[HN Gopher] Direct evidence for poison use on microlithic arrowh...
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       Direct evidence for poison use on microlithic arrowheads at 60k
       years ago
        
       Author : layer8
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2026-01-08 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (doi.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (doi.org)
        
       | ktg0215 wrote:
       | Fascinating research. The idea that humans were using compound
       | tools with poison 60,000 years ago really challenges our
       | assumptions about "primitive" technology. Our ancestors were far
       | more sophisticated than we often give them credit for.
        
         | helpfulclippy wrote:
         | Whenever this stuff comes up I try to remind people that we
         | only get to see a tiny little glimpse of what these folks were
         | up to. Folks look at the stone tools that have only been found
         | after their owners were done with them and left them in the
         | ground for eons, and imagine that in general everything was
         | "rough" and "crude."
         | 
         | We don't get to see the overwhelming majority of their craft --
         | there's no doubt a whole world of wood and leather artistry and
         | so on that don't get to survive. Humans are clever, adaptable
         | and often times really fucking obsessive. That same instinct
         | that makes one spend hundreds of hours on Factorio was around
         | in prehistory, applying itself to whatever.
         | 
         | I often times hear anthropologists speculate that large stone
         | handaxes were a means of seduction -- that the girls would have
         | swooned over the guys who were better able to make more
         | effective tools. I know too many nerds to believe this. I think
         | that back then, there were people who kept obsessing over
         | making finer tools and theorizing about designs and where
         | materials could be found, and it was about as sexually
         | appealing as my homelab. Which is to say, absolutely fucking
         | not, but who cares, I want to tell you about my idea for a
         | subnet optimized to allow doomcoder agents to handle their own
         | infra needs
        
           | Tagbert wrote:
           | Having a great hand axe might be more analogous to the boy
           | with the "bitchin Camaro" to attract the girls. Or more
           | recently, performance in a street takeover.
        
         | rwoerz wrote:
         | They had some kind of "microlithic" architecture.
        
       | opwieurposiu wrote:
       | Anyone who has done much hunting gets tired of carrying that
       | heavy-ass rifle through the woods all day. A small reduction in
       | the weight of your gear allows you to cover a lot more ground.
       | 
       | The great thing about poison arrows is that they can be much
       | smaller and still be effective. Smaller arrows means you can
       | carry more of them and also your bow will be smaller and lighter.
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-08 23:01 UTC)