How Did Ancient Humans Discover Poison?

How did ancient humans discover poison? Sixty thousand years ago, a hunter in South Africa painted a deadly plant paste onto a quartz arrowhead smaller than your fingernail — and scientists can still detect it today. In this video, Pink Hat — who has been around since the Stone Age — takes you through the hidden history of ancient poison: how early humans learned which plants could kill, why the weakest hunter on the savanna needed poison arrows, and how a 60,000-year-old recipe made from gifbol, the "poison onion", survived unchanged into the 1700s. You'll see the 7,000-year-old bone quiver from Kruger Cave with a multi-ingredient heart poison, San hunters squeezing beetle larvae onto their arrows, curare darts in the Amazon, the golden poison frog that can kill ten men, the Greek origin of the word "toxic", Socrates and his cup of hemlock, King Mithridates, and arsenic, the "inheritance powder". Then the twist: the same poisons became medicine. Foxglove heart drugs, curare in surgery, a blood pressure drug from snake venom, and warfarin — a rat poison given to a US president. As Paracelsus said, the dose makes the poison. 👉 Subscribe to Pink Hat:    / @pinkhatrr   💬 Tell me in the comments: what should the first humans discover next? Sources: Isaksson, Högberg & Lombard (Science Advances, 2026); Bradfield et al. (iScience, 2024); d'Errico et al. (PNAS, 2012). Pink Hat has been around since the Stone Age. He watched humans discover fire, poison, medicine, and everything in between — and now he's telling you what your ancestors never did. Learn how ancient humans discovered poison, medicine, and more — new videos every week. #ancienthistory #stoneage #archaeology