Welcome to Anbanet directory of Caribbean Islands history. The content of this directory is a collection of articles written by various authors, historians and scholars on the indigenous people of the Caribbean, their cultural traditions and civilization Pre-history. It also contains enlightened perspectives on the Caribbean pre-history and colonial history of the Caribbean.
The Caribbean peoples, traditions and cultures represents a diverse racial mixture of Amerindian, African and European heritage that help to shape and define the Caribbean today. Pre history explains the way of life in the Caribbean islands long before the arrival of Christopher Columbos.
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-Ceramist nomadic groups migrated from Venezuela to the Antilles. The Ciboney peoples were remnants of these nomadic groups. They inhabitted 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, and were not 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 Caribs: 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 wiht 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 Antillean 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.