56 ISLAND CULTURE AREA OF AMERICA [eth. ANN. 34 



ments to the Carib. This conclusion does not necessarily follow, for it 

 fails to take into account the significant fact that the stone objects 

 found on the so-called Carib Islands may have been made by a people 

 inhabiting them before the Carib came. Moreover, this interpreta- 

 tion does not give sufficient weight to the evidence furnished by the 

 implements themselves, for they imply a culture quite different from 

 that of the Carib as made known by historical accounts, as flourish- 

 ing at an earlier date on the Carib Islands. In other words, there is 

 good evidence of a prehistoric race other than Carib but related to it 

 inhabiting the Lesser Antilles before the arrival of the Europeans. 

 This culture is here called the lerian as that of Porto Eico is known 

 as the Tainan. 



One characteristic of the prehistoric objects found on the islands 

 inliabiteil by Carib when discovered may be mentioned in this con- 

 nection. It is well known that the Arawak, like all agricultural 

 peoples, are great potters, and that the ancient Carib, like nomads, 

 from necessity were not. The two races probably preserved these 

 characteristics in the West Indies ; and the fact that we find pottery 

 objects of high excellence on all the islands inhabited by the Carib 

 leads to the natural inference that they were made by a people allied 

 to the Arawak who anciently lived on these same islands or lerian 

 women and their descendants married to Caribs. 



Archeological remains left by the aborigines of the West Indies 

 reveal three cultural epochs, grading into each other, which may 

 indicate a sequence in time or distinct cultural stages. These epochs 

 were those of the cave dwellers, the agriculturists,**" and the Carib. 

 The most primitive culture is represented by objects found in the 

 floors of caves or in the numerous shell heaps scattered from Cuba 

 to Trinidad. A second stage is more advanced and is agricultural in 

 nature, represented on all the islands, but surviving at the time of 

 discovery on the larger — Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Eico; while the 

 third, or Carib, stage had replaced the agricultural in certain of the 

 Lesser Antilles, especially on the chain of volcanic islands extending 

 from Guadeloupe to Grenada. 



Although the three stages above mentioned are supposed to follow 

 each other chronologically, not one of them had completely died out 

 when Columbus discovered America. The cave dwellers still sur- 

 vived in western Cuba and in Haiti, and according to some authori- 

 ties they spoke a characteristic language. The Arawak inhabited 

 Porto Eico, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. 



The customs of the aborigines who left the great shell heaps found 

 throughout the West Indies were apparently diffei-ent from those 

 of the natives of prehistoric Florida but like those of northern South 



"'■ Some of the finest specimens of pottery evidently belonging to the agricultural epoch 

 occur in shell heaps and caves. 



