Aboriginal Traces Found in Keys off Northern Cuba

New tourist interest of great historical value has emerged from the keys of Jardines del Rey, a Cuban travel destination north of the island nation’s central region, as archeologists there unearthed evidence of aboriginal life previous to Christopher Columbus’s arrival in 1492.

Dr. Jorge Calveras Roses, chief of the expedition, said his team of experts collected nearly a hundred samples –including fragmented ceramics, hammers made of seashells and flint, pierced shells and other pieces- from seven different points.

One of the top discoveries is a small cave containing rim-carved seashells and huge conches pierced as Cuban pre-Hispanic aboriginals used to do.

Dr. Roses explained that according to the evidence, the artifacts belonged to a group of Taino farmers and potters that had settled down in the village of Los Buchillones more that 1,700 years ago.

Los Buchillones, a few miles away from the Ciego de Avila northern keys, was discovered in the 1940s by a team of local speleologists. Research in the area, though, did not get going until the 1980s.

Several expeditions in that same region have collected a grand total of 1,680 pieces made of wood, stone, ceramic and seashells, chanced upon a funerary knoll and unearthed an aboriginal skeleton. All this bears out the existence in central Cuba of one of the largest pre-Hispanic human settlements of the entire Caribbean Basin.