 Among
the groups and towns that The Antilles inhabited before the
Discovery of America, were those of Santo Domingo's island
who reached a bigger development degree. Because among the
thousands of objects that the archaeologists have been able
to pick up and study, it removes the notion very clearly
that the Taina society ended up being unwrapped in a
civilization degree comparable to the superior Neolithic of
the old European towns.
The news that the first columnists from India left about the
life, the customs and the material culture of the many
aboriginal groups that populated the island and territories
of the great circuncaribe region.
Pointed out that in some moment of their social evolution
the Tainos began to develop certain cultural singularities
that finished differentiating them of the South American
groups of the forests of the Orinoco and the Amazons, where
they originally proceeded.
The Tainos were sedentary and they ended up becoming farmers
to make a living, at the same time of they fished and
hunted, with which they conserved those cultural features
that had shown to be functional in the process of adaptation
to the environment of the Antilles. Its main legacy to the
society of the Dominican Republic was in fact a group of
plants, already tamed in South America that seems they have
brought from the first migrations.
The most important in these plants was the mandioca. From it
they took out the cazabi that is the current “casabe”,
thanks to a procedure that is conserved almost the same
until today. Their cultivation was carried out by burning
the ground they wanted to clear, and then piling quantities
of earth in wide heaps above which the stakes were planted.
These heaps had a perimeter from about nine to twelve feet
and they were separate from another to a distance of two or
three feet. This disposition of the earth favored its
oxygenation, at the same time, it allowed the roots to grow
more easily.
The only care that required these plantations were to weed a
couple of times during the year. The name of these mandioca
plantations was in Taino language the word conuco.
Corn the word that would pass later to the Continent from
the Spaniards, to continue referring to this grain was among
the other important cultivations. The corn was eaten tender,
raw or roasted. It was sowed and harvested twice a year,
following the same technique of its ground preparations used
for the yucca conucos.
Once the fields were cleared, the Indians advanced in arrays
with a pointed stick in hand, giving a blow to earth with
each step and allowing to fall in each hole, seven or eight
grains of corn with the other hand. |
|
|
