Guanahatabey | |
---|---|
Native to | Cuba |
Region | Pinar del Río Province and Isla de la Juventud |
Ethnicity | Guanahatabey |
Extinct | 16th century |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | None (mis ) |
Glottolog | None |
Precolombian languages of the Antilles. Guanahatabey Ciboney Taíno, Classic Taíno, and Iñeri were Arawakan, Karina and Yao were Cariban. Macorix, Ciguayo and Guanahatabey are unclassified. |
Guanahatabey (Guanajatabey) was the language of the Guanahatabey people, a hunter-gatherer society that lived in western Cuba until the 16th century. Very little is known of it, as the Guanahatabey died off early in the period of Spanish colonization before substantial information about them was recorded. Evidence suggests it was distinct from the Taíno language spoken in the rest of the island. [1] [2]
The Guanahatabey were hunter-gatherers that appear to have predated the agricultural Ciboney, the Taíno group that inhabited most of Cuba. By the contact period, the Guanahatabey lived primarily in far western Pinar del Río Province, which the Ciboney did not settle and was colonized by the Spanish relatively late. Spanish accounts indicate that Guanahatabey was distinct from and mutually unintelligible with the Taíno language spoken in the rest of Cuba and throughout the Caribbean. [1] [3] Not a single word of the Guanahatabey language has been documented.
However, Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius have identified five placenames that they consider non-Taíno, and which may thus derive from Guanahatabey. Granberry and Vescelius argue that the names have parallels in the Warao language, and further suggest a possible connection with the Macoris language of Hispaniola (see Waroid languages). [4]
Name | Warao parallel | Warao meaning |
---|---|---|
Camujiro | ka-muhi-ru | 'palm-tree trunks' |
Guara | wara | 'white heron' |
Guaniguaníco (mountain range in western Cuba) | wani-wani-ku | 'hidden moon, moon-set' |
Hanábona (a savannah) | hana-bana | 'sugarcane plumes' |
Júcaro (three locations) | hu-karo | 'double pointed, tree crotch' |
The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greater Antilles and northern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. All these groups spoke related Arawakan languages.
The Lucayanpeople were the original residents of the Bahamas before the European conquest of the Americas. They were a branch of the Tainos who inhabited most of the Caribbean islands at the time. The Lucayans were the first indigenous Americans encountered by Christopher Columbus. Shortly after contact, the Spanish kidnapped and enslaved Lucayans, with the genocide culminating in complete eradication of Lucayan people from the Bahamas by 1520.
The Ciboney, or Siboney, were a Taíno people of Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola. A Western Taíno group living in central Cuba during the 15th and 16th centuries, they had a dialect and culture distinct from the Classic Taíno in the eastern part of the island, though much of the Ciboney territory was under the control of the eastern chiefs. Confusion in the historical sources led 20th-century scholars to apply the name "Ciboney" to the non-Taíno Guanahatabey of western Cuba and various archaic cultures around the Caribbean, but this is deprecated.
The Lucayan Archipelago, also known as the Bahama Archipelago, is an island group comprising the Commonwealth of The Bahamas and the British Overseas Territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The archipelago is in the western North Atlantic Ocean, north of Cuba along with the other Antilles, and east and southeast of Florida.
The Guanahatabey were an indigenous people of western Cuba at the time of European contact. Archaeological and historical studies suggest the Guanahatabey were archaic hunter-gatherers with a distinct language and culture from their neighbors, the Taíno. They might have been a relict of an earlier culture that spread widely through the Caribbean before the ascendance of the agriculturalist Taíno.
Samana Cay is a now -uninhabited island in the Bahamas believed by some researchers to have been the location of Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the Americas on October 12, 1492.
Saona Island is a tropical island located a short distance from the mainland on the south-east tip of the Dominican Republic. It is a government protected nature reserve and is part of Parque Nacional Cotubanamá. It is a popular destination for tourists from all over the Dominican Republic, who arrive in fleets of catamarans and small motorboats on organized excursions every day. The Island is known for its beaches, and has been used on a number of occasions by film-makers and advertisers looking for a stereotypical "deserted island" setting for their film or product. It is promoted amongst European visitors as the setting for the Bounty chocolate bar advert.
The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean included the Taíno, the Island Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, and the Guanahatabey of western Cuba.
The Ortoiroid people were the second wave of human settlers of the Caribbean who began their migration into the Antilles around 2000 BCE They were preceded by the Casimiroid peoples. They are believed to have originated in the Orinoco valley in South America, migrating to the Antilles from Trinidad and Tobago to Puerto Rico. The name "Ortoiroid" comes from Ortoire, a shell midden site in southeast Trinidad.
Warao is the native language of the Warao people. A language isolate, it is spoken by about 33,000 people primarily in northern Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. It is notable for its unusual object–subject–verb word order. The 2015 Venezuelan film Gone with the River was spoken in Warao.
The Haina River is a river of the Dominican Republic. It is located on the oriental limit of hydrographic district of Azua, Baní, and San Cristóbal.
Taíno is an extinct Arawakan language that was spoken by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. At the time of Spanish contact, it was the principal language throughout the Caribbean. Classic Taíno was the native language of the northern Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and most of Hispaniola, and it was expanding into Cuba. The Ciboney dialect is essentially unattested, but colonial sources suggest it was very similar to Classic Taíno and was spoken in the westernmost areas of Hispaniola, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and most of Cuba.
Several languages of the Greater Antilles, specifically Cuba and Hispaniola, appear to have preceded the Arawakan Taíno. Almost nothing is known of them, though a couple recorded words, along with a few toponyms, suggest they were not Arawakan or Cariban, the families of the attested languages of the Antilles. Three languages are recorded: Guanahatabey, Macoris, and Ciguayo.
The Taíno are an indigenous people of the Caribbean. At the time of European contact in the late fifteenth century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Taíno were the first New World peoples to be encountered by Christopher Columbus during his 1492 voyage. They spoke the Taíno language, an Arawakan language.
The Kalinago language, also known as Igneri, was an Arawakan language historically spoken by the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Kalinago proper became extinct due to colonial genocidal activity by about 1920, but an offshoot survives as Garifuna, primarily in Central America.
Guaniguanico, also known as Cordillera de Guaniguanico, is a mountain range of western Cuba that spans from the centre-west of Pinar del Río Province to the western area of Artemisa Province. It is formed by the subranges of Sierra del Rosario and Sierra de los Órganos.
Macorix was the language of the northern coast of what is today the Dominican Republic. Spanish accounts only refer to three languages on the island: Taino, Macorix, and neighboring Ciguayo. The Macorix people appear to have been semi-sedentary and their presence seems to have predated the agricultural Taino who came to occupy much of the island. For the early European writers, they shared similarities with the nearby Ciguayos. Their language appears to have been moribund at the time of the Spanish Conquest, and within a century it was extinct.
Ciguayo (Siwayo) was the language of the Samaná Peninsula of Hispaniola at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taino who inhabited much of the island. The language appears to have been moribund at the time of Spanish contact, and within a century it was extinct.
Waroid is a proposal by Granberry and Vescelius (2004) linking Warao of Venezuela with the extinct Macoris and Guanahatabey languages of the Greater Antilles.