Thankyou,
It is mind blogging to me that the Tainos, and almost the entire Western Hemisphere has been " agrafa" for milennia. That is the number one reason why they got conquered so easily by the Europeans. Without writing, is nearly impossible to develop any technology, such as cannons or guns.
Columbus found a Paleolithic( late Stone Age) society. He wrote in his diaries that " they are very easy to conquer". So for the Spaniards, is like they won the lottery.
It is sad that we don't know what the hell was going on in, let's say, the year A.D 1200 in Quisqueya, because there aren't any records like in Europe or Asia. Is like history started in 1492 when Columbus arrived and started to write about the island.
Did the Mayas had a " real functional writing system"? how come we don't have detailed Mayan history like we find in Europe? How come that writing didn't evolved and spread all over the region( to South America perhaps) like the Phoenician alphabet spreaded and evolved in the Mediterranean??
I don't think that a heading of "Paleolithic" can be used to describe, perhaps, one rich culture as the Arawak in the Caribbean...
The absence of a writing language doesn't precludes the potential to develop weapons par to cannons, it may hinder the passing of the knowledge from one generation to the other; but if we take under consideration that most trades in the world were in fact passed from masters to apprentices, via hand to hand without much writings to study. One can surmise that not having a written language represented no ultimate impossibility of advancements...
The Maya civilization was so advanced that still to this day, many can't grasp the ideology and workings of such culture; unlike the Egyptians or Phoenicians, they had incredible understanding of the elementals on earth and the cosmos...
The observation of Columbus was nothing more than the obvious to any person confronted with a culture based on agriculture and harmony with the surroundings. The old world relied on commerce, expansion, taxation and all the other ills of a culture heavy on exploitation...
Just as the Jews passed on culture, folklore and traditions in the mouth of cantors and rabbis along the common folk until they started to employ Aramaic to graph the messages; so too was the Taino in Quisqueya...
The missing link to the Taino culture is not the absence of a written language, but the absence of a committed effort to seek the culture by any institution or government to present.
We know probably more about the Ice Age and the Neanderthals than some cultures still in existence today, with written language and all teeth in their mouth...
