Taíno: Echoes of the Greater Antilles

The archaeological record for Taíno-speaking peoples unfolds like a chain of coral-lit islands: older Archaic occupations in cave sites such as Canimar Abajo and Cueva Calero (western Cuba) provide deep time context, while later Ceramic-phase villages—La Caleta (Dominican Republic), Juan Dolio (DR), and Paso del Indio (Puerto Rico)—show the hallmarks of an Arawakan-derived, pottery-making lifeway. Radiocarbon and stylistic sequences indicate a major Ceramic expansion into the Antilles by the first millennium BCE to the early centuries CE, bringing new pottery styles, horticulture (manioc/cassava), and social practices.

Archaeological data indicate both continuity and influx: shell middens, communal plazas, and burial patterns show long-term island occupation, while shifts in material culture reflect connections to the Orinoco/upper Amazonian corridors. Limited evidence suggests multiple pulses of migration rather than a single event, and localized adaptations produced regional variants across Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. Genetic samples from cave and coastal burial sites help anchor these patterns in biological ancestry, linking the archaeological signature to populations with northern South American affinities. Uncertainties remain about the precise timing and number of migration events; new ancient genomes continue to refine the story.

The genetic dataset for Taíno-associated burials includes 268 ancient individuals sampled across the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Bahamas. Y-chromosome diversity is dominated by haplogroup Q (132 of 268 Y calls), consistent with an Indigenous American paternal ancestry common in northern South America and the Antilles; minor counts of CT, Q1b, P and BT occur but are rare. Mitochondrial DNA is strikingly dominated by haplogroup C (93), followed by A2 (32), D1 (31), A2e (22) and A (18), a maternal profile that coheres with migrations from the Orinoco–Amazonia region and with patterns seen in other Ceramic-period Caribbean samples.

These genetic patterns align with archaeological models of Arawakan-speaking people dispersing from northern South America into the islands. Genome-wide data, where available, show continuity across many island sites but also hints of regional structure—subtle genetic differentiation linked to island geography and site clusters (e.g., La Caleta vs. Matanzas-area caves). The dataset is substantial overall, but geographic sampling is uneven (many samples from Dominican sites and Cuban caves); where per-site sample counts are low (<10) conclusions are preliminary. Finally, post-contact admixture with Europeans and Africans during the 16th–17th centuries complicates late-period genomes, so ancient pre-contact samples are crucial for isolating Indigenous ancestry.