Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/25/prehistoric-poop-reveals-perso.html
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Or they were just that pissed off and spiteful toward the snake.
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Although the same could probably be said of early adopters of the artichoke.
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Now the poop is quite historic.
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His name? Honey Badger.
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pretty sure we had history 1500 years ago
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Prehistory in this case refers to the group under investigation, not those doing the investigating.
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“Prehistoric” refers to any period before written records existed, so the cutoff date varies widely by culture.
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“a distinctly ceremonial or ritualistic purpose,”
or they were just really hungry - or had pica.
ritualistic purposes - the cop math of anthropologists
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I feel like there’s a Taco Bell joke buried somewhere in here, but I’m just not finding it.
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I appropriate the use of the term “venomous snake”
Though, one could argue that it would be a poisonous snake in this case. No?
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Yes, please, someone find the joke. I love this thread. So much potential.
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Drugs. Ah, I was confused as to why anyone would eat a snake including the fang, because that doesn’t seem like a survival strategy, but drugs would explain it.
Except human beings had to breed the plant to produce the artichoke - the edible ancestor of the plant (something like a cardoon), was raised to eat its leaf-stems.
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But did he gulp it down in one go?
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I could imagine some sort of marketing woo.
Taco Bell’s™ new Snake Bite Taco’s™ with veneno picante sauce™ bite back if your aren’t careful.
Come to Taco Bell™ today and see if you have what it takes to survive the Snake Bite Ritual Challenge™
[Bro voice shouts] GET BIT!
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Slither to the Border?
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Saying that the prehistoric drug-users would have also had to have been experimental crop farmers isn’t really hurting my original point 
that Venn diagram is like a waxing crescent
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Perhaps the snake had bitten him, and tribal lore suggested that killing and eating the snake would protect him from the venom. Which apparently it did, at least long enough for him to digest and shit the snake.
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Serious question: is snake venom particularly dangerous when ingested? I would think that most forms of venom attack either muscle or the nervous system. Eating the stuff would probably mean the toxins are broken down before entering the blood, although maybe not. I suppose the more strong the venom, the more likely enough gets absorbed into the bloodstream and cooks your goose.
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People do consume venomous snakes including the venom (e.g. in snake wine), and apparently both alcohol and stomach acid will render snake venom (mostly) harmless*. (Though when consuming venom straight, it obviously could be problematic if it gets into a cut in the mouth, etc.)
*There are reports of people recreationally ingesting snake venom, dried, in pill form. It seems there are effects, albeit not the deadly ones that getting bitten by the snake would have (and it’s also not entirely clear if the pills actually contain venom, or if that’s an active ingredient).
And now that I remember the reports of people deliberately ingesting snake venom as a drug (supposedly), I have to wonder if eating the whole snake wasn’t the drug trip itself…
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