History Of The Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands are a Caribbean British overseas territory that have been under various governments since their discovery by Europeans. Christopher Columbus sighted the Cayman Islands on May 10, 1503 and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles seen swimming in the surrounding waters. Columbus had found the two small islands (Cayman Brac and Little Cayman) and it was these two islands that he named "Las Tortugas".
The 1523 "Turin map" of the islands was the first to refer to them as Los Lagartos, meaning alligators or large lizards, By 1530 they were known as the Caymanes after the Carib word caimán for the marine crocodile, either the American or the Cuban crocodile, Crocodylus acutus or C. rhombifer, which also lived there. Recent sub-fossil findings suggest that C. rhombifer, a freshwater species, were prevalent until the 20th century.
Read more about History Of The Cayman Islands: Settlement, British Control, Dependency of Jamaica, Governmental Changes, Hurricane Ivan
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or islands:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)