5000 BC: The first human populations reached the Caribbean islands during the fifth millennium BC, marking the beginning of the region’s anthropogenic history.

c. 5000 BC: The first human populations reached the Caribbean islands during the fifth millennium BC, marking the beginning of the region’s anthropogenic history. Despite the importance of this era, relatively little is known about these earliest inhabitants compared to later ceramic-producing groups. Much of the primary research on this period is located in Cuba and Hispaniola and was conducted by local archaeologists using the framework of Latin American Social Archaeology. Because many of these findings were published in Spanish and employed different theoretical orientations, they were frequently excluded from North American archaeological syntheses. This lack of integration has occasionally led to a limited or outmoded understanding of the Caribbean’s initial colonization.