Columbus’ footprints on Hispaniola from a coastal perspective: multi-proxy reconstruction of environmental change in the northern Dominican Republic.
Summary
Columbus founded the very first permanent settlement in the New World, La Isabela, on the
northwestern coast of the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola during his second voyage
in AD 1493. Assessment of the character and scale of human disturbance of the natural environment
in one of the earliest colonized regions in the New World is hampered by a lack of independent
paleoenvironmental evidence.
We present a reconstruction of environmental change from pre-Columbian to post-Colonial
times based on sediment cores from a near-coastal lake (Laguna Grande) and a mangrove swamp
(Estero Hondo), reflecting land use changes over the past 3200 years. The environmental history
was reconstructed from changing grain size distributions, organic carbon content, fossil pollen,
coprophilous fungal spores and charcoal particle concentrations.
During the early Ceramic (ca. 250 cal yr AD), the Saladoid people had only minor impact on the
environment and cultivated squashes near the mangroves that provided them with shells and fish.
Most likely, cultivation of maize commenced on the shores of Laguna Grande during the late
Ceramic (ca. 1150 cal yr AD). Absence of evidence for cattle introduction, Old World crop
cultivation or deforestation, suggests early colonial disturbance was mostly restricted to the Cibao
valley, where the gold rush lead the colonists to the inlands. Fire frequency increased from ca. 1700
cal yr AD onwards, potentially as a result of large numbers of European immigrants and enslaved
Africans that enlarged demographic pressure on the environment. Anthropogenic disturbance had
not significantly affected the mangroves until ca. 1770 cal yr AD, when frequent fires and
deforestation degraded the forest.
Our results demonstrate that colonization more extensively and more instantly impacted the
natural environment in the Cibao valley compared to only minor disturbances on the Atlantic
coastal plain. Intensification of anthropogenic disturbance on the Atlantic coast is particularly
evident after three centuries of colonization.
This study underlines the importance of reliable age constraints for interpretations regarding
cause and effect in terms of natural and human disturbances. Considering a higher level of detail
desirable, the suite of proxies could be supplemented by phytholith analysis so as to identify crop
plants that are included in the records of higher taxonomic ranks such as potato and tomato (both
Solanaceae).