Austronesian settlement of Madagascar
Colonización austronesia de Madagascar
- Date
- c. siglos IV-VII · confidence low
- Place
- Eastern coast, Madagascar
- Credited to
- Austronesian sailors (ancestors of the Malagasy)
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Sailors from the Indonesian archipelago, with outrigger canoes and a package of crops (banana, taro, yam, rice), crossed more than 6,000 km of the Indian Ocean to settle Madagascar. It is the longest Austronesian voyage and gives the island its language and its mixed Indonesian-Bantu genetics.
Evidence is debated: cut-marked bones at Taolambiby some 2,000 years old (Hansford, 2018), Asian crops from c. AD 700 (Crowther, 2016) and genetics pointing to c. AD 700-1000; so too whether there was one wave or several, and the route (direct or via the African coast).
What it led to
- introduction of Asian banana and yam to East Africa
- the Malagasy language of Barito origin
- mixed rice-paddy and zebu economies