Caribbean Origins | History, Migrations & DNA

This production is brought to you by Ancient Origins, reconstructing the story of humanity's past, and the YouTube channel, The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Caribbean History and DNA. In 1492 CE, Christopher Columbus famously sailed across the Atlantic and landed in the He and his men were the first Europeans to wash up in the Bahamas, Hispaniola, Dominican Republic and Haiti, and eastern Cuba. On his return to Spain, the controversial explorer reported that the Caribbean was a land of gold-laden islands. His brother, Bartholomew, later returned to the Americas and identified Hispaniola's land and indigenous people as potentially profitable for the Spanish crown. Bartholomew estimated about 1.1 million people lived on Hispaniola, but modern scholars have generally used the range of 250,000 to a million people. However, the actual Caribbean aboriginal population is now known based on a new Caribbean DNA study published in the journal Nature, which fuses decades of archaeological work with cutting-edge genetic technology. This breakthrough study shows that the local population before the arrival of the Spanish was much lower and far less heterogeneous than thought. Caribbean DNA study challenges Spanish assumptions. Professor David Reich of the Harvard Medical School led a team of researchers who analyzed the genomes of 263 individuals, representing the largest-ever study of ancient human DNA in the Americas. The Caribbean DNA study concluded that the Caribbean had been settled by two major migratory waves of highly mobile people, separated by thousands of years. However, according to an article by the Florida Museum of Natural History, on their way to this conclusion, the researchers developed a new genetic technique for estimating the island's past population size prior to the first Spanish landings. When the first Europeans arrived, the number of people living in the Caribbean was far smaller than the 1.1 million reported by Columbus's brother Bartholomew. Professor of archaeology William Keegan, from the Florida Museum of Natural History, was co-senior author of the new study, and he told the New York Times that this study of ancient DNA moves the academic understanding of the Caribbean's history forward dramatically in one fell swoop. Two ancient waves of Caribbean DNA. The new genetic evidence offers insights into the early peopling of the Caribbean and suggests that the island's first inhabitants were a group of stone tool users who had boated to Cuba about 6,000 years ago. These first inhabitants expanded eastward and populated other smaller islands during the region's archaic age. The study determined that they had closer genetic links with people from Central and South America, compared to the ancient DNA from North American Indian cultures. And further cementing this origin's story, artifacts found in Belize and Cuba also suggest they had a Central American origin. The second ancient pathway into the Caribbean was forged 2,500 to 3,000 years ago by groups of migrating farmers. The paper says these people were related to the Arawak speakers of northeast South America, who had paddled the fingers of South America's Orinoco River basin from the interior to coastal Venezuela, then northwards into the Caribbean Sea. After settling on Puerto Rico, these explorers traveled westward, beginning the region's Ceramic Age, which is defined by these farmers' agricultural methods and style of pottery. The new Caribbean DNA study also relied on ceramic evidence. Before this new study was published, there had always been unclarity regarding the various styles of pottery discovered in the Caribbean, each of which was associated with later migration waves. However, the newly gained genetic information finally determines that all the fragments of ancient pottery found in the region were created by one group of people over time. Another aspect of the study analyzed the X chromosomes from 19 pairs of genetic cousins, who had all lived on different islands but were separated by several generations. For example, the DNA from a man buried in the Bahamas was matched with another man discovered 600 miles away in the Dominican Republic, according to the paper. Dr. Reich wrote that finding such a high proportion of genetic cousins in a sample of fewer than 100 men is another indicator that the region's total population size was small. The researchers concluded that only about 10,000 to 50,000 people were living on two of the Caribbean's largest islands, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, shortly before European arrival. Dr. Reich holds back no punches in describing the Spanish landings in the Caribbean, and he called them the beginning of a systematic program of cultural erasure. Furthermore, he reminds us that just because the 1.1 million number given by Bartholomew is in reality closer to tens of thousands, that the cultural erasure is no less significant. True Origins Although archaeologists and anthropologists know that the Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas settled by humans, a new study of DNA has revealed when, how, and where the original Caribbean inhabitants came from. The discovery of stone cyst graves on the Caribbean island of Sabah represented a cultural continuity from the burial practices of rural 17th century British settlers. But now two new papers explain when humans first settled in the Caribbean and how they populated the islands. DNA Mapping Ancient Caribbean Origins A new paper studying ancient DNA from the Caribbean, posted on Bioarchive, explains that the Caribbean has one of the most culturally diverse mixes of human beings on the planet, but it was one of the last places in the Americas to be occupied by people between 8,000 and 5,000 years ago. Where these early migrants came from has always been a mystery, until this study of ancient DNA probed into the deep history of the Caribbean, and the story discovered by the researchers is one of migration and cultural mingling, revealing how descendants of the first inhabitants interacted with new waves of migrants who arrived about 2,800 years ago. An archaeologist at the Museum of the Dominican Man and the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, who wasn't involved in the study, said traditional models of Caribbean history are greatly influenced by the views of European colonizers who erased the region's complexity and diversity. But the new genetic work shows the Caribbean was potentially always a mosaic of cultures, origins, and ancestries. DNA Testing in the Shadow of Banana Trees The archaeologists wrote in the Bioarchive paper that increasing agriculture and ceramic use represented a move from the Archaic Age to the Ceramic Age about 2,500 years ago, and, aiming to further understand the history of Caribbean people, the researchers studied genome-wide data from 184 individuals predating European contact from the Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and northwestern Venezuela. The results of this DNA study revealed that a ceramic-using population had originated in northeastern South America, related to modern Arawak-speaking groups, and that they had spread throughout the Caribbean islands at least 1,800 years ago. The scientists writing in Science generated genome-wide data for 93 ancient Caribbean islanders, dating between 3,350 to 350 BCE, and evidence was discovered of at least three separate dispersals into the region, including two early dispersals into the western Caribbean, one of which is perhaps associated with radiation events in North America. The study also detected genetic differences between the early settlers and a later expansion from South America into the Caribbean, with almost no evidence of admixture. The researchers say their results add to our understanding of the initial peopling of the and the movements of archaic age peoples in the Americas. Charting the Movements of Ancient Caribs According to lead author of the study in science, Dr. Katharine Negele from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, the team documented high mobility and inter-island connectivity throughout the ceramic age, which was reflected in relatives buried 75 kilometers apart in Hispaniola, and they found a low genetic differentiation across many other Caribbean islands. For example, the Bahamian islands showed a subtle population structure which was distinct from the rest of the Caribbean, and a long-term population continuity was found in southeastern coastal Hispaniola, the island that today includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which differentiated this region from the rest of the islands. The researchers also determined that ceramic-associated people groups avoided close-kin unions despite limited mate pools, and it is thought that this represents low effective population sizes even on the larger Caribbean islands. What's more, transitions in pottery styles showed no evidence of migration waves of new people from mainland South America, and this finding likely reflects the spread of ideas and people within an interconnected Caribbean world. Hannes Schroeder, an ancient DNA researcher at the University of Copenhagen, reports, it's rare to see so little genetic mixing between groups once they meet, and we need more individuals from those crucial places in order to really have an idea as to how widespread this genetic mixing was. Ancient Origins specializes in reconstructing the story of humanity's past. And honestly, for those of you who love anything ancient, mysterious, and the unexplained, it's the best resource online for you, providing a variety of content. 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