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.
¹ and "badly compressed looping animation"
Although there are plenty of other opportunities for pedantry, especially when we take regionalisms, and other Portuguese speaking countries into account.
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).
It's different for the actual substances. Although it relates: a venomous creature that bites you will release its venom into your bloodstream.
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?
Thanks for clarifying.
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"?
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.
The motion sickness patch? Gives "just shoot me" a new meaning in 6,000 BC
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.
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.
