 |
"Mr. Speaker, the Parris Lyew-Ayee Jr. (2005) boundary is being recognized by
the Cabinet as the boundary of the Cockpit Country by the State and is
depicted on Map 1. This boundary will be declared and gazetted."
What are the problems with this definition which Government of Jamaica wants to present as "Cockpit Country"?
| 1. The Lyew-Ayee Jr. boundary restricts itself to cockpit karst which developed in the Troy - Swanswick - Claremont - Somerset Formations of the White Limestone Group, which formed under the sea about 45-34 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch. |
| . |
| 2. The Lyew-Ayee Jr. boundary excludes contiguous cockpit karst which developed in the Walderston - Brown's Town Formation, also of the White Limestone Group. In assuming that cockpit morphology develops only in the Troy/Claremont formations i.e., in using geology as the first exclusionary classifier, Lyew-Ayee Jr. biased his analyses of cockpit karst and Cockpit Country. Had Lyew-Ayee Jr. started with morphology first, he would have delineated a completely different boundary and would not, for example, have excluded the "windward Cockpits" in the northeast, from The Alps extending eastwards to the parish dividing line of Trelawny / St. Ann, as recongized by the geologist James Gay Sawkins in 1869. |
| . |
| 3. The Lyew-Ayee Jr. boundary EXCLUDES THE ACCOMPONG MAROONS FROM COCKPIT COUNTRY as well as other Maroon history and heritage, such as Quashies River Sink, Cuffie Ridge, and Mahogany Hall, as shown on the map above |
WRC notes that the map shown by the Prime Minister on November 21st, 2017 did not include named location points for Accompong or Maroon Town. In our ATI request to Forestry Department, we asked for these and other heritage points-of-interest to be added to a map of the Prime Minister's "Map 1 - Boundary of the Cockpit Country (geomorphological boundary).
A zoom-in to Accompong on this map confirms that, if defined by Lyew-Ayee Jr's restricted description of geomorphology (ie., a subset of the cockpit karst in the area), "the Cockpit Country" excludes Accompong.
Given that it was the British who ascribed the name "cockpits" to this part of Jamaica's landscape in the early 18th century, more than 200 years before the term "cockpit karst" was coined by Dr. Marjorie Sweeting, WRC completely rejects this boundary definition for "Cockpit Country". No definition of Cockpit Country can exclude British-Maroon heritage and contiguous cockpit karst which has documented ecological and hydrological connectivities.
 |
| Boundaries Home Page |