THE CULTURAL SEQUENCE IN BRITISH GUIANA: 
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 
The colony of British Guiana extends inland from the coast half- 
way to the Amazon in the northeastern corner of South America. 
Included within its borders are vast expanses of virgin forest, a nar- 
row coastal band of mangrove swamp and beautiful stretches of tree- 
sprinkled, lateriticsavanna. Mountains form a backdrop on the south 
and west, but are too low to constitute a geographical barrier to the 
easy movement of men or animals. British Guiana, along with its 
two neighboring European colonies to the east, is one of the areas 
of lowest population density in South America today. Archeological 
investigation has shown that a similar situation existed in pre-Kuro- 
pean times. Then, as now, the largest population concentration was 
on the coast, and coastwise communication was far more highly devel- 
oped than contacts between the coast and the interior. In spite of 
differences in technological development, political organization and 
economic orientation, British Guiana today is the easily recognizable 
descendant of its aboriginal forebear. 
The peopling of the Guianas began at an unknown time, when some 
of the wandering hunters who represent the first human inhabitants 
of the American continent filtered southward and eastward (fig. 126). 
The only evidence of their existence is a handful of beautifully 
chipped stone projectile points found by accident in gravels of several 
British Guiana rivers (pl. 8). When these hunters arrived, how 
numerous they were, and what became of them are questions that may 
never be answered except by inference from conditions elsewhere in 
South America because of the small chance of finding sites in British 
Guiana, even if they should exist. The lush vegetation that covers 
most of the terrain and the lack of habitable caves or large rock shel- 
ters, coupled with the characteristic paucity of artifacts in sites of 
the lithic horizon as it is known in other parts of the New World, all 
place high odds against other than the accidental encounter of such 
remains. 
The earliest well defined archeological complex is that of the shell- 
fish gathering Alaka Phase (fig. 126).° The distribution of this pre- 
ceramic culture appears to be limited to the coast west of the Essequibo 
® The repetition of data has been kept to a minimum in this concluding summary. Tune 
evidence upon which the statements that follow are based can be found in the chapters 
at the end of each geographical section in the body of the report. 
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