Scientists discover oldest poison, on 60k-year-old arrows

[noleary]

https://archive.ph/qGfbk

[icyfox]

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.

[skrebbel]

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"

[VanshPatel99]

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

[throwaway5465]

Not overly pedantic at all as it highlights that by using venom the hunters were able to eat what they shot.

[hyrix]

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.

[Gud]

Not pedantic, two different.

Thanks for clarifying.

[Retric]

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.

[OptionOfT]

But eating a rattlesnake and dying is a bad way of finding out that you have a stomach ulcer.

[jeltz]

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.

[gilleain]

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.

[CGMthrowaway]

> having an effect akin to that of scopolamine

The motion sickness patch? Gives "just shoot me" a new meaning in 6,000 BC

[ojo-rojo]

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.

[Modified3019]

The linked study (the summary is both more concise and informative): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz3281

[WillAdams]

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).

[chrneu]

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.

[narag]

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.

[adolph]

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].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Paleolithic

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene

[shevy-java]

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.

[jayzalowitz]

the main poison used today is dopamine.

[regularization]

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.

[bookofjoe]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46535230