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Iguana cay history - learn what once happend
They are known today as Lucayan [Tainos]: an anglicized version of the Spanish 'Lucayos,' which derives from the Arawakan words Lukkunu Kari ('island men'). The Lucayans share a common ancestry with the Taino societies of Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica (the Greater Antilles), who they separated from around A.D. 600 when they began to colonize the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas (hereafter called the Lucayan Islands). By 1492, they had settled all of the larger Lucayan Islands. In addition, they continued to exchange goods with other Tainos living in the Greater Antilles. Most villages in the Lucayan Islands were composed of houses aligned atop a sand dune with the ocean in front and a marshy area behind. Quite likely, these marshy areas provided ready access to fresh water before the islands were deforested. In addition many sites are located just offshore on small cays, such as Iguana Cay in Jacksonville Harbour, East Caicos. Lucayan sites occur in pairs, which reflects either cooperation between socially allied communities or sequential settlements in the same location. The former possibility is more likely because it is the men who most often were the leaders, even in matrililineages, and especially with regard to external relations. In a matrilineal society, your mother's brother, and not your father, is the most important male in your life because he heads your family's lineage. However, if men are needed by their matrilineage, yet are expected to live in their wife's village, then social relations will be unstable. These competing demands can be balanced by establishing villages in close proximity, thus reducing the distances that men must travel to participate in their lineage affairs. In the Turks and Caicos and the Greater Antilles a slightly different type of community plan predominates. Here the houses are arranged around central plazas. The plazas were used for public displays, ritual dances, recording astronomical events, and for the Taino version of the ball game. The house of the cacique ("chief") is usually located at one end of the plaza, and within the cacique's house are stored the village idols and spirit representations called cems. This community plan shows a heightened solidarity among its members reflecting the social hierarchy and competition between cacicazgos (chiefdoms). The Taino pantheon of spirits, called cems, was divided according to the dichotomies of gender and cultural/noncultural. There were principal male and female spirits of fruitfulness, Yucahu, the giver of manioc, and Attabeira, the mother goddess. They both attended by twin spirits. The anti-cultural world was ruled by Maquetaurie Guyaba, Lord of the Dead, and Guabancex, Mistress of the hurricane. They too were attended by sets of twins. Cems played an active role in the affairs of humans, and they served to distinguish between that which was human, cultural and pleasing; and that which was non-human, anti-cultural, and foul.
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Iguana cay Vacations site
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