500-year-old horn container discovered in South Africa sheds light on pre-colonial Khoisan medicines

Both the Khoi and the San believed in a mythical animal, resembling a cow, whose horns were thought to have medicinal attributes. Rodger Smith

In 2020, a chance discovery near the small South African hamlet of Misgund in the Eastern Cape unearthed an unusual parcel – a gift to science. The parcel turned out to be a 500-year-old cow horn, capped with a leather lid and carefully wrapped in grass and the leafy scales of a Bushman poison bulb (Boophane disticha). Inside the horn were the solidified remnants of a once-liquid substance.

Thanks to chemical analyses, we now know that the horn was a medicine container. It is the earliest known object of its kind from anywhere in southern Africa and offers the first insights into pre-colonial medicines in this part of the world.