Bahamas in the context of "Ooid"

The Lucayan Archipelago, also known as the Bahamian Archipelago, is an island group comprising the sovereign nation of Bahamas and the British Overseas Territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. The archipelago is in the Caribbean region, stretching from south-east of Florida in the mainland United States to northern Hispaniola. There are about 740 islands and 2,400 cays, of which only 38 are inhabited.

Between 1492 and 1504, the Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus led four transatlantic maritime expeditions in the name of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain to the Caribbean and to Central and South America. These voyages led to Europeans learning about the New World the Americas. This was an early breakthrough in the period known in Europe as the Age of Exploration, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.

Born in the Republic of Genoa, Columbus was a navigator who sailed in search of a westward route to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands thought to be the East Asian source of spices and other precious oriental goods obtainable only through arduous overland routes. Columbus was partly inspired by 13th-century Italian explorer Marco Polo in his ambition to explore Asia. His initial belief that he had reached "the Indies" has resulted in the name "West Indies" being attached to the Bahamas and the other islands of the Caribbean.

The Straits of Florida, Florida Straits, or Florida Strait (Spanish: Estrecho de Florida) is a strait located south-southeast of the North American mainland, generally accepted to be between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, and between the Florida Keys (U.S.) and Cuba. It is 93 mi (150 km) wide at the narrowest point between Key West and the Cuban shore, and has been sounded to a depth of 6,000 feet (1,800 m). The strait carries the Florida Current, the beginning of the Gulf Stream, from the Gulf of Mexico.

Taíno is an Arawakan language formerly spoken widely by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. In a reconstructed form, not in any way the same language, there exist several modern-day pseudo-Taíno language variants including Hiwatahia-Taino and Tainonaiki. At the time of Spanish contact it was the most common language throughout the Caribbean. Classic Taíno (Taíno proper) was the native language of the Taíno tribes living in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, Borikén (now known as Puerto Rico), the Turks and Caicos Islands, most of Ayiti-Kiskeya also known as Hispaniola, and eastern Cuba. The Ciboney dialect is essentially unattested, but colonial sources suggest it was very similar to Classic Taíno, and was spoken in the westernmost areas of Hispaniola, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and most of Cuba.

By the late 15th century, Taíno had displaced earlier languages, except in western Cuba and in pockets in Hispaniola. As the Taíno culture declined during Spanish colonization, the language was replaced by Spanish and other European languages, such as English and French. Although the language declined drastically due to colonization, it continued to be spoken in isolated pockets in the Caribbean until the 19th century. As Spanish, English, and French became the dominant languages, some Taíno words were absorbed into those languages. As the first Indigenous language encountered by Europeans in the Americas, it was a major source of new words borrowed into European languages.

A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the 15th century. Originally a phrase (the common-wealth or the common wealth – echoed in the modern synonym "public wealth"), it comes from the old meaning of "wealth", which is "well-being", and was deemed analogous to the Latin res publica. The term literally meant "common well-being". In the 17th century, the definition of "commonwealth" expanded from its original sense of "public welfare" or "commonweal" to mean "a state in which the supreme power is vested in the people; a republic or democratic state".

The term evolved to become a title to a number of political entities. Three countries – Australia, the Bahamas, and Dominica – have the official title "Commonwealth", as do four U.S. states and two U.S. territories. Since the early 20th century, the term has been used to name some associations of states, most notably the Commonwealth of Nations, an organisation primarily of former territories of the British Empire. It is also used in the translation for the organisation made up of formerly Soviet states, the Commonwealth of Independent States.

At the time of first contact between Europe and the Americas, the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean included the Taíno of the northern Lesser Antilles, most of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas; the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles; the Ciguayo and Macorix of parts of Hispaniola; and the Guanahatabey of western Cuba. The Kalinago have maintained an identity as an Indigenous people, with a reserved territory in Dominica.

A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (Latin American Spanish: [kaˈsike]; Portuguese: [kɐˈsikɨ, kaˈsiki]; feminine form: cacica), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact with those places. The term is a Spanish transliteration of the Taíno word kasike.

Cacique was initially translated as "king" or "prince" for the Spanish. In the colonial era, the conquistadors and the administrators who followed them used the word generically to refer to any leader of practically any indigenous group they encountered in the Western Hemisphere. In Hispanic and Lusophone countries, the term has also come to mean a political boss, similar to a caudillo, exercising power in a system of caciquism.

Cardisoma guanhumi, also known as the blue land crab or great land crab, is a species of land crab found in tropical and subtropical estuaries and other maritime areas of land along the Atlantic coast of the Americas from Brazil and Colombia, through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, to the Bahamas, and north to Ponce Inlet, Florida, Princess Place Preserve in Palm Coast, and Bermuda. The species varies in colour from dark blue to brown or pale grey, and may grow to 15 centimetres (6 in) in carapace width and weigh over 500 grams (18 oz).