The mysterious people of the Caribbean – BBC.com

The first and last major Archaic discovery here happened in the 1970s in the southern part of the island. Over the years, Coppa found butterfly axes scattered around the north, but no site, which led him to believe the Archaic peoples lived down south, likely coming from Cuba, the biggest island in the Greater Antilles.

Until he found El Pozito.

El Pozito is tucked away at the end of the Saman Peninsula, a 30-mile verdant strip of land in the country's north-east that juts into the Atlantic Ocean. An eco-tourism paradise, the land is rainforested and dramatic, formed by the Sierra de Saman, an extension of the Cordillera Septentrional the biggest mountain range in the Caribbean that runs along the northern coast, providing natural shelters along several remote beaches. Coppa theorises that these Archaic people may have reached Saman from Puerto Rico, the closest nearby island about 200 nautical miles to the east, though he says more research is needed.

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But the bigger questions are: Which continent did they come from? To whom are they related? How did they interact and trade with others? And what happened to them?

According to Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari, the first seafaring society may have developed on the Indonesia archipelago 45,000 years ago. It would take another 39,000 years or so for homo sapiens to discover the Caribbean the last region of the Americas to be settled by humans, and the first to be colonised by Europeans.

While 6,000 years ago is relatively recent for archaeologists, evidence is scarce because almost nothing organic survives the tropics. The humid climate, volcanic soil and rising sea levels not to mention agriculture, development, looting and indifference breaks down and swallows up bones, settlements and objects, posing a challenge to Caribbean archaeology. But that's precisely what makes the field and this discovery exciting.

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The mysterious people of the Caribbean - BBC.com