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The first Caribbeans arrived on the islands closest to South America around 4000 BC. These nomadic hunter-gatherers were followed by waves of Arawaks. Indeed, one of the Caribbean’s recurrent themes, from pre-Columbian times until right now, has been movement of peoples. Around AD 1200 the peaceable Arawaks were happily farming, fishing and minding their own business when the Caribs from South America started fanning out over the Caribbean. The Caribs killed the Arawak men and enslaved the women, triggering another wave of migration that sent the Arawaks fleeing as far west as Cuba and as far north as the Bahamas. When the Spanish explorers arrived, they dubbed the warfaring people they encountered ‘cannibals’ (a derivation of the word ‘caribal’ or Carib), for their reputed penchant for eating their victims. Since the Arawaks had no written language, little of their culture survived, except – thankfully for weary travelers