Madagascar in the Ancient World

Date: 500 b.c.e.-700 c.e.

Locale: Off the eastern coast of southern Africa

Madagascar in the Ancient World

Because Madagascar (ma-da-GAS-kar) was originally settled by preliterate peoples, no written history of the first colonization of Madagascar exists, and Madagascar’s prehistory must be reconstructed primarily from archaeological data.

Although it lies not far from the eastern coast of Africa, humanity’s original home, Madagascar was settled relatively late in human history, probably between 500 and 700 c.e. Therefore, Madagascar retained a unique ecology, with many species that had survived nowhere else, such as a wide variety of lemurs, early primates that had been replaced by the more robust and adaptable monkeys elsewhere.

Small bands of hunter-gatherers may have made their way into Madagascar earlier, but they apparently had relatively little impact on the land. The elusive Mikea people, who follow a way of life strongly reminiscent of the San (formerly known as Bushmen) of the Kalahari Desert, may represent the descendants of such an early population. However, some anthropologists claim that other evidence groups the Mikea clearly with the rest of the Malagasy and that the similarities of their culture to that of the Kalahari San are simply a matter of form following function.

The main population group of Madagascar, the Malagasy, is a light-skinned people akin to the Malay and Polynesians. Their language is clearly a member of the same large family of languages as those of Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Their terraced fields, in which they raise rice, are similar to those of Indonesia. The canoes of the Vezo, a Malagasy people who have retained an orientation to the sea, are strongly reminiscent of the outrigger canoes with which the Polynesians colonized the scattered islands of the Pacific.

The exact route by which the proto-Malagasy arrived in Madagascar is a subject of historical debate. Some historians theorize a direct route across the Indian Ocean, and modern experimenters have sailed a replica outrigger canoe along the relevant currents. However, the absence of human occupation on intervening islands such as Mauritius and Reunion before European discovery in the sixteenth century is evidence against this theory. Most historians hold that the proto-Malagasy came along the northern fringe of the Indian Ocean, following the coastline of Asia and Africa.

When they first arrived in the area, these early settlers planted colonies on the mainland of Africa as well as on the island of Madagascar itself. They brought with them a number of traditional Asian foods, including coconuts, breadfruit, yams, bananas, and taro. Rice was not a part of the first settlement, although when it did arrive, it would become very important in Malagasy culture and the basis of many traditional sayings.

The original Malagasy settlers of Madagascar are known as the Tompon-tany, the lords of the land. As they settled, they drove inland from west to east, changing the environment and causing mass extinctions of the Madagascar megafauna. Several species of giant lemurs and giant tortoises were made extinct, as was the largest bird ever known. This was the elephant bird, Aepyornis maximus, about 8 feet (2.5 meters) tall and weighing about 660 pounds (300 kilograms). It is remembered in the native language as vorombe, literally “big bird.” Whole eggs can still be found when heavy rains scour them from the streambeds, although the embryos within them are, of course, long dead.

On Madagascar, the Malagasy developed a distinctive culture that combined African and Indonesian culture. Their rectangular houses with the doors on the western side are clearly derived from Indonesian dwellings, as is the symbolic importance of the various sides and corners. Nowhere on Madagascar does one find the round hut that is so common on the African mainland. The Malagasy attached strong importance to the cardinal directions and always would give directions in terms of north, west, east, and south, rather than left or right. This may have been a holdover from the needs of navigation across the trackless ocean.

Their religious tradition of ancestor worship, centered around family tombs, appears to have been derived from mainland Africa, as does the importance of cattle. The Malagasy traditionally spoke to their ancestors as if living and saw them as continuing to play an important part in the society of the living. Many Malagasy regarded the ancestors, the razana, as the source of both economic and moral welfare. One of the most important elements of ancestor worship has been the famadihana, the annual ceremony of opening the family tomb and rewrapping the bones of the ancestors. Although cattle were very important to traditional Malagasy culture, they were not sacred, as they were in India. However, much like the mainland African pastoralists, the Malagasy rarely slaughtered cattle to eat. Instead, cattle were considered to be a representation of wealth and generally slaughtered only as a part of a religious ceremony.

Although most Malagasy adopted a primarily terrestrial way of life, the Vezo retained a tradition oriented to the sea. Those who captured sea turtles would follow an elaborate ritual reminiscent of their landbound neighbors’ cattle sacrifices in order to liberate the turtles’ spirits before eating the meat. Dolphins that washed ashore were buried in shrouds in a human cemetery and treated like the people’s own kin.

Bibliography

Heale, Jay. Madagascar. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1998.

Lanting, Frans. A World Out of Time: Madagascar. New York: Aperature Foundation, 1990.

Madagascar: Society and History. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1986.

Oluonye, Mary N. Madagascar. Minneapolis, Minn.: Carolrhoda Books, 2000.