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The content of this directory is a collection of articles written by various authors, historians, and scholars, about ancient caribbean civilization, indigenous peoples, cultural traditions, and established societies Pre-history.
Today, the Caribbean population is a multi-racial diverse mixture of Amerindian, African and European heritage. Pre-history documentary cronicles the arrival and settlement of the first peoples in the Caribbean islands and their way of life before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
Before The Arrival Of Europeans
Caribbean island populations date back about 7,000 years, as far as we know today. Those 7,000 years saw a changing panorama of varied cultures and different kinds of human interactions, which mostly took place before the arrival of Columbus and Western history.
1. 4,000 BC Pre-Ceramics nomadic groups migrated from Venezuela to the Antilles. The Ciboney peoples were remnants of these nomadic groups. They inhabited some of the islands, living mostly in camps, natural caves and rocky overhangs. Their daily life and economy was centered around fishing and gathering, they did not farm the land or familiar with pottery or ceramics.
Just before the Christian Era, Arawak Indians moved up through the islands from Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, then via the Orinoco River Basin of Venezuela. They were a very peaceful people and skilled farmers who introduced sedentary agriculture on the islands.
The Arawak were remarkable potters and excellent basket weavers living in large round huts, housing clans of up to 50 people. Their way of life, culture and religious practise was centered around a complex relations with nature.
1200-1300AD The Lesser Antilles were invaded by a warrior Amerindian tribe called the Carib: They originated in the Amazon Basin of South America and pushed the Arawaks further north in the islands, capturing prisoners and enslaving the women for wives. Women played a subordinate role in their society. They raised the children and handled all the domestic chores including pottery and ceramics.
The men were mostly warriors making weapons for war, hunting, fishing and trapping. They were also skilled weavers and usually did the basket-weaving. A typical Carib village contained 30-100 members of several generations.
The Carbet(Men's Houses) was the central building with 100 to 120 hammocks inside. The wives and families lived in the less important buildings surrounded the Carbet.
Just as today the Caribbean is a marvel of diversity of peoples, of myriad forms of interactions, and even of changing ethnic identities and boundaries, so too it was at the time of European contact and back through time in prehistory.
At any time when humans have been in the Anthillean islands there have been expeditions of exploration, migrations, long-distance relations with former homelands, trade between strangers, warfare between neighbors, rebellion within communities, adoption of outside innovations, and merging of cultures.