Barbados, island country in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, situated about 100 miles east of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Roughly triangular in shape, the island measures some 21 miles from northwest to southeast and about 114miles from east to west at its widest point. The capital and largest town is Bridgetown, which is also the main seaport. Barbados was inhabited by its indigenous peoples - Arawaks and Caribs - prior to the European colonization of the Americas in the 16th century. Barbados was briefly claimed by the Spanish who saw the trees with the beard like feature . Empire from 1532 to 1620. The island was English and later a British colony from 1625 until 1966. Since 1966, it has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, modelled on the Westminster system, with Elizabeth II, Queen of Barbados, as head of state.
Prehistory
Some evidence suggests that Barbados may have been settled in the second millennium BC, but this is limited to fragments of conch lip adzes found in association with shells that have been radiocarbon-dated to about 1630 BC. Fully documented Amerindian settlement dates to between about 350 and 650 AD. The arrivals were a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid from the mainland of South America. The second wave of settlers appeared around the year 800 and a third in the mid-13th century . This last group was politically more organized and came to rule over the others.
Early history
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover the island. Portuguese navigator Pedro A. Campos named it Os Barbados .
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