The first inhabitants of Madagascar were immigrants from Indonesia

The island of Madagascar is located 400 kilometers from the east coast of Africa. The modern population of the island - the Malagasy - is a complex mixture of African Bantu peoples with East Asian peoples, presumably immigrants from the island of Borneo, or Kalimantan. But, interestingly, the locals speak the language belonging to the Austronesian language family. Yes, and many local customs, ranging from terraced rice cultivation and ending with Asian features of the architecture of dwellings, indicate the primary Indonesian settlement of the island. But it would be more logical to assume that initially the island was inhabited by tribes of immigrants from the African continent. And later, immigrants from Borneo joined them, because the Indonesian islands are more than 5,000 kilometers away from Madagascar.

For a long time, scientists could not agree on the formation of the island's population. But the geneticists who helped historians and ethnographers finally managed to uncover the secret of the settlement of Madagascar. A group of international scientists examined the DNA of more than 2,700 residents of the island, living in 250 villages located in different parts of the island. In the analysis of genetic data, it was confirmed that modern Malagasy are simultaneously descendants of the African Bantu peoples and Indonesians. Moreover, in different parts of the island the predominance of certain genes varies. African genes dominate in the northern part, and peoples with a large number of Indonesian genes predominate in the southern and central parts.

It is also interesting that with the help of genetic analysis it was possible to determine the age of various populations of immigrants. The separation of the Malagasy and their African ancestors occurred about 1,500 years ago. But the separation of the islanders from the Indonesians from Borneo took place, according to geneticists, about 2000-3000 years ago. It was also possible to identify differences in the composition of immigrants. Indonesian migration included an influx of men and women in approximately equal proportions. While African migrants were predominantly male. A slight association with the population of the Middle East was also discovered. As it turned out, they also contributed to the formation of the peoples of Madagascar.

This is how geneticists once again managed to shed light on some of the mysteries of history that representatives of other sciences worked on.