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Using the largest study of ancient Caribbean DNA to date, researchers have shed light on the Caribbean's first islanders and pieced together the story of how the archipelago became inhabited thousands of years ago. Like many other ancient DNA studies, it's upended some old assumptions about the past and brought new questions to the table. As reported in the journal Nature, a multi-national team of geneticists, archaeologists, and anthropologists, including Caribbean-based researchers, have analyzed the genomes of 174 new and 89 previously sequenced people who lived in the Bahamas, Haiti, ...

In a new study of the genetic history of the pre-contact Caribbean, researchers analyzed genome-wide DNA data from 174 ancient individuals who lived in the Bahamas, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (collectively, Hispaniola), Puerto Rico, Curaçao and Venezuela, as well as the data from 89 previously sequenced ancient individuals. Illustration of one of the early settlers in the Caribbean. Image credit: Tom Björklund. Prior to European colonization, the Caribbean was a mosaic of distinct communities that were connected by networks of interaction since the first human occupations in Cuba, His...

The Caribbean Islands was one of the last places in the Americas to be inhabited by humans almost 6,000 years ago - but the inhabitants were almost wiped out by invaders, according to DNA evidence. After a massive genetic analysis of hundreds of individuals, researchers believe the region's first inhabitants were wiped out by a second wave of colonists arriving from South America more than 3,000 years later. This extermination, possibly caused by disease or warfare, would have happened a millennia before Columbus landed on the Bahamas in 1492, kicking off European involvement in the Western H...

Professor David Reich of the Harvard Medical Schoo l led a team of researchers who analyzed “the genomes of 263 individuals,” representing the largest ever study of ancient human DNA in the Americas. The Caribbean DNA study concluded that the Caribbean had been settled by two major migratory waves of highly mobile people, separated by thousands of years. However, according to an article by the Florida Museum of Natural History , on their way to this conclusion, the researchers developed a new genetic technique for estimating the island’s past population size, prior to the first Spanis...

Ideas, Inventions And Innovations Ancient DNA and Archaeology Offer New Insights Into Caribbean Archaeological research and ancient DNA technology can work hand in hand to illuminate past history. This vessel, made between AD 1200-1500 in present-day Dominican Republic, shows a frog figure, associated with the goddess of fertility in Taino culture. Credit: Kristen Grace/Florida Museum The history of the Caribbean's original islanders comes into sharper focus in a new Nature study that combines decades of archaeological work with advancements in genetic technology. An international team led...