Toxic preservatives on old weapons?

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by JeffS

I take this back, I looked at the source for this, Monbiot, George. (1989). Poisoned Arrows: An Investigative Journey Through Indonesia. It is really just a piece of travel journalism, I would not take his anecdotal statement "In the Asmat region, the warriors prepared their arrows with a paste derived from toxic plants, ensuring that even a minor wound could prove fatal." to be a valid reference. I can't find any other reference.

Hehe yeah I hope not I have some asmat bows and arrows about I was fooling with some the other daym. But I'd suspect the idea PNG arrows are poisoned is the bamboo or Palmwoods fighting arrows are so full of vicious barbs. Without hours you'd have a terrible infection in many cases.
There is also some mid 19th century Australian settler sort of comments in literature about aborigines and poison or cannibalism but all are pretty dubious. People who use poisoned spears or eat people they slay generally boast about it or have one myth or sorry about it. I'd say the spears with barbs being rather unfamiliar to remove probably caused infections so rapidly that such suspicions arose.

It does seem though in the ancient world in the eastern med poison was used at least people in Greek, phonecoan, egyptian, Assyrian and such texts mention it frequently. Makes you wonder why it wasn't used in Europe in the middle ages when armor was common as you could kill Witham nonlethal strike. Maybe some edicts from the church prohibiting it ?