The Caribbean before Columbus
A glimpse at the Caribbean paradise makes us look into the rich history of both the region and its original dwellers, who were said to be very peaceful people who knew no writing and were a far cry from civilization as we know it. Contemporary archeological and anthropological studies, however, dig out the mystery and grandeur of those civilizations that once dwelt in those sea-bathed West Indian territories. Those lands witnessed for centuries the nonstop coming of humans. Those groups that differed significantly from Europeans –half-naked men and women of yellowish-brownish skin and thick straight hair- despite their development and cosmic vision, were rendered as lower, spiritless and soulless beings. Therefore, the conquest of those new overseas possessions was marked by domination and/or extermination (genocide) through the sword while ramming the gospel down their throats.
If we refer to one of the most widespread classifications in specialized literature, the Great Caribbean -as the whole basin is known- includes those former mainland American territories of Mexico's Yucatan, Honduras and Nicaragua, where groups that coexisted with the Aztecs and the Mayans had settled down earlier. The northern region of South America (Colombia, Venezuela and Guyana) need equally be added to this group.
Prior to 1492 –the year when Genoa-born admiral Christopher Columbus thought he had discovered the far-off lands of the East- today's Caribbean was peopled by the ancestors of the Arawak language group and the Caribs.
Arawaks inhabited almost all islands and territories of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, while the Caribs invaded and dominated those tribes for quite sometime, only to move later on to smaller islands and across mainland.
Those who named the great sea after them and turned it into a historic bridge spanning two portions of the American continent, were said to be not as peaceful as the Arawaks. Caribs used to be extremely belligerent during their war campaigns and in their encounters with other ethnic groups. They were counted among those who put up a tougher fight to Spanish conquistadors.
For scholars and sages, it can't be any harder to accurately pinpoint through carbon radiation the exact age of the first West Indians. Recent archeological findings in the Puerto Rican island of Vieques trace back the presence of different civilizations some 3,000 to 4,000 years BC.
Unsatisfied archeologists are still out there in search of new signals since they strongly believe the region's first inhabitants hark a much longer way back –circa 10,000 years BC- something that might wind up getting in the way of the most generalized hypothesis on America's population spread.
All research efforts point to both Arawaks and Caribs as the first humans to ever cross the sea corridor from northern South America to the other end of the continent. For archeologists and historians, these were sub-Taino and Taino civilizations –among others in line with the degree of complexity they used to show- that scattered all over Cuba, La Hispanola, Puerto Rico, Aruba, Jamaica, Antigua and other West Indian enclaves all the way to the Caribbean-bathed zones of Venezuela and Guyana.
POTTERY WAS ALREADY A FACT From the very dawn of mankind, the Caribbean was a center of constant migrations as proven in pre-Columbus demographics, during the colonial rule (Spain, Portugal, England, France and the Netherlands) and in modern times. This turned the region, as Cuban researcher Yolanda Wood puts it, into “a crossroad of cultures, spaces of an intense multiplicity of origins.” The colonization process carried out by Spaniards, Britons, Frenchmen, the Portuguese and the Dutch in the Caribbean –made up of over 30 territories that later became independent nations- killed off almost the entire autochthonous population that passed on the names of the surrounding nature –rivers, mountains, the wildlife and other natural phenomena- to their colonizers.
Arawaks make up a linguistic family widely spread across the Amazon River, through Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and South America, from the Orinoco banks and Peru all the way down to Paraguay.
Hunters and collectors used silex as a distinctive element of all human activity. People who never made use of snails, conches or bones were the forerunners of the Caribbean's first-ever dwellers.
In the immense and many-sided Arawak world, the sub-Taino civilization was one of a kind. This pottery-working culture had evolved with less complexity than Taino civilizations.
With poorly decorated and carved earthenware, Arawaks never managed to develop woodcarving to a large scale. Their ballgame –sketched out as living quarters- never featured major buildings in the playing field. Their religious organization never reached beyond the threshold of a primitive Taino rituals, either.
Before outlining the next developing stage achieved by these communities, it's worth making a few comments on mix-ups and confusions derived from the indiscriminate usage of Arawak and Taino attributes. The former points to an ethnological and cultural linguistic organization, while the latter deals with material and spiritual life, and it's mostly used in archeological studies.
The most representative findings of the Taino culture –penciled in as the most advanced group- were located in Cuba, Costa Rica, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico. They had in-depth agricultural know-how and practiced a kind of ballgame in huge ritual centers.
They used to perform stunning carvings on stone and snail shells. A sophisticated kind of pottery as far as decoration was concerned and made with all kinds of materials was also an outstanding element.
A complex social structure was built on the underpinnings of those civilizations, while the agricultural system of conucos (round knolls) raised laborers as doers of a true Neolithic revolution in the Caribbean.
In addition to the Igneris and the Arawaks dominated by the Caribs, several mavens mention a group close to the Tainos that inhabited Trinidad, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Other groups were the Ciguayo-Macorix from La Hispanola; the sub-Tainos from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, part of Cuba, the Bahamas and Haiti, and the Lucayos, hailing from the Bahamas, the latter catalogued as sub-Tainos en route to the Taino classification.
A BROKEN THREAD, AN UNFINISHED STORY Described as passive beings, the Tainos excelled in agriculture, fishing and earthenware pottery. Their idols carved in wood speak volumes of their beliefs in the Sun and the Moon as the stars of fertility, the continuation of life and births. Casabe –the basic food in aboriginal cuisine- was a kind of breaded tortilla made of grated cassava and seasoned with the meat of wild animals and fish that made its way into the cuisine traditions of eastern Cuba and the Greater Antilles.
Tobacco was an exclusive Taino possession. Their people used to chew slobs of tobacco given its well-proven healing characteristics. They used to inhale its smoke during rituals and religious ceremonies headed by the tribe's chief known as behique. Drawings and paintings made on cave walls disclose a world of reflections, fears and mystery toward natural phenomena. Those observations let us take a much closer look at the spirituality of the pre-columbine man. However, their real meanings remain frozen in time with a symbolism and a sense yet to be ferreted out and construed.
Nevertheless, the footprints of the Caribbean's first dwellers were captured in the rich lithic industry of stones, shells, wood objects, techniques for making hunting, sowing and fishing tools, and in god-worshipping rituals, let alone a spectacular cultural heritage as seen in refined earthenware pots and vases, geometric designs, decorations and other elements.
Recent studies in Puerto Rican sites reveal the significance of this region for a better understanding of the Caribbean's pre-Columbus civilizations, as the island served to bridge the gap between the Greater and the Lesser Antilles.
For archeologists, piecing together the pre-columbine history of the West Indies and the Caribbean reaches out to the Vieques deposits, a key link to the Arawaks' Taino civilization.
Curious megalithic arrangements –allegedly used by natives of those lands for astronomic observations- stand for groundbreaking findings if we consider that this age and civilization were long rendered irrelevant as compared with much bigger cultures as the Aztecs and the Mayans. These are non-carved stone arrangements placed in such a way that used to permit Arawaks to find out in advance the coming of the harvest time, the change of seasons and the approach of the feared hurricanes.
Might this be truly a stone calendar –as archeological evidence and researchers' considerations appear to point- then our Arawak ancestors will no longer be considered the humble inventors of casabe, and the makers of the bow and the arrows.
These signals of an extinguished civilization killed off in bloodshed that have miraculously lived out time and nature's implacable weather impairment, make us wonder whether those Caribbean natives were probably great sages adequately prepared to fight against the environmental odds of their times.
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