The Caribbean was murder

The Reich lab has sequenced more Caribs. 174 people who lived in the Caribbean and Venezuela between 400 and 3,100 years ago, adding to 89 they already had.

Based on what they got from the Caribbean, they're estimating a population that didn't rise above the tens of thousands. We'd estimated maybe a million. It's been awhile since I read Mann's 1491 but I recall it too went high on population estimates.

I'll say that 263 is a darn good sample number, certainly good enough for marking population bottlenecks, especially once you add modern Caribbean DNA admittedly mestizo. It might not tell us enough about how high the population reached at its height. Suppose there was a population explosion in the 1400s and then the rapid decline...?

I think, though, that we'd need extraordinary evidence. For islanders who overran their environment, we know of Rapa Nai in time for Easter. The Caribbean by contrast wasn't notably desolate when came Colón.

... at least, not artificially so. We have evidence that some islands couldn't even sustain a population. Nobody was using Barbados when the British settled it, but there's archaeology there showing that some used it before. Intermittently.

I am applying my favourite historical rule, "if it happens now it happened then". What's happened now is Hurricane Maria and the Montserrat volcano. Throw in the Port Royal quake and Mount Pelée. Along the Lesser Antilles and low-lying Bahamas, people might want to procreate but Nature won't let 'em. Once Arawaks got to Puerto Rico they were home safe...-er. But that founding-population might have been very small and not reinforced. And then came the Caribs who had a taste for the long pork (it's not cannibalism if you're only eating enemies!).

To sum up, although I didn't expect tens of thousands, I can account for it. I didn't even have to propose castaway Lishbunatis with smallpox.