The oldest known/discovered/documented bows only go back to ~7,000 BC (Holmegaard bows from Northern Europe).
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.
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.
It's different for the actual substances. Although it relates: 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
Or Hamlet's mother died by drinking poisoned wine. Hamlet died by being stabbed with an envenomed sword.
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.
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?
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. :)
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?
¹ and "badly compressed looping animation"
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.
No? That's how I've always said it. "Ta żmija jest trująca" - don't see any issue here. Jadowity grzyb I'll agree.
You've never visited Italy ? They're not that far away and I'm sure you'll love it.
No, the situation in English matches your description exactly: all of these things are called poison. The word venom is almost never used in natural speech.
Furthermore, if you ask English speakers what the difference between poison and venom is, by far the two most common responses will be "there isn't one" and "I don't know". icyfox is just looking to be annoying.
(Another popular option will probably be "it's called venom when you're talking about snakes", which explains roughly 100% of use of venom in natural speech.)
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)
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).
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.
I'm laughing in Finnish..
Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish are both Uralic languages along with Estonian and the Sámi languages, but none of these are related to the Indo-European languages common in the other parts of Europe.
And while most of Europe’s extant languages are in the Indo-European language family, there’s still a fair number of differences between Albanian, Germanic, Hellenic, Celtic, Romantic and Slavic languages.
The point was essentially what you're showing here: People focusing on all the differences instead of shared history, languages influencing each other and how we're all not that different in the end.
If you want to, even within what are nowadays countries and what outsiders would say is "one language" and "one ethnicity", you can start focusing on differences and make people dislike each other.
In English it maintains its original Germanic meaning derived from the verb give.
The sense of "poison" in German comes from a euphemistic use of "gift". (Literally 'something given' but actually used to calque Greek "dosis", which also literally meant 'something given', but was used to mean 'dose [of medicine]'.)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gift#Etymology
Summing up, the reason gift is a word in English with an entirely different meaning from what it has in German is that everyone in Germany forgot what gift meant.
(The reason it's gift and not something more like yift is the Danelaw.)
Also: in German Dosis is the word for dose.
Die Dosis macht das Gift
Although there are plenty of other opportunities for pedantry, especially when we take regionalisms, and other Portuguese speaking countries into account.
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.
Semantics: 1 (linguistics) the study of meanings
I am not sure what could be more important.
But perhaps you "word choice"?
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.
Thanks for clarifying.
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.
Given the scantiness of any evidence 10,000+ years ago, I doubt such conclusions can be drawn.
gilleain•4w ago
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•4w ago
The motion sickness patch? Gives "just shoot me" a new meaning in 6,000 BC
ChrisMarshallNY•4w ago
58,000 BC
onionisafruit•4w ago
temp0826•4w ago
gus_massa•4w ago
temp0826•4w ago
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/world/americas/colombia-d...
gus_massa•4w ago
> 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.
temp0826•4w ago