Culture: From Dominican to New Orleans

Five days of 5* resort should do the trick recharging travel and social batteries (hard to believe even a 9.5/10 extrovert such as me does have a limit to his social batteries). And finally I have visited a carribean island! I have learned that christopher columbus first set foot here - and met the Taíno culture. As opposed to the “Carrib” folks in the south east who were known to be aggressive cannibals (As displayed in the famous pirates of the carribean movie series), the Taíno were a rather peaceful society based on a matrilineal system, where the men lived separate whilst the women took care of organising society. The Spaniard wiped out 95%+ of Tainos with their advent (mainly due to transmitting diseases from pest/polio/measles ridden Europe).

Many words we use daily originate from Taíno language, including:

Barbecue, ananas, papaya, cannibal, canoe, cassava, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, manatee, mangrove, potato, savanna, and tobacco.Read more