A volcanic island arc fences the Caribbean from the Atlantic
The Lesser Antilles swing from the Virgin Islands east of Puerto Rico through the Leeward and Windward chains toward South America, then west via the Leeward Antilles off Venezuela. Together with the Greater Antilles they form the Antilles, the eastern rim where Caribbean meets Atlantic.
Most islands ride a partially volcanic arc between the Greater Antilles and South America. Kalinago peoples dominated many of these shores, unlike the Taíno-heavy Greater Antilles; colonial writers later nicknamed the cultural boundary the “poison arrow curtain.” Politically the crescent splits into eight sovereign states—all once under British rule—plus seventeen partly self-governing territories answerable to Paris, The Hague, London, Washington, or Caracas.
Archaic Age sites such as Banwari Trace in Trinidad date between about 7700 and 6100 B. P., with twenty-nine Archaic loci identified on that island alone. Stone and bone tools show people hunting and fishing long before pottery arrived. In the north, dates split the Archaic into early, middle and late phases running from 3300 BCE to 100 CE, with settlers favouring small islands and coasts near marine food. Yet no Archaic site is known in the Windwards south of Guadeloupe, apart from Trinidad, Tobago and Barbados, which were probably settled separately from South America. Three migration models compete: South American hops to Trinidad–Tobago–Barbados, skips of the Windwards toward northern islands, or technology diffusion without mass movement of whole communities.
Storms and tectonic upheaval have probably scrambled traces on Tobago, Barbados and Martinique, so gaps there may not mean emptiness. Huecoid and Saladoid pottery point to contact between coastal South America and the northern islands starting around 400 to 200 BCE.
Columbus sailed among the islands on his second voyage in 1493 and sighted Margarita, Coche and Cubagua on 15 August 1498. The Frenchman Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc sought a colony on Saint Kitts in 1625, the French pushed Spanish settlers off Guadeloupe from 1626, and Spain yielded Martinique in 1635. Spanish Trinidad, governed from San José de Oruña, fell to British occupation in 1797, which Spain accepted in 1802.
Source: Lesser Antilles
