Interdisciplinary Approaches to Stratifying the Peopling of Madagascar

It has long been accepted that the core population contributing to the Malagasy language are the Barito, an inland people of SE Kalimantan, and that a superstrate of Malay nautical terms implies ships under Malay control. However, recent linguistic and genetic research points to a far more complex picture. Malagasy has numerous terms not attested in Borneo languages and only found on other islands in SE Asia, particularly Sulawesi. Genetic research, comparing populations of Island SE Asia with the Malagasy, indicates complex layering, and surprisingly, no strong Barito component. There are several possible models to explain this anomalous situation, for example that the original vessels which brought the settlers across the Indian Ocean had multi-lingual crews. However, this does not explain why the Barito, a non-maritime people, came to contribute to the core Malagasy culture. A more intriguing alternative is that Madagascar was peopled in waves coming from Island SE Asia, and that a significant component consisted of the ancestors of the present-day Samalic and Orang Laut peoples, the ‘sea nomads’, whose opportunistic trading and multi-lingual culture would better explain the mixture found in Madagascar today. In addition, the evidence from ceramics indicates that the Comores may have played a key role as a staging post in these migrations. The present Malagasy language is strikingly uniform, which suggests a significant episode of language levelling, presumably in the medieval period, and related to the establishment of the Merina kingdoms on the plateau. However, Malagasy dialects can provide clues to a more complex history of migration, especially among populations such as the Vezo, who practice a form of nomadic marine exploitation similar to the Samal of SE Asia.