The Settlement of the Caribbean (A Part of Project Exploration)

Humans have been in North and South America for more than 20,000 years, and as we've seen in a previous episode, people migrated into North and South America rapidly. However, after all the continental landmasses were settled, one frontier remained, the islands of the Caribbean. And it's not too difficult to see why. Most of these islands are quite a distance from the mainland, yet indigenous sailors and explorers did eventually reach these islands and settle on them. Today, let's consider how the Caribbean was discovered and settled by humans. This video is part of a collaboration with several other YouTube channels called Project Exploration. If you are interested in exploration and discovery, you can check out the other videos in the description or at the end of this video. Also, a quick thank you to our channel friend, Atlas Altera, for letting me use his map for this episode. Atlas Altera is a project that uses fiction to reproject our world into something familiar, yet radically different. Using alternative geography, Atlas Altera reimagines human diversity and coexistence in a new way. If that sounds cool to you, go check out his channel. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Before we get started, we need to lay out some geography. The Caribbean islands are made up of over 700 islands ranging widely in size. They are places of rich biodiversity and are home to 2.9% of endemic vertebrate species and 2.3% of the world's plant species, which is very impressive for a chain of islands that only comprise 0.15% of the Earth's surface. These islands are divided into three main groups. First, we have the greater Antilles, which includes the larger islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the tiny Cayman Islands. These are probably the first places that come to mind when you think of the Caribbean. Next, we have the lesser Antilles, which include the smaller islands east of Puerto Rico and north of the South American coast. This arc of islands is relatively young, and these are mainly volcanic or coral islands. Finally, we have the Lucayan archipelago, colloquially known by the more common name, the Bahamas. One thing we need to keep in mind is that the Caribbean is more than just islands. Most of it is water. Winds and currents play a huge role in governing how people move between the islands and continents. The Caribbean current flows from east to west along the northern coast of South America and pushes water into the Gulf of Mexico. Other currents move along the Gulf coast and back into the Atlantic, where it becomes the Gulf Stream. Also joining the Gulf Stream is the Antilles current, which runs east to west along the northern rim of the lesser and greater Antilles. These are strong currents that can also intensify or abate depending on the season. Channels between the islands also act as bottlenecks, which intensify the current. Any seafarer navigating the Caribbean is going to have to reckon with these forces of nature to make any headway. So with this backdrop, you're probably wondering how people navigated and sailed the Caribbean waters. Anyone who knows about Polynesian seafaring, or thinks they know something about Polynesian seafaring because they watched the movie Moana, should be familiar with outrigger canoes, double-hulled canoes, celestial navigation, and wayfinding. I really wish I could discuss the analogs to all that, but the tragic fact is that the Caribbean populations were decimated so quickly by colonization that that knowledge is almost gone. Working from evidence that is available, we can say that the means of transportation between the islands were canoes. Now we do have to generalize somewhat here because very few canoes are preserved in the archaeological record, and historical accounts of indigenous marine transportation are not as common as one would hope. By the way, one thing that these accounts never mention are sails. That means that any and all propulsion had to be fueled by elbow grease and a can-do attitude. Now you might think that a canoe is a pretty unimpressive boat, but these impressed Columbus when he first encountered them. As a fellow sailor, he noted that they could move almost as fast as his own ship, and that the crews were very adept sailors who could quickly bail out their boats if they got swamped by a wave and be on their way in no time. He also observed a variety of canoes used by the locals. They could be small enough for one or two people, or huge elaborate vessels designed to carry dozens. For example, the Kalinago built a type of canoe called the Kanoa that could hold up to 40 people and traverse the open sea. In 2008, a team of archaeologists approached a Kalina community about building one of these canoes. The Kalina are one of the last indigenous groups in South America still building their dugouts just as their ancestors did. The report I read didn't specify what type of wood was used for this, but historical accounts report that the silk cotton tree was particularly favored due to its large straight trunk and its buoyancy. Once completed, they took it to sea, and after some practice and training, sailed from Martinique to Antigua in nine days. Two years later, they completed a trip from Granada to Martinique in eight days. Their boat, named the Akayuman, or the Spirit of the Grandfather Snake, required 26 rowers, one boat swain at the front, and a steersman at the stern, and averaged a speed of three knots during the trip. Not bad! Subsequent analysis has shown that on most days of the year, conditions would have been fine for inner island travel. Most islands in the Caribbean can be navigated by means of coastal navigation. With a few exceptions, no island is ever out of sight of another. When you look at the Lesser Antilles, for instance, all these islands with the exception of Granada and Tobago are within sight of one another, although sometimes you do have to climb to the top of the island to see the next island in the chain. Therefore, in most instances, there may not have been a need for elaborate means of navigation with a proper understanding of winds and currents. However, there are islands outside the sight of land that we know were colonized, which means that there must have been methods for navigating open water, but what these would have been, we can only speculate. Also, as we'll see, island hopping may not have been the preferred method of travel. Perhaps like Polynesians in the Pacific, they too figured out how to read natural phenomena to guide them in their travels. We'll never know for certain. Regarding the voyages of the Akayuman that I mentioned earlier, they were only testing coastal trips between islands. No one has yet taken it out into the open blue, but believe it or not, that's about to change. There were plans to take the boat from the Yucatan to Cuba in July of 2022, assuming that recent events haven't jettisoned those. Hopefully, this will shed some light on what is needed to make such a crossing. Before we proceed, I do want to clarify some things about chronology. Originally, I didn't want to get into this detail, but I feel like it's worth touching because it's a bit of a mess, and if any of you lovely viewers ever engage with this topic and want to do your own reading, which I always hope that you do, it's good to be familiar with it. If you've read any popular literature on the subject, it will most likely refer to the chronology formed by Dr. Irving Rouse. Rouse was a giant in the field of Caribbean archaeology and archaeology as a whole, and he bequeathed the world with a slick-looking chronology of the Caribbean. Now, archaeology in the Caribbean is pretty uneven, more so when Rouse formulated this, and while it was very serviceable 30 years ago, it hasn't really stood the test of time. Rouse's chronology breaks Caribbean history into four ages that, in theory, line up with certain migrations and material cultures, and goes something like this. From 4000 to 2000 BCE, we have the Lithic Age. From 2000 to 500 BCE, we have the Archaic. Starting in 500 BCE, going all the way until European colonization, we have the Ceramic Age, which is a bit of a misnomer, as we'll see. Finally, after 1500 CE, we have the Historical Age. In Rouse's defense, he himself even admitted that this chronology was tentative and that revision would be in order with more archaeology. Well, more archaeology has happened, and more past archaeology has been re-evaluated and scrutinized. Many people have made suggestions for how these various ages should be defined, but ultimately there's no field-wide consensus that I could find on this, and there's a frustrating degree of variability before the Ceramic Age. The Lithic and Archaic Ages usually get pushed back a bit in such proposals. Hopefully some brains out there are working on a new chronology. So just understand that these divisions are not as rigid as they appear, and they will definitely change down the road. That said, I'm still going to be using these terms a bit loosely in this video. So let's take a look at when and how humans migrated into the Caribbean. These migrations into and across the Caribbean were not a single event, but a series of migrations and pauses with new migrants and colonizers coming and going at different times. The earliest islands to be inhabited were Trinidad and possibly Tobago, but these islands kinda sorta don't really count because when humans first arrived in South America, the sea levels were much lower than they are today, and these islands were part of the mainland. So it does stand to reason that people would have inhabited those areas for millennia before they became islands. Tobago was cut off about 11,000 years ago as sea levels rose, and Trinidad followed suit about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. However, the earliest archaeological sites in Trinidad date to about 5,000 BCE, which is well after it was cut off from the mainland. If this picture is accurate, it suggests that the earliest inhabitants had to have crossed the sea to get there. Granted, with lower sea levels back then, it would have been a very short trip, but a trip nonetheless. It should be obvious, but I'll just say it anyway, these migrants would have come from the north coast of South America. Soon after Trinidad was settled, there was another migration into Cuba and Hispaniola. These settlers are referred to in the literature as the Casamoroid Culture and are associated with the Lithic Age since they are mainly identified from their lithic tools. In case anyone is wondering, this culture is not named after some Polish archaeologist or something, but actually for the Casamira site in the Dominican Republic. They settled Cuba and Hispaniola around 5,000 to 4,000 BCE. Where these people came from is a matter of ongoing debate. Traditionally, archaeologists have theorized that they came from the Yucatan, and that certainly makes sense when you look at a map. The dating of these early sites suggest a west to east movement, and the Yucatan isn't that far of a jump. The tools used by the Casamoroid people have similarities with tools in modern-day Belize, though these similarities have recently come under renewed scrutiny. Specifically, their timing is a bit problematic because the tools in Belize date back way earlier than when the migrations took place. Another possible problem with this theory is that rowing your boat from the Yucatan Peninsula to Cuba is actually pretty hard because the currents between the islands are very strong and they can easily push you off course. Remember, there's no evidence that these people ever used sails, so rowing was most likely the only means of propulsion that they had. Others have suggested migrations originating from Nicaragua or Florida, but subsequent research hasn't borne out these theories. Scholars have started to warm up to the idea that these migrants came from the Etzmo-Colombian region, and this actually nicely lines up with some of the material artifacts we have from that time. Some initial genetic studies have also suggested that these people may have come from mainland South America. This is all a very long way of saying that the jury is still deliberating on the question and that we should look forward to new research in the future. Regardless of where they came from, the Casanoid peoples colonized only Cuba and Hispaniola. No evidence of Casanoid culture has been found in Jamaica or Puerto Rico, and not for lack of trying. In Jamaica especially, archaeological surveys have combed through the island for early sites and come up empty. Around 3000 BCE, we see a second great migration into the Caribbean. This migration and its culture are referred to as the Otoroid, and they are typically associated with the Archaic. Now this is where things get a little funky. It's believed that these people originated from South America, specifically from the Orinoco Delta and the surrounding coast, and there's plenty of good archaeological and genetic evidence to support this. Now you'd expect that coming from South America, the Otoroid would make their way up the Lesser Antilles, hopping from island to island, settling each one sequentially until they arrived at the Greater Antilles. Well, that sounds pretty straightforward and maybe true, but that's not what the archaeological record bears out. Instead, we see settlements pop up in the Lesser Antilles north of Guadalupe, extending west to Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and some parts of eastern Cuba. But wait, there's an exception, because of course there is. On the island of Barbados, there is solid evidence of a Toroid settlement there, so that's a bit weird. Why were most of the islands south of the Guadalupe Passage skipped? This passage isn't difficult or treacherous to navigate, at least not any more so than any other island passages. Did not one tribe or clan think of starting a home on such prized Caribbean real estate? It's all the more odd, because during this time, the southern Caribbean islands off the coast of modern-day Venezuela were getting colonized, so there was clearly activity in the south, just not much in the southeastern Lesser Antilles. There's been a lot of discussion to explain this discrepancy. It could be that we just haven't yet found the evidence needed to prove earlier settlements of these islands. Rising sea levels and coastal erosion may have sunk the best archaeological sites. Scientists have also speculated that volcanic activity or shoreline erosion discouraged settlement on these islands, but neither of these cases can be applied to all the islands in the Lesser Antilles. It's also possible that these people may not have island-hopped at all, but sailed directly north from the mainland. There is, of course, another theory, albeit one that needs a lot more investigation. There is the possibility that the Casparoid and a Toroid were the same people, and that they didn't come from the south, but spread from the Greater Antilles eastward. Proponents point to similarities in artifacts and lifestyle, but as you can imagine, this is quite the hot take, and we'll have to wait and see how or even if this plays out. Now, these archaic cultures have traditionally gotten written off as simple and primitive hunters, fishers, and foragers who barely made a dent in the local environment. If you read older, more widespread literature, they'll characterize them as a people who didn't practice horticulture or make any pottery. Thankfully, recent archaeology has shed light on just how complex these people were. One area where this is very evident is their diet. Archaeobotany has come a long way in the past few decades, and it's allowed scientists to analyze microbotanical remains. This has revolutionized how we view archaic groups. For one, we know that they were consciously maintaining domesticated plants such as maize, potatoes, beans, peppers, and manioc to augment the natural flora and fauna. These domesticates would have been very important to colonization because they were a predictable source of food in a new and uncertain land. It shows that these groups didn't just wander into the Caribbean blindly and hope for the best. They took steps to ensure that they had a predictable source of food. Now, it doesn't appear that they practiced full-time agriculture, but they were clearly cultivating and harvesting these plants on a limited scale. Furthermore, simple pottery has been dated to this time. These were once thought to be intrusive elements at archaic sites, but more and more discoveries of such pottery have convinced most scientists that it was a product of these cultures. The earliest dates we currently have for these ceramics are about 2600 BCE in Cuba, but there are plenty of other sites around the Caribbean that feature archaic pottery as well. Okay, now let's step back and take a look at where we are at 1000 BCE. The greater Antilles have mostly been settled, and there are settlements popping up in the lesser Antilles. All of these diverse islands probably encouraged diverse cultures, lifestyles, and political entities that regularly interacted with each other. We start to see strong signs of regional trade. The best example of this is Chert from the island of Antigua. The Caribbean is not a flint-rich area, but there are large deposits of it on Antigua, and this rapidly became a highly sought-after material that was traded widely across the Caribbean islands. However, contact with mainland South and Central America was still maintained. In fact, it's likely that archaic developments in the Caribbean were in part inspired by what was happening on the mainland. The Bahamas and several southern islands in the lesser Antilles were not being settled at this time. Even the large island of Jamaica was still sitting empty at this point. Now, between 800 and 500 BCE, a new player entered the ring, the Saladoid, also referred to as the Arawak. These people are best remembered for their brilliant white-on-red and zone-incised pottery, which is very hard to miss and also appears on the northern coast of South America. This pottery is what gives the ceramic age its name in Rouse's old chronology, although we know now that that's a bit of a misnomer. It's worth giving the Arawak a bit of background here. We briefly met the Arawak at the end of our Mara Johara episode, but didn't say very much. It's believed that they originated in the Orinoco Basin sometime before 1000 BCE and began to spread out not just into the Caribbean, but all over South America. In fact, the Arawak language family is one of the most geographically extensive in all the Americas, stretching from Central America to the Caribbean to the Amazon Basin to the feet of the Andes. These people knew how to move around. Arawak communities are usually organized into permanent settlements with a focus on intensive agriculture, but they were also capable of adapting to local environments and conditions. They also have highly institutionalized social rankings based on bloodline and birth order. We know this because the Arawak didn't just survive into the historical period but are still around today. These Arawak, or more precisely Saladoid, migrants colonized the rest of the Lesser Antilles in due course, but not in the way you'd expect. If you thought the Atauroid migrations were weird, buckle up. These Saladoid people settled the rest of the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico. Where the Saladoid went, they transformed the lands that they touched and incorporated previous populations. Now if I were to ask you how these people settled and colonized these islands, you'd probably look at this map for a few seconds and knowing that these groups came from South America, you'd confidently state that they hopped from island to island up the Lesser Antilles chain. A few months ago, I would have agreed with you and 15 years ago, so would most scientists. But weirdly, the earliest archaeological dates for the Saladoid appear in Puerto Rico and the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles, just like the earlier Atauroid. And unlike the Atauroid, we are almost certain that they did not originate in the Caribbean. At first, archaeologists just figured that this was due to the fact that more archaeology had been done in the north, but the last two decades of archaeology in the Lesser Antilles haven't really changed that picture, which has forced scientists to grudgingly accept that the Saladoid migration likely began in the north and worked its way down south through the Lesser Antilles. Now there are some surprising but logical explanations for this. The first is that people may have indeed moved up the islands but didn't want to colonize the smaller islands. Another interesting way to look at this and other migrations is to look at Puerto Rico in relation to the currents that we spoke of earlier. Computer simulations have shown that if you take off from the north coast of South America and strike out to the north, you'll most likely end up in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, given the prevailing currents and winds. Understanding these forces likely allowed people to travel between the mainland and islands with ease. Another thing to consider, not just in the Saladoid migrations but other migrations as well, is that big islands have a very important quality, their size. A bigger island was probably a more attractive place to initially settle because a bigger island is easier to find. They make much better targets for trips back and forth. Now with that said, if you think that setting out north in a boat with nothing but your shipmates and a prayer is reckless, consider this. The Greater Antilles is basically a long coastline with a few braids. With all due respect to those ancient mariners, this isn't quite as difficult as navigating across the Pacific to reach those tiny islands that are like mere specks in a large empty Pacific canvas. Once the Saladoid reached Puerto Rico, they steadily moved east along the rest of the Lesser Antilles and appear to have replaced the previous populations that were already there. Genetic studies note that very little genetic heritage from those earlier archaic groups has survived to the present day, but why this is the case is uncertain. By roughly 200 CE, all the Lesser Antilles were settled. Interestingly, we don't find any of those quintessential Saladoid artifacts to the west in Hispaniola in Cuba. It seems either that the previous archaic populations resisted contact with them or that Saladoid migrants didn't care to settle those islands. It's also during this time that the last big holdouts of the Caribbean finally get settled, including Jamaica and the Bahamas. Only the Cayman Islands and Bermuda remained uncolonized at European contact. If you're curious about pre-Columbian population estimates for the Caribbean, they have ranged widely from hundreds of thousands of people to millions. But a recent genetic study done in 2021 took samples of archaic human remains across the Caribbean islands and compared them to people of indigenous Caribbean descent. The results showed that the pre-Columbian Caribbean population was surprisingly small. As an example, European sources recorded millions of people on the island of Hispaniola, but according to the genetic evidence, the population may have only been in the tens of thousands. If this is correct, it means that these small island populations had stayed in touch with other people across the Caribbean to maintain genetic diversity and to prevent inbreeding. Now, I don't want you to get the idea that this was the end of migrations into the Caribbean. People continued to move in and out of the Caribbean. Those already living in the islands developed increasingly regional cultures and communities. But none of these people were settling any new islands. At this point, the Caribbean was as settled as it was ever going to be by indigenous people. It was no longer a frontier, nor was it an isolated backwater either. Exchange between the Caribbean islands and the South American mainland in particular thrived. These patterns of exchange expanded, contracted, and evolved through time until European arrival. We need to remember that water isn't always a boundary. The Caribbean waters were a highway of traffic that was the product of centuries of exploration and settlement. What I've discussed here only represents what archaeology has uncovered so far. It's my hope that this video will be obsolete someday as more work is done in the Caribbean. And on that note, we're going to wrap up for today. Special thanks to my patrons listed here. You guys are the best. 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