Fragile Adaptation: Struggle for Survival

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The College of The Bahamas Department of Psychology, Sociology and Social Work Fragile Adaptation: Struggle For Survival In partial fulfilment of the course requirement for ENG 300 Submitted to: Dr. A. McKenzie Name: Chelsea Williams Student Number: 000-06-3433 Date: February 13th, 2013 The Bahamas is an archipelagic nation home to over 300,000 people. Each island is famous for some item, be it the pineapples of Eleuthera, the natural wonders of the iguanas swarming Inagua or the succulent fat crabs in Andros (Bahamas4Kids, 2010). Fruits and spices are in abundance, on par with any other in the world. Sour sops, watermelons, potatoes, cassavas, bananas, pepper, limes, pears, mangoes, tamarinds and mangolas are just a few that The Bahamas has to offer. Tobacco and cascarilla bark also flourish, as well as the indigenous cotton. But these delectable and highly valued plants were not always omnipresent. In the prehistoric era of The Bahamas, its economic state was quite poor and most of the aforementioned non-existent. The term ‘fragile adaptation’ is apposite to describe the land before its modern day development. The land was sensitive to climatic and environmental changes that coerced adaptation. Early settlers such as the Lucayans and the Eleutheran Adventurers were forced to acquaint themselves with the arid lands and use a combination of agricultural knowledge, architectural innovation and economic resourcefulness to survive, though it entailed a long journey of failures and achievements. Though the land’s productive state was a burden, the Lucayans possessed creative survival skills and utilized the environment as best they could. To better understand the uniqueness of the Lucayan’s adaptation, creativity must first be analysed. This term can be defined as a change in the symbolic domain of a culture (The Bahamas Environment, Science and
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