For decades it was believed that the Caribbean islands were settled in a stepping-stone fashion by Amerindians migrating north from South America. This would mean that the southernmost islands were settled first, then each next northern island in succession, as the Amerindians moved north into the Caribbean.
After reviewing 2,500 radiocarbon dates from 55 islands, researchers are now telling a different story. Trinidad, the closest island to South America, was indeed the first to be settled around 7,000 years ago. But humans did not settle next in the next northern island. Instead, the radiocarbon dates point to a more ambitious migration: they rode currents north across open sea to Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hispaniola. Once the larger islands were settled, there was no migration for thousands of years, until people slowly filled in the rest of the habitable land in the Caribbean by following the chain of islands southwards.
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