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BiggerTaino art in Dominican caves of Borbón dates from the eleventh century until the arrival of the Spaniards
Undated photograph courtesy of the Spanish-Dominican archaeologist Adolfo López, where cave paintings are observed in the Caves of Borbón or Pomier, in San Cristóbal (Dominican Republic). EFE
Santo Domingo, Feb 21 (EFE). Carbon 14 has made it possible for the first time to date exactly when the cave paintings of the caves of Borbón or Pomier, one of the main archaeological vestiges of the Dominican Republic and of the Taino culture in the Caribbean, were made: they span from the eleventh century to the arrival of the Spaniards at the end of the fifteenth century.
In an interview with EFE, the Spanish-Dominican archaeologist Adolfo López, who is in charge of the research along with other Spanish specialists, explains that carbon 14 has made it possible to establish for the first time the date of these works, some of which “even reach the time of contact.”
“They are Taino cave paintings that are very interesting because they reflect rituals (such as the ceremony of the hallucinogenic substance cohoba), animals that existed at that time, images of their deities… They are like photographs from a thousand years ago,” he says.
It has been a multi-pronged work: the carbon-14 dating was carried out by the University of Oxford within the framework of a project approved by the Museum of the Dominican Man and the Ministry of the Environment and funded by the Dominican Academy of Sciences and Spanish entities, in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid. The Museum of the Spanish Caves of Altamira and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) laboratories in the Museum of Evolution in the Spanish city of Burgos.
For this work, carried out in two batches since 2022 and which has only been done twice in the Caribbean, specialists came from Spain. Samples were taken from a large part of the paintings, extracting very small portions so as not to damage the works, despite the fact that this made it difficult to obtain the organic matter or charcoal necessary for dating.
More than a thousand paintings and a hundred petroglyphs were identified
In the Cuevas de Borbón or Pomier Natural Monument Anthropological Reserve – about 30 kilometers from Santo Domingo and currently at the center of a controversy over a mining operation whose operations various sectors are asking for an immediate halt – there are 37 documented caves (it is not ruled out that there are more), of which 17 have rock art.
Specifically, 1,033 paintings and 103 petroglyphs have been identified, “but we know,” says López, “that there are more paintings that have not been counted, in total we believe that there must be about 1,700 samples of cave art.”
No previous paintings from the archaic period have been detected in the place, but all are Taino from the eleventh century, and one of them is already from the moment of contact with the Spaniards. This shows that these caves constituted a ceremonial center of the greatest importance: “For the natives it was like talking about the Vatican or the sanctuary of Lourdes,” which probably survived the early years of colonization.
According to the CSIC, the paintings were made with charcoal using suitable and previously prepared firebrands, which shows the advanced nature of these pre-Hispanic people. For the most part, they represent birds as sacred animals, although there are also many anthropomorphic and anthropo-zoomorphic human beings, full-length schematic faces and figures, and, to a lesser extent, other animals (turtles, dogs) and deities.
Experts also know that in Borbón, there were burials with human remains now calcified, but they have not yet been able to locate the village where these Taínos lived. However, they consider that the ritual center would be isolated from the place of habitation.
“We thought that the settlement would possibly be closer to the river than on top of the mountain, but the riverbed has changed many times, there have been floods, it is not easy to know where they lived,” says the archaeologist, who thinks that the most feasible area would be where the city of San Cristóbal is now, but as they built their houses out of wood, they have not survived to the present day.
He assures us that the Taíno were an “extremely advanced” agricultural culture: They knew the calendar, managed the ecosystem, had a very well-structured way of life, did not practice human sacrifice, and had a very advanced religion and social structure in which women had practically the same rights as men and could be chieftains.
But the Taínos ended up disappearing because, with the arrival of the Spaniards, a part of them died in war and as a result of slavery, but above all, from diseases spread by them.
López says the Taínos survived much longer than you think (10th-15th centuries). He found a settlement in Playa Grande (northern Dominican Republic) that survived, according to carbon-14, until the early 17th century. EFE
