FEWKES] CULTURE AREAS IN THE WEST INDIES 57 



America. These peoiile, essentially fishermen, lived on fishes, mol- 

 lusks, or crabs, eking out their dietary with turtles, birds, and other 

 game captured along the shores ; fruits and roots were also probably 

 collected and eaten, but their main food came from cultivated crops 

 of yuca planted in the neighborhood of their settlements. The 

 nature of their food supply confined them to the seashore or to banks 

 of rivers, where village sites occur in numbers. It is probable 

 that the shell-heap people of the West Indies were likewise cave 

 dwellers and resorted at times to rock shelters for shelter or protec- 

 tion. We know from excavations in caverns that they buried their 

 dead in these caves, which later came to have a religious or cere- 

 monial significance. 



We may suppose that a life devoted to fishing would make men 

 good sailors, and it is probable that the prehistoric Antilleans manu- 

 factured seaworthy canoes, hollowing out logs of wood with the live 

 ember and the stone ax. It is also evident from objects found in 

 the floors of caves that the women of this epoch manufactured pot- 

 tery, and as reptilean figures in relief or effigy vases representing 

 this animal occur constantly, we may suppose that some reptile, as 

 the iguana or turtle, was highly prized for food. Some of the bone 

 needles, whistles, and ornaments of shell or wood found in shell 

 heaps show that those who camped in the neighborhood were ad- 

 vanced in culture, while other objects found in the West Indian shell 

 heaps are, so far as technique goes, equal to those of the highest of the 

 Stone Age culture. It is probable that this form of culture reaches 

 back to a very early date in culture development. 



One important consideration presents itself in relation to the 

 shell-heap life in the West Indies as compared with that of the 

 shell heaps in Florida and Guiana in South America. The very 

 existence of the shell-heap culture on the continents and connecting 

 islands would seem to slied light on the earliest migrations of 

 W^est Indian aborigines. Unfortunately, however, the objects manu- 

 factured by all primitive people in this stage are so crude that they 

 are not distinctive; there is often a parallelism in their work. 

 For example, pottery from widely separated regions often bears 

 identical s}Tnlx)ls, even where the people who manufactured it have 

 had no cultural connection. Consequently, although we find cer- 

 tain conmion features in decorated coastal pottery of Florida and 

 that of Porto Eico. this similarity implies rather than proves cultural 

 contact. 



The highest prehistoric culture attained in the West Indies was 

 an agricultural one. It was based on the cultivation of the yuca 

 {Manihot manihot), a poisonous root out of which was prepared 

 a meal, from which the so-called cassava bread was made. At the 

 time of the discovery the cultivation of this plant had attained 



