They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pockets of central Brazil.

[citation needed] Meira, Gildea, & Hoff (2010) note that likely morphemes in proto-Tupian and proto-Cariban are good candidates for being cognates, but that work so far is insufficient to make definitive statements.

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Guato, Kawapana, Nambikwara, Taruma, Warao, Arawak, Bororo, Jeoromitxi, Karaja, Rikbaktsa, and Tupi language families due to contact.

There they were in contact with early forms of Macro-Jê languages, which were likely spoken in an area between the Parecis Plateau and upper Araguaia River.

According to Kaufman (2007), "Except for Opon, Yukpa, Pimenteira and Palmela (and possibly Panare), the Cariban languages are not very diverse phonologically and lexically (though more so than Romance, for example).

2000 on most Cariban languages; classifications prior to that time (including Kaufman 2007, which relies on the earlier work) are unreliable.

[7] Meira, Birchall & Chousou-Polydouri (2015) conclude that the Proto-Cariban homeland was located north of the Amazon River, and that there is no evidence for a northward migration from the south, as previously proposed by Rodrigues (1985).