Bahamas were settled earlier than believed
It's believed early settlers to the islands eventually changed the
landscape of the Bahamas

Date:
March 3, 2021
Source:
Texas A&M University
Summary:
It's believed early settlers to the islands eventually changed
the landscape of the Bahamas.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Humans were present in Florida by 14,000 years ago, and until recently,
it was believed the Bahamas -- located only a few miles away -- were
not colonized until about 1,000 years ago. But new findings from a team including a Texas A&M University at Galveston researcher prove that the
area was colonized earlier, and the new settlers dramatically changed
the landscape.


========================================================================== Peter van Hengstum, associate professor in the Department of Marine and
Coastal Environment Science at Texas A&M-Galveston, and colleagues have
had their findings published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences).

Researchers generated a new environmental record from the Blackwood
Sinkhole, which is flooded with 120 feet of groundwater without dissolved oxygen. This is important because it has pristinely preserved organic
material for the last 3,000 years. Using core samples and radiocarbon
dating, the team examined charcoal deposits from human fires thousands
of years ago, indicating that the first settlers arrived in the Bahamas
sooner than previously thought.

"The Bahamas were the last place colonized by people in the Caribbean
region, and previous physical evidence indicated that it may have taken hundreds of years for indigenous people of the Bahamas -- called the
Lucayans -- to move through the Bahamian archipelago that spans about
500 miles," van Hengstum said.

While people were present in Florida more than 14,000 years ago at the
end of the last ice age, he said, these people never crossed the Florida Straits to nearby Bahamian islands, only 50 to 65 miles away. Meanwhile,
the Caribbean islands were populated by people migrating from South
American northward. Van Hengstum said the oldest archaeological sites in
the southernmost Bahamian archipelago from the Turks and Caicos Islands indicate human arrival likely by 700 A.D.

"But in the northern Bahamian Great Abaco Island, the earliest physical evidence of human occupation are skeletons preserved in sinkholes and blueholes," he said. "These two skeletons from Abaco date from 1200 to
1300 A.D. Our new record of landscape disturbance from people indicates
that slash- and-burn agriculture likely began around 830 A.D., meaning
the Lucayans rapidly migrated through the Bahamian archipelago in likely
a century, or spanning just a few human generations." The team's other findings show how the Lucayans changed the new land.

When the Lucayans arrived, Great Abaco Island was mostly covered with
pine and palm forests, and had a unique reptile-dominated ecosystem
of giant tortoises and crocodiles. Increased deforestation and burning
allowed pine trees to colonize and out-compete native palms and hardwoods.

Large land reptiles began to disappear after 1000 A.D. A significant
increase in intense regional hurricane activity around 1500 AD is thought
to have caused considerable damage to the new pine tree forests, as
indicated by a decrease in pine pollen in the sediment core.

"The pollen record indicates that the pre-contact forest was not
significantly impacted earlier in the record during known times when
intense hurricane strike events were more frequent," van Hengstum
said. "In our current world where the intensity of the largest hurricanes
is expected to increase over the coming decades, the current pine trees
in the northern Bahamas may not be as resilient to environmental impacts
of these changes in hurricane activity." The study was funded by the
National Science Foundation.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Texas_A&M_University. Original
written by Keith Randall.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Patricia L. Fall, Peter J. van Hengstum, Lisa Lavold-Foote,
Jeffrey P.

Donnelly, Nancy A. Albury, Anne E. Tamalavage. Human arrival and
landscape dynamics in the northern Bahamas. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 2021; 118 (10): e2015764118 DOI:
10.1073/ pnas.2015764118 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210303161651.htm

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