How Long Have People Been Sailing Here?

How long Have people Been Sailing Here?
By Ravenna Narizzano

The Virgin Islands is a great place for an adventure, with so much to do, see and learn.
Boating, beaches, parks, gardens, historic sites, libraries, museum, markets, music, food, and drink options are many and varied and steeped in deep and layered history and culture. Everywhere I go I always meet awesome people; hear new stories and learn.

Favorite walks are up Sage Mountain; Most exciting down-wind paddle board trip has got to be in the clear waters over the coral reefs in Anegada; Most fun dip spot is Bubbling Pool on Jost Van Dyke; Most magnificent boulder climbing on Virgin Gorda; Best Day Sail on The Anne Bonny.

Yet my personal favorite island adventure was many years ago when we sailed by dinghy to a small uninhabited island nearby for a picnic lunch. This island is very challenging to navigate to because of reefs and tides. I was led on a short walk to the interior of the island to an old stone and mortar well. This experience inspired me to learn more about Virgin Island’s History and Culture.

I had the privilege of meeting Mitch Kent at the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College Maritime Museum. He was working as a Professor of History and was researching Plantation Archeology. I wanted to know about that small island and to learn more about a pre-historic dig in another location in the BVI I viewed in the late 90’s.

Professor Kent advocated for appropriate cultural resource management as he answered my questions; showed me artifacts; and shared mind-blowing information. “We have got to beat back the backhoes!” he said, “We have to eliminate construction workers saying they did not know.” He spoke about the need for laws and systems to be in place to protect cultural resources when construction is going to happen.

There must be accountability for bulldozers destroying cultural resources. He explained the importance of identifying the exact locations of all the historic (and pre-historic) sites and filing that information with Town & Country Planning so that when contractors are going to excavate a location they know if it is a potential cultural resource site.” It must be the responsibility of the contractor to inform his workers and a worker not knowing cannot be an acceptable excuse.”

The US Virgin Islands has been studied more extensively than the British Virgin Islands, nevertheless, artifacts of stone; bone; pottery, Virgin Gorda green Jasper; and Jade have been found on Jost Van Dyke; Tortola; St. John; St. Croix and throughout the Virgin Islands. These artifacts prove habitation, sea travel and a very long organized cultural history.

People lived on these beautiful Islands, we now call The Virgin Islands, for a very, very long time. These islands have a much longer and deeper history than any of us have been taught or probably could have even imagined. Due to advancements in technology – and investigations by archaeologists; scientists; specialists; and independent researchers – we now have evidence to prove what has long been suspected – and these big secrets are now getting out.

Artifacts had been found that prove occupation of these islands as early as 1680BC. During the same decades the Israelites fled Egypt. There is now proof that early people in the Virgin Islands were using boats and sailing island to island as far up as to North America and as far down as South America. In fact, it has now also been proved that people sailed greater distances. There are petroglyphs in Azerbaijan of reed boats with twenty men rowing that date back over ten-thousand years.

DNA evidence of migration over the ocean during the Pleistocene has now been reported. Initial dispersal to the region appears to be from Northeast Asia; the Pacific Islands and Africa.

The Virgin Islands are a favored destination and people have been traveling here for over three-thousand seven hundred years and may even have been here more than ten-thousand years ago. Cultural Resource Management is of paramount importance to our continued learning and growth.

Specifics have been left out of this article by design. Sadly, there are too many people who do not understand the value of cultural resource management and take artifacts as personal treasure. All historical sites and artifacts should be left in place unless leaving them means they will be destroyed. A big anthropological puzzle needs a whole crew to solve it. When an artifact is removed from its place – it loses context in the bigger story.

Once a site or artifact is moved; and exposed to oxygen it and the material around it may begin to rapidly decompose.
If you know of a site or artifact let it be. The only things acceptable to take are photos and notes. Pin the GPS location on google maps and contact The Virgin Island’s Studies Institute at HLSCC.

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