However, between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago people in the
forested river drainages of Brazil, Uruguay, northern Argen-
tina, and Paraguay began to use a greatly diversifi ed tool kit.
At sites along the Paraná River, the familiar projectile points
and scrapers are joined by an increased number of wood-
working tools, knives, choppers, bolas, anvils, and grinders.
All of these are tools adapted to building, subsisting, and pre-
paring food in a wooded environment. Th e varied vegetable
sources within the forest would have provided food, shelter,
and clothing to settlers, and they may also have been the in-
spiration to manipulate the growth of certain desirable vege-
tation. Bottle gourds, pumpkins, beans, peppers, and avocados
were among the crops purposefully grown by 5,000 to 10,000
years ago. By 4,000 years ago archaic Indians had begun to
cultivate the staple food manioc, or cassava root, a starchy
crop that would transform many societies, chiefl y by sup-
porting population explosions.
In the last 2,000 years before the Common Era, many
archaic groups settled down and developed into agricultural
societies with far-reaching trade relationships. Th is is the
period in which the civilizations of Caral, Paracas, Chavín,
and Chinchorro emerged in Peru and Bolivia with agricul-
ture and fi shing as the basis of their economies; the Olmec
and early Pre-Classic Maya organized in Mesoamerica, hav-
ing cleverly doctored a wild grass into the high-yield staple
known today as maize; and the egalitarian Adena culture
emerged in the eastern Woodlands of North America, based
on a combination of agriculture, forest gathering, fi shing,
and the hunting of woodland fauna and migrating ducks. All
of these civilizations illustrate the archaic transition to forest
life, which in turn contributed to the domestication of plants
and the development of agriculture. With the archaic expan-
sion throughout the continents, albeit by small groups, the
settlement of the Americas seemed complete. But there was
one great Indian migration yet to commence.
Th e movement of Amazonian peoples to the Carib-
bean islands represents the last migratory expansion in the
pre-Columbian Americas. Th e fi rst Caribbean settlements
appear to have taken place quite early, as Paleo-Indians pre-
ceded archaic Indians. Excavations in the 1970s at Banwari
Trace in Trinidad yielded the oldest-known human artifacts
in the Caribbean archipelago. Th ese 8,000-year-old remains
include stone tools, human bones, and a large midden of dis-
carded shells. Th e human artifacts at Angostura in Puerto
Rico date from just 1,000 years aft er those at Banwari Trace.
With habitations at opposite ends of the Caribbean archipel-
ago showing such close dates, it appears that the Caribbean
islands were settled very quickly. Th is maritime expansion
of Paleo-Indians testifi es to their intelligence, skill, and de-
termination.
Successive groups of Paleo-Indians followed by later set-
tlers appear to have come in canoes from the delta of the Ori-
noco River. Some may have traveled down the Orinoco from
as far away as the foothills of the Andes. Others may have
migrated along the coast of Guiana from the Amazon. With
seafaring skills developed on the great and oft en perilous riv-
ers of South America, they struck out for Trinidad, an island
visible from some parts of Venezuela. From there they settled
Tobago and Grenada. Within a single millennium they is-
land-hopped all the way to the Bahamas and Cuba, islands
located in the far northwest. Given the northern Caribbean’s
proximity to the Yucatán and the Florida peninsulas, archae-
ologists have not entirely dismissed the possibility of migra-
tions from North and Central America.
While the earliest hunter-gatherers left mostly simple
stone tools as evidence of their habitation, later Indians began
arriving in the Caribbean some 4,000 years ago with elabo-
rately decorated pottery, complex weaving techniques, and
sculpture made of wood, stone, shell, and bone. It is mostly by
their pottery that archaeologists have classifi ed their distinct
cultures. Anthropologists and linguists also have identifi ed
at least a dozen distinct groups of settlers from at least two
major South American language families.
Th e transition to island life was not always as diffi cult
as might be expected, since many of the local species had
originated on the mainland, blown or carried by hurricanes,
marine currents, and prevailing winds. Th e settlers had
also brought stalks of manioc and other reproducible food
sources, and intermittent contacts with the South American
mainland were maintained. In the Caribbean islands, how-
ever, these settlers developed insular cultures with unique
dialects, arts, and religions. Th ey relied heavily on agricul-
ture and fi shing and did only part-time hunting and gather-
ing in the limited island interiors. Since the terrain of some
islands was radically diff erent from that of others (ranging
from volcanic to sedimentary to coral soil), a vital trading
system among the islands developed by the beginning of the
Common Era. Eventually, the brave explorers who had ar-
rived with only bare necessities in the second millennium
b.c.e. would evolve into the Taíno kingdoms that greeted
Columbus in 1492.See also adornment; agriculture; art; astronomy; bor-
ders and frontiers; building techniques and materials;
ceramics and pottery; cities; climate and geography;
crime and punishment; death and burial practices;
economy; empires and dynasties; exploration; foreign-
ers and barbarians; food and diet; government orga-
nization; hunting, fishing, and gathering; inventions;
language; laws and legal codes; literature; metal-
lurgy; military; money and coinage; natural disas-
ters; nomadic and pastoral societies; pandemics and
epidemics; religion and cosmology; roads and bridges;
seafaring and navigation; settlement patterns; ships
and shipbuilding; slaves and slavery; social collapse
and abandonment; social organization; towns and vil-
lages; trade and exchange; transportation; war and
conquest; weaponry and armor.722 migration and population movements: The Americas