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BIOGEOGRAPHIC THEORY It is important to ask whether biogeographic principles as originally described by MacArthur and Wilson (1967) apply to human colonization of islands (Fitzhugh and Hunt 1997). They apply in two very important ways: (1) humans, like other organisms, have basic biological needs, and (2) islands have limited resources and clear constraints with which human cultures must cope. For colonization to be successful, an island must be large enough and have adequate resources to sustain a viable human population at the given scale and level of technology. Under almost any circumstance new colonists will affect the equilibrium of the existing fauna and ®ora of an island, which in turn affects the development of subsistence and economic patterns, among other things (Burney 1997; Keegan and Diamond 1987; T errell 1997). At a very basic level, human colonists are similar to other organisms establishing viable populations on islands, but culture dictates the nature of human adaptation and the long-term outcome of colonization and settlement. Human colonists of the Caribbean originally represented a number of distinct mainland cultural traditions, each of which was ultimately transformed through unique adaptations , technological innovations, and intrinsic social dynamics in the various islands and subregions of the archipelago. People must satisfy their subsistence requirements on a regular and frequent basis. In the island setting food resources are gleaned from the land as well as from the inshore waters. Possibly beginning with the earliest preceramic human groups of the region (Keegan 1994), and during the later Ceramic age, sources of wild food were augmented by food production that expanded the carrying capacity of the land. Such a broad diet required tools such as ¤shing equipment, containers for gathering, agricultural implements, 3 Human Colonization of the West Indies and utensils for food preparation. The “tool maker” must also have materials for construction of shelter, clothing, ornaments, medicines, and more. The size and longevity of a human population on any given island depends to a large extent on the quality and quantity of resources and the resiliency and regeneration ef¤ciency of those resources under human extraction pressure (Costanza et al. 1997; Prugh et al. 1999). The colonization of islands by people as well as the plants and animals they brought with them set into motion a new equilibrium among the species in the island faunas and ®oras. Through the study of plant and animal remains from archaeological sites it is possible to document both the introduction of new species brought to the islands by people and the extirpation or extinction of endemic species (Pregill et al. 1994; Wing 1989). Not all species extirpations were necessarily the direct result of hunting or gathering pressures, but they may have been indirectly caused by competition exerted by people or their introduced animals, newly introduced diseases, or habitat disruption and change (Amorosi et al. 1997; Burney 1997; Keegan and Diamond 1987). Whatever the most immediate cause, a decline or loss of species coincided with the establishment of human colonies. Of course human colonization differs in some important respects from that of plants and other animals. Discovery of an island may precede its colonization by people (Cherry 1984). Evidence from the Mediterranean Islands indicates that many of the islands were well known long before founding populations established settlements on them (Patton 1996). Probably the West Indian islands were known before colonists departed from the mainland. Many islands are close enough to be seen from neighboring islands. A further guide to navigation from one island to another is the visible cloud cover hovering over the islands. Clearly, large islands and those with high peaks and permanent cloud cover would be the easiest to see and are likely to have been discovered ¤rst (Keegan and Diamond 1987). The pattern of settlement along the coastline of Caribbean Islands indicates that the seas were less of a barrier to settlement than the interiors of islands (Rouse 1992). Mariners’ skills, exploratory forays, and clouds over islands would have provided direction to explorers and potential colonists. Maritime knowledge and navigational skills allowed people to control the direction of their exploration. They were not completely at the mercy of the currents and the prevailing winds for their destination. Maritime knowledge would also have permitted trade and communications between settlements on other islands and between islands and the mainland. This had the potential of renewing supplies, sources of rare materials, information, and gene ®ow. The size of the human populations in the Caribbean Islands either as founding populations or as recently...

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