Did the Clovis use poison?

First off, check this out The World We KnewSo basically, nowadays, I've been wondering about accurate documentaries of late Pleistoscene life, and also what kinds of interactions were there when now extinct ice age animals met with still living megafauna alive today.
There was a documentary back in the early 2000's called Wild New World. This doc put a miriad of extinct megafauna with living ones.
Here are a few clips.
So basically, I came up with an idea of an accurate Late Pleistoscene. It's called The World We Knew.
It will take place either between 200,000-150,000 years ago, in which, although there are humans, they haven't made they big impact to the ecosystem yet.
The series takes place across the world, though I'm not sure where exactly to start. I've made two options for the setup of the seasons
OPTION 1
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Season 1: Eurasia
Season 2: Africa
Season 3: South America
Season 4: North America
Season 5: Australasia
Season 6: Antarctica
OPTION 2
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Season 1: North America
Season 2: South A.

Now...

An interesting new paper came out in December 2016. Having read it, it's suggestions were interesting about the possibilities of how the Clovis hunted. This is exploring the theoretical possibilities, NOT any actual evidence.

Most paleontologists, archaeologists and paleoecologists claim the Clovis point to be specially crafted weapons of mass destruction, capable of killing large proboscideans, such as woolly and Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius and M. columbi respectively), as well as American mastodon (Mammut americanum), among others, with which they are often found in association, with 15-26 sites qualifying, depending of the restrictiveness of the criteria. The method of killing is typically posited to be via the severe shock and bloodloss induced via wounds accumulated from hunting.

This is similar to what is generally seen in modern hunter gatherer societies in their attempts to kill elephants. However, on further examination, it appears that the arsenal and technique have major differences. The weapons used are not always restricted to spears, with axes and harpoons playing an important role for some recent hunter-gatherer groups. The blades and points used in recent times are typically constructed of iron, and have blades much larger and thicker than Clovis points, that do not typically break off into the hide of the animal upon impact like Clovis points evidently did. Therefore, there is little comparison between Clovis weaponry and that which is used today.

Given this, another, previously unexplored weapon may have been critical in dispatching large proboscideans of the size we see - poison.

Historically, poison has been used by a variety of hunter gatherer societies, including in the pursuit of elephants. Notably, the Liangulu of Kenya boiled the bark, roots, and wood of the Acokanthera tree to form a thick, dark residue that contained ouabain, a cardiac glycoside. According to the paper:

They then applied 8 to 15 grams of this paste to the arrow foreshafts (Laidlaw 1909:354; Parker and Amin 1983:39). Such amounts were more than 70 times the lethal dosage for an elephant weighing 5,443 kg (12,000 lbs; Parker and Amin 1983:30). Neuwinger (1996:78) states that ‘‘Acokanthera arrow poisons, kept in a dry place, will keep their effect for decades.’’ Hunters then used their powerful bows and poisoned arrows to target the gut (small intestines) and also the base of the ear, not the heart and lungs, so that the poison spread via intraperitoneal and intravenous routes through the elephant’s body (Holman 1967:40). Holman (1967:87) states, ‘‘Well shot with good poison, an elephant might collapse after running two hundred yards. . ..’’ Larger prey like eland (Taurotragus oryx; 837 kg), gemsbock (Oryx gazelle; 145 kg) and elephant (10,000 kg) died more quickly than smaller animals like zebra (Equus zebra; 234 kg) and warthog (Phachochoerus aethiopicus; 28 kg).

But in the context of the lateglacial of North America, what poisons were available to the Clovis?
The poison used by modern Liangulu in Kenya was almost certainly unavailable to the Clovis for use in hunting.

However, the paper puts forward one very major candidate instead - Aconitine, a toxin derived from the eponymous Aconitum sp., the genus of highly toxic plants, commonly known as monkshood, or wolf's bane. Hunter-gatherer societies in northwestern India, Tibet, Burma, China, Eastern Russia, Sakhalin, Japan, Siberia, the Aleutians Islands, southwestern Alaska, and Kodiak Island have been known to have used this poison in hunting, with plants from the genus being native to those areas. Studies on the environmental preferences of the plant have suggested that, during glacial periods, Aconitum would have thrived in North America. Therefore, monkshood is a very good candidate for mammoth-killing.

How much is the lethal dose for megafaunal herbivores?
Using mass estimates and calculations of the metabolic rate of the target megafauna, and using modern elephants as a reference point, the lethal dosage, that is, the dosage of Aconitine necessary for killing a mammoth or mastodon was calculated. As it happens, as the size of the animal increases, the amount of poison needed, relative to body mass, decreases:

Using the calculations, the following can be stated:

The estimated dosages of aconitine required to kill a Columbian mammoth, woolly mammoth, and mastodon equal 149 mg, 88 mg, and 81 mg, respectively. Consequently, onequarter teaspoon (3,000 mg) of aconitine could kill 20 Columbian mammoths, 34 woolly mammoths, or 37 mastodons. Parenthetically, Bisset (1976:94) states that the Ainu on Hokkaido would apply 600–700 mg of aconite poison to each arrowhead.

Given that the amount of the toxin used nowadays by hunter-gatherers per spear is multiple times the amount required to kill a mammoth, if we were to assume the same for the Clovis, they were fully capable of doing so. Methods of extraction can allow for poison tips lasting up to 5 months, as well as poison-dipped coils wrapped around the shaft below the tip. Quite possibly, the tip merely allowed the entry of the long shaft into the point. When hunting elephants, hunters using other poisons would aim for the area behind the ears, or the belly (small intestine), rather than the heart and lungs. This is so that the poison spread via intraperitoneal and intravenous routes through the elephant’s body, killing it after ~200 yards of running.

Using this knowledge, the researchers made illustrations of possible poison configurations of Clovis points, along with other paleoindian cultures:

Figure 5. Possible hafting configurations and poison applications for Paleoindian chipped stone projectile points (A, Clovis; B, Cumberland; C, Folsom).

Once dead, the meat may be safe to eat. Present hunter gatherer societies would usually cut out the area of flesh on a carcass where a poisoned tip had penetrated, before the consumption of the remaining meat. While this is possible for the Clovis, given the sheer size of an animal the such as a mammoth or mastodon, the poison would have been quickly diluted in the animal's bloodstream, below the concentration necessary for any lethal effects from consumption.

There is no evidence that poison was used, but very few researchers have been looking for such evidence for very long, and methods the identification and preservation of poison over millennia are a relatively new field, with work to be done.

Still, poison-tipped Clovis spears are an interesting idea indeed.


Paleoindians, Proboscideans, and Phytotoxins: Exploring the Feasibility of Poison Hunting During the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transition