Episode 87 – San poison, the world in 1821 and an MP “hectic spectacle"
History of South Africa podcastPlay episode
Show notes
This is episode 87 and it’s time to talk a bit about the terrifying power of San poison and then a quick revisit to the frontier of 1822 which of course is exactly two hundred years ago.
As part of the picture of the past, at times when there’s a bit of a lull in the action so to speak, I’ll concentrate on aspects of historical themes or interesting titbits and today we’re looking into South Africa’s first people and specifically – their deadly poison arrows.
All the way through these episodes, you have heard about how the amaXhosa, the Khoe and the Boers, then the British, exploited or subjugated the San – previously known as the Bushmen.
We have enough DNA evidence to point to the fact that they were not only the first people of South Africa but given their DNA diversity, are the first people of planet earth. But this didn’t stop everyone from trying to either kill them, or co-opt them through the thousands of years that their lives have intersected with the lives of newer folks returning home so to speak.
The San were particularly terrifying because they could manufacture various types of poison for use with their arrows. Based on the results obtained from various artefacts spanning historical, Later and Middle Stone Age phases particularly at sites along the cape coast archaeologists believe poisoned bone arrowheads may have been in use in southern Africa throughout the last 72,000 years.
Its now time move refocus on to what was going on across southern Africa and the world in 1821 as we step back to assess matters.
In the east, Shaka Zulu was starting to flex his imperial muscles as you know while in Cape Town, Lord Charles Somerset was back from his sabbatical and facing the ruin of most 1820 Settlers.
But the newspapers were also obsessing about other matters at the end of 1821.
Napoleon Bonaparte had died of stomach cancer in exile in St Helena. Europe was increasingly unstable as the agreements signed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 were coming apart.
