SKELETAL REMAINS of about 50 to 60 individuals and a number of dogs point to Barbados' history books having to be rewritten.

Presenting his findings Monday evening at the Barbados Museum, Garrison, St Michael, British professor of archaelogy Peter Drewett said this, among other evidence, proved there was life in this paradise prior to what has been taught.

"We found human remains at all the sites. Port St Charles produced the most, but they were very different where many of them were secreted into the sandlots and extremely difficult to get out.

"We probably have about 50 or 60 Amerindian individuals found over the years. There are no children which I always thought quite impressive, as they were clearly treated differently. The adults tended to be young, from late teens to early or mid-30s," he said.

His evidence, which spans 25 years of research and was presented under the theme Amerindian Barbados Circa 2000 BC To Circa 1492 AD, are artefacts of the first Amerindian inhabitants who travelled across the treacherous Atlantic waters as early as 2 000 BC to Barbados.

Drewett showed slides of some of the 214 fragments of multi-purpose shell tools found, post holes where home structures were built, ceramic masks that reflected their features, animals and their belief structure, and burial sites, which collectively conveyed traces of their existence, particularly at Port St Charles, St Peter.

He said the first settlers were "pre-ceramic", judging from the sheer number of tools and shells found. Additionally, he noted that the pottery found would have been developed on the island.

However, Drewitt said a bigger and more important discovery had been made at Three Houses, St Philip, but did not go into detail as it will be presented on Friday.

He said the problem arose because the settlements were along the coastal ridges and when sea levels shifted, the bulk of the evidence was washed away.

"So we only get traces in the upper bits of marine inland and there aren't many of these left in Barbados . . . but places like Graeme Hall Swamp and Chancery Lane would have been the sort of environment that those first pre-ceramic people would have come to and then essentially collected shell fish and fishing," he said.

He said that, historically, we were made to believe that there were not Amerindians here, but "excavations in Holetown showed that there was Amerindian presence . . . .

"But the two don't really join; so there is a distinct possibility that the [first] Amerindians had already left.

"So we don't really know what happened at the end to the Amerindians, whether they were wiped out by European diseases or enslaved by the earlier European settlers . . . or, which is also a possibility, they overused their resources, polluted their own water supply and moved on to other islands.

"But they would have no doubt come back," Drewitt said. (TM)