section_path: History by region/Americas/Caribbean
section_name: Caribbean
paragraph_text: Caribbean
  
  Concentrating a significant number of islands, the Caribbean had been the scene of constant maritime migrations via canoes since the Lithic stage, with its first inhabitants reaching the area by around 5000 BCE.
  
  After a millennia of population flows, the various peoples of the Caribbean entered in the post-classical period with notable developments on numerous permanent settlements and more complex social organizations, which were a result of the improvement of agricultural techniques and also the considerable growth of villages, that became great ceremonial and commercial centers led by different Cacique. Trading goods like shells, cotton, gold, colored stones and rare feathers were largely exported from island to island, ranging from the Lesser to the Great Antilles.
  
  By around 650 C.E and 800 C.E, new migratory waves from the Caribbean coast of present-day Venezuela took place and several people began a process of major cultural, sociopolitical, and ritual reformulations, which led to the formation of the first chiefdoms and the emergence of social hierarchy. This period can also be described by the expulsion of the ancient Saladoid peoples from the main islands of the Caribbean and their subsequent replacement by the newly arrived Taíno people, who fiercely competed with other Arawak-speaking groups for arable land and war captives. Despite little evidence, some scholars still claim that the Taíno may have had a tenuous influence from the Maya civilization, as certain customs, such as the practice of batey, may have been inherited from the original Mesoamerican ballgame which also carried a religious character.
  
  When Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, he and his crew initially maintained a peaceful contact with the local Taíno people, but soon afterwards they were enslaved by the Spanish colonizers, bringing the area into the early modern period.