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During this “archaic” period, people used stone tools there. It was not until about two or three thousand years ago that clay potters established themselves in the region. The era of ceramics began, as he said on Wednesday in a broadcast from the University of Vienna.
Region before slavery
With the coming and going of population groups, this process went hand in hand, before Europeans and the people dragged there as slaves from Africa strongly formed the region from the late 15th century AD, the extensive team now sat using the largest analysis of ancient DNA to date. apart from the area. The investigated remains date roughly to the period between 3,000 and 400 years ago.
“Our objective was not only to examine the origins of people who lived in the Caribbean before their first contact with Europeans, but also to shed light on their regional networks of interaction,” says Fernandes. It turned out that the genome of the people of the Archaic era most closely matched that of the residents of Central America and northern South America. However, contrary to popular belief, no North American genetic influence was found.
Then the region underwent a profound change at least 1,700 years ago: according to new analyzes, it is likely that people from northeastern South America have penetrated large parts of the Caribbean through the Lesser Antilles archipelago and brought with them ceramic technology. . It seems that this group has replaced the original population almost everywhere. The last population groups of the archaic period remained in western Cuba until the arrival of the Europeans. The path of the new settlers, now traced from genetic data, coincides surprisingly with archaeological and linguistic findings.
Well connected people
Until the first ships from Spain landed, this population group apparently largely kept from one another, but maintained close contacts on all the islands. For Fernandes, the new findings support “the theory that the peoples of the ceramic era were well connected, which could have acted as a catalyst for the diffusion of new ceramic styles throughout the region.”
Based on the vast amount of DNA data, scientists also dare to estimate the population of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico before the momentous colonization began. Consequently, it was estimated that only 10,000 to 50,000 people lived there before the arrival of Europeans. That’s surprising, since a population of several hundred thousand to millions of people was previously assumed.
Despite the upheavals of the past 500 years, according to the study, an average of between four and 14 percent of genetic information can still be found in the genetic material of the current inhabitants of the Caribbean islands, dating back to the towns indigenous people who originally lived there.
