Florida

The Calusa people, an ancient Native American population that occupied the lands of modern-day Florida in pre-Columbian times, engaged in a most unusual practice. It seems they harvested enormous quantities of a fish that couldn’t be eaten because it produced a toxic compound that was deadly to humans. So, the question is, what exactly were they doing with this poisonous fish? Recent excavations at the Mound Key archaeological site in southwestern Florida have unearthed extensive deposits of the bones of burrfish, a species that survives to this day but has never been used as a source of food. Burrfish produce a poison known as tetrodoxin, which can kill a person within an hour of consumption, causing gastrointestinal distress, paralysis, and