For those of you who have read my most recent posts on the Guanahatabey and have not followed the URL provided, I have written a summary essay on those papers and am sharing it with you this morning. I am very excited because I have found papers containing new data on my Indigenous ancestors the Guanahatabey. New digs equal new information updating and filling out their life style much better. 1: It was surmised before that the Guanahatabey were pure savages, living off the land and hunting as well as fishing were their only means of survival. Not so. 2: It was also thought that the Arawak speaking tribe, the Carib and the Taino were the ones responsible for transporting manioc, cassava and corn to the Caribbean. Not so. 3: It was surmised that the Guanahatabey were not into ceramics. Not so. 4: It was thought that the Guanahatabey lived in small groups and were nomadic. Not so. New data: They found several middens, piles of garbage that contained ceramics, corn, cassava, manioc and sopapilla. Their flint working skills were very sophisticated, other middens were bereft of ceramics and flint tools. They also found basket work as well as finely ground tools made from shells. Fish hooks, cutting tools, beads and scrapers made from shells. The size of the middens they found were very large as well as the sites they were on This Indicated that the Guanahatabey traveled in large groups and traveled from somewhere else that was more permanant. These sites were tempoary camp grounds for gathering and hunting. From all the data that was found they have revised the old stuff about the Guanahatabey. The old data was based off of the old Spanish accounts from de Oviedo, de Valazquez and de las Casas accounts of the Guanahatabey. The Spanish view was tainted with the old school of thought of people living au naturale, or within the Golden Age concept which was based on an subsistence way of living within nature. The old accounts relate that when a group of Guanahatabey were contacted by the Spanish they would listen for a bit and then run away into the jungles shunning the Spanish and their interpreters. When one looks at this encounter one sees a very deep wisdom borne out of extreme caution arising from all the negative accounts of how the Spanish had been treating other Indigenous people at the time. It is true that the Guanahatabey did speak a dialect that was unintelligable to the Lacono interpreter at the time. Old archeologists and old anthropologists studies were colored by the old Spanish accounts and as a result transfered the old data into their studies and papers. A lot of old sites that might have belonged to the Guanahatabey were lost because of the presumption that if the sites had ceramics they could not belong to the Guanahatabey who had been classed as archaic and savage people. All this new data has been derived from the new generation of anthropologists and archeologists who have been looking at sites with new and fresh eyes and outlooks. Yes, all the new data arising from these new finding have been tried and tested using carbon dating of assemblages as well as DNA testing of vegetal assemblages dug up from the middens. It has been discovered that the corn, manioc and cassava DNA match those of vegatal assemblages found in Central America. Unfortunately the writers of these papers have not pin pointed where in Central America the vegetal and root assemblages DNA match. So, the new data that is coming out of these studies have been monumental informing us that the Guanahatabey were a founding people who brought corn, manioc and cassava to the Caribbean islands. One can theorize that they also brought with them the concept of the Caribbean Indigenous religous belief in Atabey, Earth Mother and her son Yucahu. It is very unfortunate that their language has been lost to us, Perhaps someday a genealogist or a historian researcher will find an old Spanish document that contains the rudimentary elements of the Guanahatabey language. All this data is important to me because the Guanahatabey are my genetic ancestors via mtDNA. Sources: Carlos Ayes Suarez, Angostura: Un campamiento arcaico tempano del valle Maunatabon, Bo, Florida Afuera, Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. Raniel Rodriuez Ramos, From the Guanahatabey to the Archaic of Puerto Rico. Joshua M. Torres, The Social Construction of Community, Polity, and Place in Ancient Puerto Rico (AD 600 – AD 1200.) Awhile back I have asked that Family Tree DNA change my mtDNA kit status from Taino to Guanahatabey. They never did. Now I am very motivated to begin the process again since I have C. Lalueza Foxs scientific paper and copies of these papers in my possession. In 2005 - 2006 was the time I was asked to present scientific papers to FTDNA to prove that my mtDNA sequences were derived from the Taino people. As a result of that they were convinced enough to change my mtDNA kit to reflect that ancestry. Today I see that was an error because my mtDNA Haplogroup C does in fact arise from the Guanahatabey, not the Taino who are a part of the Arawak speaking tribes who came up from South America. They, the Taino are a distinct and different tribe from the Guanahatabey people. Those persons that are C1, C2 within my Family Tree DNA match pages just might be the descendants of the Taino women who were enslaved by the Spanish.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:06:58 +0000
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