Published: 09 February 2021
The HAGUE: - On January 7th Minister van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands announced that the project Island(er)s at the Helm: Co-creating sustainable and inclusive solutions for social adaptation to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean is one of two projects awarded with funding from the NWO Caribbean Research programme.
The Island(er)s at the Helm project is chaired by Dr. Francio Guadeloupe (University of Amsterdam/KITLV), with co-applicants Prof. dr. Corinne L. Hofman (Leiden University/KITLV), Dr. Antonio Carmona Báez (University of St. Martin), and Prof. dr. ir. Filomeno A. (Boey) Marchena (University of Curaçao).
Using the largest study of ancient Caribbean DNA to date, researchers have shed light on the Caribbean s first islanders and pieced together the story of how the archipelago became inhabited thousands of years ago. Like many other ancient DNA studies, it s upended some old assumptions about the past and brought new questions to the table.
As reported in the journal Nature, a multi-national team of geneticists, archaeologists, and anthropologists, including Caribbean-based researchers, have analyzed the genomes of 174 new and 89 previously sequenced people who lived in the Bahamas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and Venezuela, between 400 and 3,100 years ago. They received special permission to carry out the study from local governments and cultural institutions who act as caretakers of the remains, involving representatives of Caribbean Indigenous communities in the discussion of their findings.