precolonial

[pree-kuh-loh-nee-uhl]

adjective

1. of or relating to the time before a region or country became a colony.

Word History and Origins

Origin of precolonial¹

First recorded in 1960–65; pre- + colonial

Example Sentences

The paper hypothesizes that it is possible that manatees were not present at all in precolonial Florida and the tools and ornaments arrived here via Native Americans trading with those from the Caribbean.

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El Fasher, the former capital of the precolonial kingdom of Darfur, has about 1.8 million inhabitants, including hundreds of thousands who fled earlier waves of fighting.

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Without action to restore these lands to something more closely resembling their precolonial conditions, many more sequoias will be lost, the experts fear.

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The park, named by the late West Seattle philanthropist and park commissioner Ferdinand Schmitz for a precolonial Native American leader lionized by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, has hardly been static.

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But a growing number are now recognizing that for people in precolonial Mesoamerica, “ruins, ancient objects, and ancestors were active parts of their communities,” says Roberto Rosado-Ramirez, an archaeologist at Northwestern University.

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