St. Vincent and the Grenadines 302


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SVG302 Pre-contact Chronology

Note: The basic structure is based on the chronology Mary R. Murrin made for the New Jersey Historical Commission during the Columbus Quincentennial, with additions and emendations derived from various sources on the web. The information about impacts/tsunamis was based on Ed Grodine's reports.
Events of importance are indicated this way.

1-1500
The Neoindian Period is characterized by distinct cultural periods, which were originally separated on the basis of different ceramic styles. The first group to immigrate into the Antilles were the Saladoid (A.D. 0 - 600) who brought horticulture (cassava, yucca, and maize) and pottery technology to the islands. It is generally accepted that they originated in the lower Orinoco River Valley before spreading throughout the Antilles.
The hallmark of the earliest pottery includes a number of types that are white paint on a red background. This white-on-red may be traced to its ancestral home in northern Venezuela. It has been postulated that between A.D. 600 and 800, another surge of migrants came out of the Orinoco area and spread throughout the Antilles. Called the Ostionoid culture, it is separated from the preceding Saladoid culture by different pottery styles, involving less painted decoration and more incised decoration.
Later elaborations of the Ostionoid culture and their people were called Arawak or Taino Indians by the Spanish when contact occurred The Arawak culture is noted for large village sites of 1,000 to 5,000 people controlled by chiefdoms, with heavy emphasis on the cultivation of yucca and cassava, with supplemental hunting and shellfish-gathering. Religious artifacts, such as zemi, or spirit stones, were often found in context with ceremonial sites, as well as distinctive polychrome and incised pottery styles and fine ground stone and shell work. In the latter part of this period white-on-red ceramics disappeared and plain ceramics with lugs shaped like human or animal heads are molded onto the rim of vessels. These features were believed to have originated in Meso-america and diffused to the Caribbean through northern South America. Just a few hundred years prior to contact, the Arawaks had begun to be displaced from the Lesser Antilles by a new group of Orinoco River Valley migrants, the Caribs. By European contact (ca. A.D. 1500), the Caribs had occupied all of the Lesser Antilles .

24
Jesus crucified

50
Teotihuacan, the most important and widely influential city in pre-conquest Mesoamerica established in Valley of Mexico. This marks the beginning of the Classic era in central Mexico. Artisans worked in obsidian and ceramics, made murals, used hieroglyphs, and engaged in trade with the rest of Mesoamerica.

300
Classic Maya civilization arises on Yucatan peninsula. Cities characterized by temple pyramids of limestone and stucco-faced, multiroomed structures, arched doorways, masonry ball courts, carved stele. Used a calendar and only complete writing system in ancient New World.

312
Emperor Constantine converts to christianity

325
Council of Nicea

354-430
St Augustine

410
Visigoths sack Rome

450
Anglosaxons invade england

493
Ostrogoths rule Italy

500
By this date the bow and arrow is widely used in North America, replacing the atlatl (spear- thrower) as the major weapon.

600-700
Teotihuacan declines.

630-725
First Islamic expansion

700-1700
Eastern Woodlands Mississippian culture farmed corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, near riverbeds. They built elaborate temple and burial mounds of earth.

711
Moslem conquest of Spain

768-814
Reign of Charlemagne

800l The Delaware, an Eastern Woodlands group, were Algonquian speaking. Other Eastern Woodlands Indians include Susquehannock, Iroquois, Mohegan, Narragansett.

800-1200
Ostionoid Period. The prevailing theory among Caribbeanists is that the Saladoid culture evolved into the Ostionoid. So the Ostionoid period represents a continuation of the Saladoid period in terms of ceramic-making, agriculture, and sedentism. The Ostionan ceramics lack the polychrome-painted decoration of the earlier period and instead are decorated by polishing, red painted surface, appliquŽ and modeled designs (usually zoomorphic), and in the latter part of the subseries, horizontal bands of geometric line-and-dot incising. Other artifacts and features associated with the Ostionan subseries are petaloid stone celts, zemi objects of stone, shell, and clay, the introduction of petroglyphs, and ball courts.

871-899
Reign of Alfred the Great

900
Classic Maya civilization declines. Toltec civilization begins. Toltec civilization were regarded as golden age of architects and artisans.

1000
Peaceful Muslim penetration of West African kingdom of Ghana which controlled the upper Niger and Senegal valleys; and the kingdom of Kanem north and northeast of Lake Chad;

1000-1006
Norsemen in America (Newfoundland).

1095-1291
The Crusades

1200
Chichen Itza, Yacatan peninsula, becomes important in first half of thirteenth century. Toltec civilization begins to decline. Aztec invaders arrive in Valley of Mexico, early thirteenth century.

1200
After contact Europeans were told by their informants that around this time a hostile, canibalistic people called the Caribs invaded the Lesser Antilles from mainland South America. It is just as possible that the Arawaks of the Lesser Antilles developed a trading culture whose trade pidgin was the Carib language. They were certainly going all over the Caribbean while the Taino group of Arawaks were creating a city-culture (civilization) on the Greater Antilles.

1200-1500
The last three hundred years of prehistoric occupation in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands may be traced to the historic Native American culture called Taino, which was first encountered by the Spanish on the first voyages of discovery in the 1490s. At first contact, the Spanish viewed Puerto Rico as being controlled by a series of Taino subchiefs, or caciques. These were the religious and political leaders of discrete geographical areas, and were loosely affiliated with paramount chiefs in a ranked hierarchy organization.

1200
Rise of empire of Mali, a multiethnic state that controlled most of West Africa south of the Sahara Desert to the northern borders of modern Nigeria; development of walled Yoruba towns of Benin, Ife, Oyo.

1200-1350
Mongol Dominance in Asia

1215
Magna Carta

1255-92
Journeys of Niccolo and Maffei Polo to central Asia. On the second journey they are accompanied by Niccolo's son, Marco.Marco Polo, in service to Kublai Khan, travels throughout China, Burma, and India.

1300
Rise of the Hausa (east of the Niger Valley) and Mossi (west of the River Volta) states; and Jenne, a major trading city on the River Bani (a tributary of the Niger).

1325
Aztecs settle at Tenochtitlan, next to Lake Texcoco in Valley of Mexico. Economy depends upon trade, agriculture and tribute exacted from subjugated cultures. The Aztecs engaged in a permanent war with neighboring societies in order to provide sufficient captives for the massive human sacrifices required by their religion.

1325-49
Ibn Batuta, a Moroccan, travels to North Africa, Egypt, the Near East, Arabia, East Africa, India, Crimea, Central Asia, Ceylon, China, Timbuktu, and the Niger.

1348
Black death (bubonic plague) strikes Europe in first of epidemics which will continue for about 100 years.

1350-1700
Second Islamic Expansion

1385-1520
Italian Renaissance

1400
Chaucer The Reformation

1400
Rise of the Inca state in central Andes (Bolivia and Peru).

1415
Portuguese capture the Moslem city of Ceuta in West Africa. This expedition launches a period of Portuguese exploration of the coast of Africa, under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460).

1420-40
Portuguese discover and colonize Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean.

1431
Joan of Arc burned

1440
Incas develop empire. Inca did city building, fine stonework, the construction of waterworks, an elaborate road system, suspension bridges and elaborate terraces for agriculture.

1453
Constantinople falls to Ottoman Turks.

1460-1591
Rise and decline of the Songhai empire of Gao north of the Niger Valley; it dominated West Africa under kings Ali (1460-1492) and Muhammed Ture (1493-1528).

1463-79
War between the Turks and Venice. Turks threaten Greece, Albania, Croatia, Dalmatia, and reach the outskirts of Venice.

1469
Ferdinand and Isabella marry, uniting the kingdoms of Aragon and Castille. Most of Spain is united under Christian monarchs for the first time in many centuries.

1475
By this year, Portuguese explorations of the West African coast have reached Sierra Leone and have produced small stations in the Cape Verde Islands and on the islands of Fernando Po and Sao Thome. The Portuguese trade with West Africans for gold and for slaves to work in Portugal and the Atlantic islands.

1482
Portuguese construct Sao Jorge da Mina (later the infamous slave-trading station called Elmina) on the Gold Coast, reach the river Congo, and have their first contact with the kingdom of Bakongo (Kongo).

1487
Voyage of Bartolomeu Dias around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean. His crew forces him to turn back after a short exploration of the east coast of Africa.

1492
Fall of Grenada, marking the end of the reconquest of Spain from the Moors (Moslems). Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

1492-1502
Christopher Columbus, a Genoese funded by the Spanish Crown, undertakes four voyages of exploration. His first voyage takes him to the Bahamas (San Salvador), Cuba and Santo Domingo. Within 100 years the Arawaks/Taino he finds in the Greater Antilles will be wiped out by diseases to which they have no immunity and by Spanish aggression. His second through fourth voyages take him to Dominica, Puerto Rico, other islands in the Antilles groups, Jamaica, Trinidad, South America, Honduras, and Panama.

1494
Treaty of Tordesillas dividing the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal. By this treaty Brazil becomes Portuguese, the rest of the Americas, Spanish. Portugal claimed the East Indies, and Spain the Philippines.

1496
Spaniards complete their conquest of the Canary Islands.

1497
Voyage of John Cabot, an Italian sailing under an English flag, to Newfoundland.

1497-99
Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reaches India by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.

1500
Pedro Alvares Cabral accidentally "discovers" Brazil. He intends to sail east around Africa and on to India, but his fleet is blown westward by a storm onto the Brazilian coast.

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