Why does the CAribbean look as it does?

Nature, Place and Peoples of the Antilles' Bioregion

Ecology of Europe in the Caribbean

Tectonic, Geological, and Cultural maps of Mexico. the Caribbean, the West Indies and South America.

Maps

Antilles, the greater and the lesser islands of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea.

The Setting

Native agriculture was dependent on el Nino (wet), la Nina (dry) patterns.

Maya: Yucatan lowlands and Southern Mexican Plateaus, trade w/ Arawak; oldest literate peoples, had been through 2 cycles of growth & decline

Aztec: central Valley of Mexico, trade with Mayans and Hopi pueblas of SW; Tenochtitlan, fell 1519, smallpox epidemic & imperial rivalry

Tectonics

Why does the Caribbean look as it does, geologically speaking?

The larger Earth portrait of which the Caribbean is but a piece:

Plate Tectonics is the study of the geological drift and consequent reshaping of the crustal surface of the planet.

Volcanoes

Bathymetry and locations

Volcano Island Arcs are an idicator of a plate boundary

Subduction Zones

Regional Plate Boundaries

Here the plates of the region are depicted that drive the physical forces which shape the terrains and isles of the Antilles Archipelago

Mid Oceanic ridge

North Atlantic Plate

Pacific Plate

South American Plate

Fracture zones

Caribbean Plate

Cocos Plate

Nazca Plate

Subduction zone

Three million years ago these tectonic forces forced up a mountain block called the Darien Gap where the Panamanian Isthmus separated the Caribbean from the Pacific Ocean.

Geological forces at work in the Antillean Bioregion.

Types of geological pressures:

History of dominant Precolumbian cultures adjacent to the West Indies and the Caribbean Sea.

Mexico | Cuba | Jamaica | Hispaniola

Spanish Map of the Aztec and Mayan regions

Zumpango, Spanish and Nahuatl language map of Meso America c 1570.

1550

Mexico

South America, 16th Century:

Peru as the Spanish focus in settling Latin America, where Aymaran and Quechua speaking peoples still dominate the mountain populations of Peru and Bolivia respectively. (c. 1585)

1576 map series fromt he Yale University Archival Map room

Hispaniola

Jamaica

Cuba

Forest cover remaining in the Antilles.

A note on the orgins of the word: Antilles.

From Random House, the following discussion has been excised:

"The reliable Encyclopedia Britannica says:

"The term Antilles dates traditionally from before Europeans discovered the New World, when 'Antilia' referred to semimythical lands located somewhere west of Europe across the Atlantic. On medieval charts it was sometimes indicated as a continent or large island and sometimes as an archipelago. After discovery of the West Indies by Columbus, the Spanish term 'Antillas' was commonly assigned to the new lands, and 'Sea of the Antilles' in various European languages is used as an alternate designation for the Caribbean Sea."

Donald Johnson's 1994 book, Phantom Islands of the Atlantic: The Legends of Seven Lands That Never Were, devotes an entire chapter to "Antillia," as he spells it. Johnson says that the first map to ever show the word Antilia was made in 1424. I found this map in an exhibit at The University of Minnesota's excellent John Ford Bell Library website called Portolan Charts. Portolan charts, created before Columbus's discovery of America, were navigational charts that contained the accumulated knowledge of sailors and navigators. ("Portolan" basically means 'getting to a safe port, haven'.) These charts were made in the 13th, 14th and 15th century, and some are quite accurate. On the 1424 chart, which was made by a Venetian cartographer named Zuane Pizzigano, you can actually see the word "antilia" next to a big, rectangular island. "Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries," Johnson writes, "Antillia's position on maps is consistent." That position is always around seven hundred miles west of the Azores. The inference is that different sailors from different countries came upon Antilia, and so it actually existed.

Columbus apparently knew of Antilia. "Cartographers as well as historians," Johnson continues, "felt that the Antillia on old maps represented a foreknowledge of the New World. After the discoveries of Columbus, they accordingly transferred Antillia to a new position in the West Indies." Of course, no theory like this would be complete without rival interpretations. In a 1988 paper about the subject, scholar Robert Fuson declared Antilia to be Taiwan.

But what of the origin of the word "Antilia?"

The Bell Library exhibit cites a 1954 study by Armando Cortes&atildeo on the 1424 chart. Here's what Cortes&atildeo has to say:

The origin and meaning of the word Antilia have been a subject of much controversy. In fact Antilia is composed of two Portuguese words: "ante" or "anti" and "ilha," an archaic form of the Portuguese "ilha," i.e. 'island'. It is, therefore, a purely Portuguese word and it was meant to designate an island--discovered perhaps at the beginning of the fifteenth century by some unknown navigators, probably Portuguese--lying before a continent, which at first might have been thought to be Asia, or opposite the European continent.

To view, look for the red island on the the map, go to: http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/map/PORTO/1424/west.html

Please credit the: James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota if you copy or reproduce material from this page.
URL: http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/index.html

For the etymology see: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010125