Guanahatabey language

Background

The Guanahatabey were hunter-gatherers that appear to have predated the agricultural Ciboney, the Taíno group that inhabited most of Cuba. By the contact period, the Guanahatabey lived primarily in far western Pinar del Río Province, which the Ciboney did not settle and was colonized by the Spanish relatively late. Spanish accounts indicate that Guanahatabey was distinct from and mutually unintelligible with the Taíno language spoken in the rest of Cuba and throughout the Caribbean. Not a single word of the Guanahatabey language has been documented.