In 1492 , Christopher Columbus voyage the ocean blue . But some of the Internet Explorer ’s bill of what he experienced throughout his journeys have long been contested , including description of “ fierce raiders ” in the Caribbean who abducted women and cannibalized their enemy .
Now , fresh inquiry take those myth may be truths .
When Columbus first down on the Bahamian island of Guanahani , he publish of the great unwashed with “ marks of wounds on their bodies ” who showed how “ people from other island nearby amount … and tried to take them ” away . To determine whether waring chemical group were , in fact , encroach upon The Bahamas , researcher at North Carolina State University and the University of Florida set out to find out which grouping the aboriginal Lucayans more closely resembled by dissect structural traits of more than 100 skulls , an confessedly small sample size , date back to between 800 atomic number 58 and 1542 .
In particular , researcher determined three - dimensional facial “ landmarks , ” such as the size of an center socket or the length of a nose , and compare these factors against the skull of habitant of pre - Columbian Cuba and Hispaniola , the share island of forward-looking - day Haiti and the Dominican Republic . The Lucayan were the first inhabitants of the Bahamas that Columbus first run into in 1492 , according toBritannica .
" It ’s like facial recognition software system , " discipline generator William Keegan , Florida Museum of Natural chronicle curator ofCaribbean archaeology , told IFLScience . " When digital measurements are made , it is potential to describe a 3D image of the face , and by compare the distributor point it is possible to identify different faces . "
Caribs , a group of plunderer and rumored cannibals from South America , were show to have invade Jamaica , Hispaniola , and the Bahamas – a migration that had been believe nonexistent for the last five decades .
" I ’ve spent long time stress to testify Columbus legal injury when he was good : There were Caribs in the northern Caribbean when he arrived,“saidKeegan . " We ’re run low to have to reinterpret everything we thought we knew . "
The other indigenous settlers of the Caribbean came from the Yucatan while the first to inhabit the Bahamas and Hispaniola were not from Cuba , as was ordinarily conceive , but from the northwest Amazon – the Caribs . Though the Caribs may have exhibited some cannibalistic tendencies , Keegan tells IFLScience that a1984 reviewof usable chronicles for the Caribbean break to find any confirm eyewitness accounts for the practice session anywhere in the Antilles .
" It ’s almost a ' Hatfields and McCoys ' form of situation , " Keegan said . " Maybe there was some cannibalism involved . If you postulate to frighten your enemies , that ’s a really good room to do it . "
These accounts influenced how Europeans see autochthonous hoi polloi of the Caribbean , and it is believed that the Spanish government may have changed its stance on inhabitants after discover that they would not convert to Christianity and ate human pulp .
" The pate say , ' Well , if they ’re going to comport that mode , they can be enslaved , ' " Keegan said . " All of a sudden , every native somebody in the entire Caribbean became a Carib as far as the colonists were concerned . "
However , there are contestations to late findings . Keegan notes that the current identification of endemic communities in the Caribbean is based on pottery styles , which holds that Meillacoid - trend clayware originate from Ostionoid - flair pottery that originated in Puerto Rico – a separate migration that Keegan agrees for the first fourth dimension is associated with the Carib expansion in South America .
