While reading Antonio Curet's Caribbean Paleodemography this week, we were reminded of the studies of ancient DNA from the Caribbean. Although Curet raises a number of sound critiques and questions of Rouse's model for Caribbean pre-Columbian history, it is interesting that so little of the Archaic population's DNA was found in the later, Ceramic Age populations sampled by the researchers. If Curet's right about the Saladoid expansion into the Caribbean requiring past relations or ties to the peoples already established in the Caribbean, one would think that biological exchanges would have contributed to the later Ostinoid expansion that developed nearly simultaneously in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, and the Bahamas. Perhaps the sample size was too small to adequately measure the degree of Archaic-Saladoid admixture. If not, then the evidence found for Archaic populations adopting and adapting aspects of the Ceramic population's culture did not include intermarriage. This strikes us as a bit odd, as it would have placed a limit on the effective population size of Saladoid and post-Saladoid expansion. Either way, we need to read more recently published work by archaeologists and historians who have attempted to use the Spanish sources from the early colonial era and excavations of various sites in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico to calculate estimated populations.
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