By: Staff Writer
January 1, 2021
A new study by a Harvard professor along with Bahamian researchers have found that not all indigenous Arawak and Lucayan Indians were killed by the Spanish and in fact, they preyed on one another.
Published in the journal Nature, the findings—drawn from the genomes of more than 250 ancient individuals—offer insights on the region’s inhabitants in the centuries prior to European invaders’ arrival.
Kendra Sirak, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study in a statement recorded by the Smithsonian Magazine, said: “We now have a much clearer picture of the biological interactions that took place—or didn’t take place—between groups of genetically distinct people in the ancient Caribbean.”
The study also finds that two distinct groups arrived in the Caribbean about 6,000 years ago. Also among the surprising findings is that most of the Caribbean’s original inhabitants may have been wiped out by South American newcomers a thousand years before the Spanish invasion that began in 1492.
Moreover, indigenous populations of islands like Puerto Rico and Hispaniola were likely far smaller at the time of the Spanish arrival than previously thought. Initial estimates had those islands ranging from anywhere from 1m to 1.5m, but estimates now suggest that the population was closer to 500,000 and maybe less.
Per National Geographic’s Andrew Lawler, the more than 700 islands scattered across the Caribbean were some of the last places colonized by early humans. The disappearance of most of the Archaic Age people was likely the result of violence or disease related to the newcomers. Crucially, however, this trend wasn’t universal across the region.
“The remarkable thing is that the Archaic way of life seems to survive in western Cuba until about 900 [A.D],” study co-author William Keegan, an archaeologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, tells National Geographic. “They apparently lived unmolested and with little mixing.”
David Reich, also a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, also said in the statement on the findings, “The same population developed extraordinarily different artistic styles over time. It highlights the creativity and dynamism of these ancient people.”
Michael Peter Patemen, a co-author and Archaeologist at Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation in The Bahamas, told the Eyewitness News, “This study is significant to the way in which we understand how ancient people settled this region. Using DNA evidence to support the findings means that the results can shed new light on how we once thought the people who settled the Caribbean and The Bahamas lived their lives during the Ceramic Age.”
“From a local perspective, we are particularly interested in the second of wave migration about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago when farmers and pottery makers moved from Venezuela, pushing further north with some landing in The Bahamas for a period of time.”
on Long Island, Bahamas.
The entire project was funded by the National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation (HOMINID grant BCS-1032255), National Institutes of Health/National Institute of General Medical Sciences (grant GM100233), Paul Allen Foundation, John Templeton Foundation (grant 61220) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
While Caribbean history has taught us that the Carib Indians in the Southern Caribbean and Northern part of the South-American continent were more aggressive and constantly attacked the more docile, and less war-faring Arawak and Lucayan Indians that migrated North towards Haiti, Jamaica and The Bahamas, this study gives concrete evidence to the conventional thought that also adds to what the Spanish noted about the differences in characteristics between the Caribs and the Lucayan Indians.
Pateman’s work on the project was funded by a grant awarded by the National Geographic Society in December 2017, with local permission from the Antiquities, Monuments and Museum Corporation.
More details on the findings can be found at https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/