The first human inhabitants to allegedly have settled on the island of Cuba were a people known as the Ciboney, indigenous Americans from Central and South America who were mainly fishermen and hunter-gatherers. They had no agricultural techniques whatsoever and their tools and other implements were rather primitive.

Soon other peoples migrated to Cuba, primarily from the Guianas in South America and the Orinoco basin in Venezuela. They were Arawak Indians who were considerably more evolved - they introduced many useful techniques to the area such as boat-building and cultivation of crops and they were skilled in making pottery and artifacts using wood. These agricultural people called themselves the Taino, although they are known as Arawak Indians and numbered over 90 000 by the time that Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492.