Because on average, phenotypic traits and global patterns of craniometric variation are consistent with neutral evolutionary forces such as genetic drift and flow, inferences can be made regarding past population history and structure including origins and demic diffusion using craniofacial morphology30. In a recent regional approach of pre-Contact New World craniofacial variation, a strong positive spatial association on morphology was found for both shape and size suggesting that these New World Amerindians were heterogeneous, which is consistent with an isolation-by-distant model after initial diffusion22. The results of the present study, per contra, show that Caribbean Amerindians were not spatially patterned (i.e., for shape, Fig. 6a) suggesting homogeneity rather than heterogeneity of the populations. Population homogeneity can arise by the migration of cohesive demes (or breeding populations) who are genetically different that settles in an area within the local population31. And while a significant spatial pattern (Table 4) was observed for centroid size, it did not show a monotonic decrease with distance or a clinal pattern (Fig. 6b) as would be expected under an isolation-by-distance model similar to kinship32. The morphological variation and similarity and spatial patterning observed in this study reasonably reflect repeated population migrations and expansions by various groups from different directions.

Contacts between Florida and the islands have long been proposed33,34,35 as have connections between the Isthmo-Colombian region36. However, the individuals from Florida and Panama in our sample show no clear relationship with individuals from the islands. Archaeological evidence documents a strong relationship between Venezuela and Puerto Rico beginning, at least, with the movement of Saladoid pottery into the islands between 800 and 200 BC. Our data confirm a biological relationship between individuals from Venezuela and Puerto Rico. However, the movement of peoples between the islands and mainland, and between the islands aligned from Trinidad to Puerto Rico, is far more complicated than origins alone can resolve3. Similarities in stone-tool technology observed in Belize and Cuba have been used to identify the Yucatán Passage as the first crossing of humans from the mainland to the islands37,38. Our data support this association, especially given the significant differences between individuals from Cuba and those from other islands in the Greater Antilles. Differences in facial morphology between Cuba and The Bahamas further support that the Lucayans did not originate in Cuba. The earliest Ceramic Age settlements on Hispaniola and Jamaica are dated to around AD 6003. They are few in number, widely scattered, and are recognized by the presence of “redware” pottery, associated with Archaic Age communities2. Meillacoid style pottery appears suddenly in Hispaniola around AD 800 and was brought to Jamaica (circa AD 900) and The Bahamas (circa AD 1000) during population expansion into essentially unoccupied territories. Meillacoid pottery also reaches eastern Cuba around AD 100039. Diffusion into Cuba is different because it reflects the infiltration of long-established Archaic Age communities, which would explain why individuals in Cuba are morphologically different from their neighbors. Meillacoid pottery is identical to the pottery associated with the Carib expansion13. Commencing in the northwestern Amazon basin around AD 500, the timing is appropriate for the sudden appearance around AD 800 of this new pottery style in Hispaniola10,11. Their arrival clarifies why population expansion suddenly resumed after a 1,000-year hiatus. The Carib invaders were on the move, as attested to their rapid expansion across South America and also resolves Columbus’ often perplexing descriptions of fierce raiders in The Bahamas, Jamaica, and western Hispaniola. Raiders that Las Casas would identify in a marginal note to Columbus’ Diario as “Caribes”1.

Genetic evidence eventually may help to verify or refute our proposed Carib migration hypothesis. However, there are currently three main problems. First, too few studies have been completed, although we would note that our Bahamas samples are part of an ongoing study of genetic relationships in the circum-Caribbean. Second, community-level identifiers are not yet available, it is difficult to evaluate the impacts of admixture over time21,40, and a high degree of genetic variability has been reported for the northwest Amazon homeland of the Carib migrants41,42. Third, previous studies have looked only at the two generally accepted Archaic Age and Arawak/Taíno expansions, with some reference to the centuries later Carib migration into the Lesser Antilles27. If future studies do not look for Carib influences, they will produce incomplete results.

Nevertheless, several studies support our conclusions. The DNA analysis of Saladoid individuals strongly suggest a common origin and genetic continuity over time27, although genetic contributions in Puerto Rican individuals that are more closely related to northwestern South America has been recognized40; and the study of dental morphology identified a distinct Cuban cluster25. These results independently confirm the Puerto Rico-Venezuela and Cuba-Yucatán clusters identified here. Finally, “marked haplogroup variation seems to be present among the three neighboring Caribbean islands (Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba),” such that colonization of the Caribbean was mainly due to successive migration movements from mainland South America in different time periods26. Haplogroup diversity among the three islands and successive waves of migrations are exactly what our data predict. Finally, guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) first appeared in the Antilles “sometime after AD 500,” and their origins were genetically traced to northwestern South America43. Their translocation occurred at the same time and from the same place that we propose for the Carib expansion into the Caribbean islands.

The reasons that most archaeologists failed to make this connection is that Rouse4 was adamant that there was only one Ceramic Age population expansion, archaeologists were fixated on the shortest geographical water crossings, especially the “stepping-stone” Lesser Antilles44, and interest in Island Caribs was focused on the 17th century testimony of French missionaries living in the eastern Caribbean. It is only in the past decade that archaeologists have recognized the pre-Columbian capacity to directly cross the Caribbean Sea3,28,45. Looking at faces, instead of islands, we see three distinct populations from three distinct places (Fig. 5). The first was the initial peopling of Cuba and the northern Antilles across the Yucatán Passage around 5000 BC. Next was the arrival of Arawak-speaking peoples in Puerto Rico from coastal Venezuela between 800 and 200 BC. Finally, Carib colonists crossed the Caribbean Sea to arrive in Hispaniola around AD 800 and then continue their rapid expansion into Jamaica and The Bahamas (Fig. 8). The evidence highlights a completely new perspective on the people and peopling of the Caribbean.