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The boundaries of each cacicazgo were precise. The first inhabitants of the island used geographic elements as references, such as major rivers, high mountains, notable valleys and plains. This enabled them to define each territory. [1] Each was divided into cacique nitaínos, subdivisions headed by the cacique helpers.
Prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish in 1492, the native Taíno people populated the island which they called Ayiti ("land of high mountains") or "Quisqueya" (from Quizqueia), meaning "great thing" or "big land" ("mother of all lands"), and which the Spanish later named Hispaniola.
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492.
Christopher Columbus [b] (/ k ə ˈ l ʌ m b ə s /; [2] between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian [3] [c] explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa [3] [4] who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
In 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but inadvertently found the Americas. Columbus's first two voyages (1492–93) reached the Bahamas and various Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba.
A map may prove that Marco Polo discovered America more than two centuries before Christopher Columbus. A sheepskin map, believed to be a copy of the 13th century Italian explorer's, may indicate ...
While technically referring to the era before the voyages of Christopher Columbus from AD 1492 to 1504, in practice the term usually includes the history of American indigenous cultures until the 18th or 19th century. In more recent decades, archaeological scholarship has extended to include enslaved Africans and European and Asian migrant ...
There was limited contact between North American people and the outside world before 1492. Several theoretical contacts have been proposed, but the earliest physical evidence comes from the Norse or Vikings. Norse captain Leif Ericson is believed to have reached the Island of Newfoundland circa 1000 AD. [3] In 1492 Columbus reached land in the ...