The People Who Discovered Columbus: Prehistory of the Bahamas

For the Lucayan Arawaks of the Caribbean, the year 1492 marked the beginning of the end: the first people contacted by Christopher Columbus were the first extinguished. Within 30 years, a population of perhaps 80,000 had declined to, at most, a few refugees. Clearing new ground in the study of prehistoric societies, Keegan argues that a different perspective on the past provides an accurate portrait of a culture that became extinct almost 500 years ago. Keegan terms his approach palaeoethnography, developing a portrait of the past by linking archaeological field data and historical documents. The result, an overview of the prehistory of the Bahamas, explains how and why the Bahamas were colonised by the Tainos almost 1,400 years ago. The portrait includes characteristics of the islands themselves, descriptions of how the Lucayans made their settlements, what they ate, how they organised in social groups, and how their population spread throughout the archipelago. Keegan reconstructs Columbus’ voyage through the West Indies, raising questions about the explorer’s motivations and presenting a controversial theory about where, exactly, Columbus landed. Offering new perspectives on Caribbean prehistory to both scholars and general readers, the book ends with the Spaniards’ arrival and the Lucayans’ demise.