According to the history books , the indigenous population of the Caribbean matte up the full force of the first Spanish invasion in the 15thcentury . Within just 30 years – or so it has long been said – the Taíno people were wiped out by disease , thrall , and the barbarous drill of the occupying Europeans .
But new molecular evidenceis rewriting this history . While many Caribbean community have long insisted that they are in fact descended from the “ extinct ” Taíno , science can now finally back them up . Researchers have sequence the first full ancient genome of a pre - European Caribbean , and found that the gene of these “ extinct ” people still persist to this day within many native islanders .
“ It ’s a fascinating finding,”saidDr Hannes Schroeder , who led the research bring out in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . “ Many account book will recite you that the endemic universe of the Caribbean was all but wipe out , but people who self - identify as Taíno have always argued for continuity . Now we do it they were correctly all along : there has been some form of genetic continuity in the Caribbean . ”
The genetic analysis of the former inhabitants of the Caribbean was only made potential through the discovery of bony clay in a cave on Eleuthera , which is part of the Bahamas . Archaeologists were actually research for evidence of the first European settlers , but as they compass through the stratum of the cave , they fare across objects dating to the first indigenous communities to have lived on the farming , including a few burials .
Considering the hot , humid nature of the Caribbean , researcher initially opine it unlikely that any meaningful amount of DNA might exist in the bones . But to their amazement , they managed to in full extract and then sequence the genome of a cleaning lady who go on Eleuthera some 1,000 years ago , at least half a millennium before the Spanish turned up .
The squad then compare this genome from the Bahamas to that of the great unwashed live on Puerto Rico , revealing that they were in reality more closely related to this ancient charwoman than to any other indigenous South American group . While this initial report only look at one modern - sidereal day mathematical group of multitude , the researchers are fairly confident that the same will be true of other Caribbean community .
What is more , the ancient genome can also shed light on how mass first came to dwell the archipelago , which is thought to have been the last part of the Americas to have been settled some 8,000 years ago . The genetics show that the indigenous Caribbean islanders are most tight related to to other grouping from northern South America , and can potentially trace their pedigree as far back as the Amazon and Orinoco Basins .
