History of the Caribbean The history of the Caribbean reveals the significant role the region played in the colonial struggles of the European powers since the 15th century. In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and claimed the region for Spain. The following year, the first Spanish settlements were established in the Caribbean. Although the Spanish conquests of the Aztec empire and the Inca empire in the early sixteenth century made Mexico and Peru more desirable places for Spanish exploration and settlement, the Caribbean remained strategically important. Political evolution of Central America and the Caribbean from 1700 to present Contemporary political map of the Caribbean From the 1620s and 1630s onwards, non- Hispanic privateers, traders, and settlers established permanent colonies and trading posts on the Caribbean islands neglected by Spain. Such colonies spread throughout the Caribbean, from the Bahamas in the North West to Tobago in the South East. Furthermore, during this period, French and English buccaneers settled on the island of Tortuga, the northern and western coasts of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), and later in Jamaica. After the Spanish American war in the late 19th century, the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were no longer part of the Spanish Empire in the New World. In the 20th century the Caribbean was again important during World War II, in the decolonization wave after the war, and in the tension between Communist Cuba and the United States. Genocide, slavery, immigration, and rivalry between world powers have given Caribbean history an impact disproportionate to its size. Before European contact An Arawak stone carving uncovered in Guadeloupe. At the beginning of the Holocene the northern part of South America was occupied by groups of small-game hunters, fishers and foragers. These groups occasionally resided in semi- permanent camp sites, while mostly being mobile in order to make use of a wide rage of plant and animal resources in a variety of habitats.[1] Archaeological evidence suggests that Trinidad was the first Caribbean island to have been settled as early as 9000/8000 BCE. However, the first settlers most likely arrived in Trinidad when it was still attached to South America by land bridges.[2] It was not until about 7000/6000 BCE, during the early Holocene that Trinidad became an island due to a significant jump in sea level by about 60 m. Climate change may have been a cause for this sea level rise. Hence Trinidad was the only Caribbean Island that could have been colonised by indigenous people from the South American mainland by not traversing hundreds or thousands kilometres of open sea.[3] The earliest major habitation sites discovered in Trinidad are the shell midden deposits of Banwari Trace and St. John, which have been dated between 6000 and 5100 BCE. Both shell middens represent extended deposits of discarded shells that originally yielded a food source and stone and bone tools.[4] They are considered to belong to the Ortoiroid archaeological tradition, named after the similar but much more recent Ortoire site in Mayoro, Trinidad. Classifying Caribbean prehistory into different "ages" has proven a difficult and controversial task.[5] In the 1970s archaeologist Irving Rouse defined three "ages" to classify Caribbean prehistory: the Lithic, Archaic and Ceramic Age, based on archaeological evidence.[6] Current literature on Caribbean prehistory still uses the three aforementioned terms, however, there is much dispute regarding their usefulness and definition. In general, the Lithic Age is considered the first era of human development in the Americas and the period where stone chipping is first practised.[7] The ensuing Archaic age is often defined by specialised subsistence adaptions, combining hunting, fishing, collecting and the managing of wild food plants.[8] Ceramic Age communities manufactured ceramic and made use of small-scale agriculture.[9] With the exception of Trinidad the first Caribbean islands were settled between 3500 and 3000 BCE, during the Archaic Age. Archaeological sites of this period have been located in Barbados, Cuba, Curaçao and St. Martin, followed closely by Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.[10] This settlement phase is often attributed to the Ortoiroid culture. Between 800 and 200 BCE a new migratory group expanded through the Caribbean island: the Saladoid.[11] This group is named after the Saladero site in Venezuela, where their distinctive pottery (typically distinguished by white-on-red painted designs) was first identified.[12] The introduction of pottery and plant domestication to the Caribbean is often attributed to Saladoid groups and represents the beginning of the Ceramic Age. However, recent studies have revealed that crops and pottery were already present in some Archaic Caribbean populations before the arrival of the Saladoid.[13] Although a large amount of Caribbean Islands were settled during the Archaic and Ceramic Age, some islands were presumably visited much later. For example, Jamaica has no known settlements until around 600 AD while the Cayman Islands show no settlement evidence before European arrival.[14] Following the colonisation of Trinidad it was originally proposed that Saladoid groups island-hopped their way to Puerto Rico. However, current research tends to move away from this stepping-stone model[15] in favour of the southward route hypothesis. The southward route hypothesis proposes that the northern Antilles were settled directly from South America followed by progressively southward movements into the Lesser Antilles. This hypothesis has been supported by both radiocarbon dates and seafaring simulations.[16] One initial impetus of movement from the mainland to the northern Antilles may have been the search for high quality materials such as flint. Flinty Bay on Antigua, is one of the best known sources of high quality flint in the Lesser Antilles. The presence of flint from Antigua on many other Caribbean Islands highlights the importance of this material during the Pre-Columbian period.[17] The period from 650 to 800 AD saw major cultural, socio-political and ritual reformulations, which took place both on the mainland and in many Caribbean islands.[18] The Saladoid interaction sphere disintegrated rapidly. Furthermore, this period is characterised with a change in climate. Centuries of abundant rainfall were replaced by prolonged droughts and increased hurricane frequency. In general the Caribbean population increased and communities changed from residence in a single village to the creation of settlement cluster. Additionally the amount of agriculture on the Caribbean islands increased. Lithic analysis have also show the development of tighter networks between islands during the post-Saladoid period.[19] The period after 800 AD can be seen as a period of transition in which status differentiation and hierarchically ranked society evolved, which can be identified by a shift from achieved to ascribed leadership.[20] After about 1200 AD this process was interrupted by the absorption of many Caribbean Islands into the socio- political structure of the Greater Antillean society. This process disrupted more-or- less independent lines of development of local communities and marked the beginnings of sociopolitical changes on a much larges scale.[21] At the time of the European arrival, three major Amerindian indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno (sometimes also referred to as Arawak) in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas and the Leeward Islands; the Island Caribs and Galibi in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboney in western Cuba. The Taínos are subdivided into Classic Taínos, who occupied Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Western Taínos, who occupied Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamian archipelago, and the Eastern Taínos, who occupied the Leeward Islands.[22] Trinidad was inhabited by both Carib speaking and Arawak-speaking groups. DNA studies changed some of the traditional beliefs about pre-Columbian indigenous history. In 2003 Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez designed an island-wide DNA survey of Puerto Rico's people. According to conventional historical belief, Puerto Ricans have mainly Spanish ethnic origins, with some African ancestry, and distant and less significant indigenous ancestry. Cruzado's research revealed surprising results: 61% of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27% have African and 12% Caucasian.[23] Early colonial history 1536 map of the Caribbean Soon after the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, both Portuguese and Spanish ships began claiming territories in Central and South America. These colonies brought in gold, and other European powers, most specifically England, the Netherlands, and France, hoped to establish profitable colonies of their own. Imperial rivalries made the Caribbean a contested area during European wars for centuries. In the Spanish American wars of independence in the early nineteenth century, most of Spanish America broke away from the Spanish Empire, but Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under the Spanish crown until the Spanish–American War of 1898. Spanish conquest … Spanish Caribbean Islands in the American Viceroyalties 1600. The Piazza (or main square) in central Havana, Cuba, in 1762, during the Seven Years' War. During the first voyage of the explorer Christopher Columbus contact was made with the Lucayans in the Bahamas and the Taíno in Cuba and the northern coast