At the risk of being overly pedantic, topologists would typically classify this as venom.
Venom is inert if digested; it's only a problem if it gets in your blood stream. So arrows that were laced with venom and thereby contaminated meat were actually perfectly safe to eat.
Poison is different. If ingested, inhaled, or absorbed it will kill you.
The poisions?
Buphanidrine : https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Buphanidrine
and
Epibuphanisine https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/substance/349793761
which are nearly identical compounds (it seems) except for one having an additional -OMe (Methylether) group. Looks like they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinine (s)
From the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boophone_disticha plant.
> having an effect akin to that of scopolamine
The motion sickness patch? Gives "just shoot me" a new meaning in 6,000 BC
That is not the only effect of scopolamine. It's a very potent deliriant. In Colombia it has been used by attackers (referred to as "devil's breath", blown into the face) to cause amnesia and a very docile state (a victim might be walked to an ATM, forced to empty their accounts, and not remember a thing. Or worse). It can cause some extreme types of hallucinations.
Is there a verified case? There is a similar urban legend here in Argentina, sometimes the steal your money, sometimes a kidney, ...
From your comment:
> referred to as "devil's breath", blown into the face
I've read similar reports in email chains in the 2000. Like the guy that touched a piece of paper and a few seconds later collapsed. I think that some local newspaper even published it, without evidence.
From the NYT article:
> She carried it from a restaurant counter to their table. He had two spoonfuls, Mr. Valdez, 31, said. “And that’s the last thing I remember.”
> He drank a pink soda, he said in a video, and later awoke to find his wallet and phone gone.
> One 42-year-old man from New York recalled being drugged by a Tinder date who served him a rum and coke that he said knocked him out for 24 hours.
These case makes more sense. There are a few recent similar cases here, and many buildings have security cameras on the front door, so they get a nice video of the escaping thieves.
> 6,000 BC
58,000 BC
6000 decades BC
It's humbling to think about all the things people have gone through over the past couple hundred thousand years. Somewhere around 117 billion humans have ever lived...? It makes it seem kind of small when we think only 50 or 100 years out when thinking of what the future would be.
The linked study (the summary is both more concise and informative): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz3281
How was it determined that these are arrowheads, as opposed to atlatl darts?
The oldest known/discovered/documented bows only go back to ~7,000 BC (Holmegaard bows from Northern Europe).
Can't directly answer your questions, but generally each region/time period has their own style of arrowheads, so my assumption here would be that this region tends to create arrowheads in this style. The paper mentions this is a pretty old site/artifacts, so I'd wager they found other "arrowheads".
Arrowhead might also be being used generically here to mean sharpened stone tip on a projectile or thrown weapon.
I'm no expert in this area, but it may just be that we aren't sure if these are arrowheads or just sharpened stones that were put on something. Someone correct me if I'm being ignorant. The article really makes it seem like a lot is unknown here, since we're dealing with 60,000 years.
There are a number of ways they're able to tell the difference between arrowheads and sharpened stones put on a stick, including high-resolution CT to look at the stress microcracks of the arrowhead. Bow-fired arrows and thrown spearheads have different launch stress profiles as well as impact profiles. There are a lot of overlapping types of analysis that happen to establish what technology did or did not exist in a given area at a given time.
You can throw the arrow with just a piece of rope rolled around your hand and using the same grip as in the atlatl. Romans called those slingshot arrows tragulae.
For context, this is towards the end of prehistoric human time period Middle Paleolithic [0] and in the middle of geological time period Late Pleistocene [1].
Man has a rather unkind history.
The even worse thing is that in 2026 this hasn't quite improved significantly. What is the main poison used today? I guess that may depend on the definition, probably particles being taken in by the lung in general. But specific poison it may be antifreeze? Or perhaps that is just more famous. Food poisoning probably is among the highest, but it would not be deliberate usually, so it should be counted in another category.
the main poison used today is dopamine.
It was almost certainly used for agriculture. Observation of hunter-gatherer bands in modern times, and archeology have little in the way of skirmishes or warfare prior to the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. Not that it never happened, but violence and war are much more endemic to the modern (past 10000 years) era.
> violence and war are much more endemic to the modern (past 10000 years) era.
Given the scantiness of any evidence 10,000+ years ago, I doubt such conclusions can be drawn.
Even chimpanzees engage in war and wanton violence. One would assume this behavior is at least as ancient as the most recent common ancestor we have with the chimpanzee.
We Dutch solve this problem by having a single word for "poison", "venom and "toxin"¹. Everybody still knows what you mean and nobody gets to be pedantic.
¹ and "badly compressed looping animation"
Same in Portuguese, veneno.
Although there are plenty of other opportunities for pedantry, especially when we take regionalisms, and other Portuguese speaking countries into account.
Is the word "stamppot" ?
Just "food". Any kind of Dutch food fits the description.
This is true, notably a kroket is both looping and badly compressed.
Vergif.
I don't know how you get from 'ver' to badly compressed.
(And I'm a native Flemish speaker, but living in the USA for 8+ years, so I barely, if ever speak it).
Remove Ver, add t and you got German: Gift
Vergiftet would be past tense.
Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.
Languages are fun, especially in Europe where they're all different but all so related but everyone does not want to admit it.
It's probably the same, for example in Afrikaans its just gif. Vergif is the verb action of doing it, and vergiftig the same past tense of it having happened previously.
This is one of the reasons I like HN: Random knowledge transfer like this. Appreciated!
Also: in German Dosis is the word for dose.
(the dose makes the poison)In German "Mitgift" is what the bride gets from her family when she enters marriage.
Hehe, you found the exception that proves the rule :P
In NL, just 'gif' is sufficient
Same in Chinese (毒). But it is a better solution just not to give pedants the time of the day.
You can't really, can you?
At the very least, they'd complain about accuracy, if not time zone, or even how we should all be on UTC (do not get one started on the difference between GMT and UTC if you value your... time)
Same in Polish. You'd just call both of these "trucizna".
Not really, we have both „jad” (venom) and „trucizna” (poison).
Obviously I know "jad" but I don't see any issue with calling venom "trucizna". Natural languages aren't C++ and you don't get compiler errors when you speak - to me, there is no issue calling both venoms and poison trucizna. Polish dictionary doesn't seem to contradict it either:
https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/trucizna.html
The point is, both are correct(afaik) while in English venom and poison are definitely two different things.
And in Russian we use "jad" ("яд" in cyrillic) for both. Although there is the word "отрава", which can be used for poisons and "яд" is closer to "venom" the difference is almost non-existant and both are often used interchangeably.
TIL. I always thought that "If it bite you -> you die = venom" and "If you eat, bite, touch -> you die = poison". But your differentiation makes more sense
That explains the words "venomous" and "poisonous" used of creatures.
It's different for the actual substances. Although it relates: a venomous creature that bites you will release its venom into your bloodstream.
>a venomous creature that bites you will release its venom into your bloodstream
unless it's a bee, wasp, hornet, scorpion, stingray, jellyfish, man-of-war, platypus, lionfish, stonefish, sea urchin, or catfish, which all have venom instead of poison, but the delivery mechanism of said venom isn't biting
I said "bite" echoing the comment I was replying to. Obviously the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to stinging etc.
If a venomous snake bites you, you die. If you bite a venomous snake, you live. If a poisonous snake bites you, you will. If you bite a poisonous snake, you die.
Or Hamlet's mother died by drinking poisoned wine. Hamlet died by being stabbed with an envenomed sword.
Not overly pedantic at all as it highlights that by using venom the hunters were able to eat what they shot.
These chemicals are derived from plants where even pedants would classify them as poisons.
The genus name Boophone is from the Greek bous = ox, and phontes= killer of, a clear warning that eating the plant can be fatal to livestock.
Huh, so telephone is killer of distance and Persephone is killer of… Persians? Grain? Vegetation?
You're mixing up phōnē (voice) and phonos (slaughter), but the truth about Persephone is actually more metal.
Her name predates Greek contacts with Persians, so the timeline doesn't fit. Instead, it comes from perthein (to destroy) + phonos, making her the "Bringer of Destruction". With a caveat that the etymology of her name is uncertain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone#Name
I do like "killer of distance" for telephone, though. :)
> Instead, it comes from perthein (to destroy) + phonos, making her the "Bringer of Destruction". With a caveat that the etymology of her name is uncertain:
But... of all the theories listed there, perthein isn't among them.
And if the roots are "destroy" and "death", what would make her the "bringer" of destruction?
Fair point about the source, but the classification usually follows the mode of delivery, not the organism of origin.
Many plant-derived compounds function as venoms once introduced into the bloodstream (arrow coatings, darts, etc.), even if they’re also toxic when ingested. Curare is one example of a plant-based compound - lethal in blood, but largely harmless if eaten.
So while Boophone is absolutely a poison in the ecological sense, using it on arrows still fits the venom/toxin distinction better than a purely ingested poison. Otherwise why would people hunt with this if they got sick the second they ate the meat?
Is it really? We call it poison darts when hunters use poison from the poison dart frog to hunt.
In practice the difference is mostly semantics.
Venom is still almost always poisonous when eaten and poison is harmful when injected. 2-3% as dangerous when eaten vs injected only helps so much.
"mostly semantics"
Semantics: 1 (linguistics) the study of meanings
I am not sure what could be more important.
But perhaps you "word choice"?
What things are more important than the study of meanings in a linguistic context?
Well semantics only covers an infinitesimal fraction of all meaning. Consider if I inject arsenic into a snakes venom sac is it now a venom? Nothing about your answer changes anything about what’s going on, yet you could still debate the question.
So when you say “what could be more important” I can only say that just about everything is more important.
Not pedantic, two different.
Thanks for clarifying.
But eating a rattlesnake and dying is a bad way of finding out that you have a stomach ulcer.
I am not a native speaker but I believe you are wrong. It is called poison dart for example. So injected toxins can be both called poisons and venoms.
In Spanish it's commonly "dardo venenoso" (venomous dart), no "dardo ponzoñoso" (poisonous dart). So it's probably incorrectly used in English.
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