“According to this discovery, the Tainos were not the island’s original inhabitants but rather their ancestors. Archaeologists refer to a group of people from South America, most likely Venezuela, as “casimiroids.” This group is the first of the first settlers of the Antilles’ five major external migrations. ‘Dominican history has an enormous journey that begins many centuries before the arrival of Columbus. It has a great wealth of cultures that were mixing with each other,’ said archaeologist Adolfo López, who is in charge of the team conducting the investigations in Samaná.

On the island, the “casimiroids” coexisted with people who had come from other parts of America thousands of years later. The archaeologist continued, “From there, a mixed culture is produced that develops and gives rise to the Taino culture, which is what Columbus discovered when he arrived on the island 530 years ago.”