Americas, Caribbean: The Greater and Lesser Antilles and the Bahamas

The insular Caribbean was the last region of the Americas to have been settled by Indigenous peoples from South and Central America and the first to have been colonized by Europeans, who used it as a jumping-off point for the conquest of other parts of the Americas. Starting as early as 8000 years ago, it was the stage for active inter-island social, cultural and political interaction. A variety of locally-developed cultures with close ties to one another and to their continental homelands resulted in a mosaic of cultures and communities at the advent of European arrival. While multiple European colonizations brought great devastation and disruption to Indigenous lifeways, the Indigenous cultures have persisted and contribute significantly to the creolized multi- and transcultural Caribbean society we know today.