Columbus’ environmental impact in the New World : land use change in the Yaque River valley, Dominican Republic

Abstract

Columbus’ arrival in the New World in AD 1492 on the northern coast of Hispaniola was followed by a suite of changes in land-use. We reconstruct environmental change from a 225-cm-long sediment core from site Los Indios from an abandoned and sediment-filled meander of the Yaque River, Cibao Valley, northeastern Dominican Republic….. This multiproxy reconstruction of anthropogenic environmental change shows a clear differentiation between an immediate introduction of livestock and after some 150 years the development of a European style agriculture, providing a context for archaeological investigations.