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I always saw the Austronesians reaching Madagascar earlier than Africas as an Austronesian flex, not an African knock. But I'm not surprised that Africans actually got there first anyway, and the Austronesian 360 no scope across the Indian Ocean is still impressive.
Iceland was also only first populated in the historic period. The exact thing you bring up is true of Europe too, but it's never treated as a reason why European peoples are bad at civilization or something.
Awesome video as always. Once again strange coincidence I was reading up on Madagascar yesterday on Isaac Samuel's African History Extra website. What I learned is as you said Africans from the mainland may have gone into Madagascar before or during the Australasian populations' arrival around the 1st millennium BC. Isaac's sources states the linguistic evidence points to most domesticates on Madagascar being introduced from the African mainland, while crops came from both Africa and south-east Asia. Also northern coastal settlements of Madagascar and the Comoros archipelago had a lot of exchanges which were associated with the Swahili who also expanded and established city states in Madagascar. The Swahili states were known as the Antalaotse City States. Its with the permanent settlements both Antalaotse (Swahili Bantu) and Austronesian the Malagasy culture emerged with its combined Austronesian and Bantu influences. Some of the Swahili aka Antalaotse states included the Kingdom of Antemoro, as well as the city states of Mazalagem Nova, Mahilaka and Antalaotra for example. So this misconception that Africans from the mainland had no interaction or settlements on the Island until long after the Austronesian is debunked and backwards. Plus by the time permanent settlements were being created many were already admixed. So ye Madagascar is as much a part of African history as it is Austronesian history. Wish we learned more. There is a ton of history regarding their kingdoms and some interesting events associated with East Africa like the Sakalavan invasions and raids on Swahili City states an interesting conflict most have never heard of.
I agree. Just to expand on what you said. The interactions between The Swahili and Malagasy can also be shown genetically. Comorians carry quite a bit of Southeast Asian Mt-DNA (maternal haplogroups) that has been traced to Austronesian women which the majority of Malagasy women carry. It's clear that the Malagasy are a cultural and genetic mix of East and Southern African Bantu and Austronesian. The Austronesians did introduce a major item into Africa - The banana. Bananas were domesticated by the Papuan many thousands of years ago. I hope more info comes out about the pre recorded history of Madagascar. Who were they? What can their genetics tell us?
Many say the Austronesians never reached Australia, India or the Americas, but settled tiny islands directly beside these continents. In my opinion it seems as if they did in fact reach these lands, but their populations couldn't compete with the native populations and so we have no evidence that they ever landed on the continent
There is some evidence they where in Australia in the 1300s but its not certain that they ever reached the Americas and they where definitely in India. but india was already very advanced. Indians also came to Indonesia and the Philippines
@@belstar1128 India's own vessels were based partly on Southeast Asian seafaring technologies. The double outrigger canoe, the lashed-lug technique, and the catamaran have their origins in Southeast Asia, for example. The Arabs also adopted Southeast Asian ships as illustrated by the Beliteng shipwreck, an Arab merchant ship off the coast of Indonesia that was built using Austronesian techniques. It's rather ironic that India and Arabia adopted Southeast Asian technologies and used them to sail back to Southeast Asia. China, too, borrowed Southeast Asian ship designs. The Chinese junk, for example, is based on the Austronesian junk. Prior to developing the junk, the Chinese had only developed fluvial vessels. Unlike the case of India and Arabia, China had no history of seafaring until the adoption of Southeast Asian vessels, whereas India and Arabia had a prior history of seafaring before Austronesian influence (Austronesian technology improved their own pre-existing maritime traditions).
What I know from my research is that people from the Borneo of South East Asia migrated on canoes in 200 AD, and when they got there to what is now Madagascar they were met by the people who already inhabited the island known aa the Hova people, who later started intermarrying with each other and built many settlements with them. This was not until the Antananarivo invaded the Hova people, which ended the relationship of the Hova and the Vazimba people.
People who make a big deal of Madagascar, forget that Iceland was settled late also, by the Vikings, at near the same time. I guess those Europeans were backward too.....
When I was an intern for a Kenyan anthropologist working in Madagascar and its connections to the Swahili cities, he once mentioned the evidence of African mainland traces in Madagascar before Indonesian settlement. I got the impression that the coast was known and there were landings but no settlement since all the valuable timber was inland, and by the time mainland settlement patterns reach the Tanzanian coast (he was also investigating early inland Tanzanian cities before wealth moved to the coast), it's easier just to trade with the Asian settlers than expand to the island . I already knew of Madagascar's early breakoff 100 million years ago and occasionally an African species would arrive there like reptiles, primates and hippos( It's funny that the last African species to land in Madagascar would be us. And we changed everything) This video really updates my knowledge. I didn't know about the date of kill sites. I suspect there's earlier ones as soon as people invented boats, but that's still really interesting to find out there were indeed mainland African towns in Madagascar before Asian settlement. Can't wait for the next video.
@FromNothing We don't have many African history channels with an unbiased touch like yours. It's always refreshing to know that you're not one of those European vs. African accomplishments type of channels.
@@MichaelClayton64 From Nothing seems to think the term isn’t problematic but in my opinion its a ridiculous term due to the fact that the Sahel region containing Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan is part of that same desert. Furthermore Europeans coined the term with the malicious intent to stop black people from claiming some of our most ancient civilisations that they want us to believe were founded by mediterraneans. Africans networked with each other in old times, before and after the desertification of the Sahara.
Really enjoy your content! (3:33 - 4:06) Sahul (Australia, Torres Strait Islands, PNG, West Papua et al) was still separated from SE Asia (As was the Philippines IIRC!?!) when Austronesian peoples first settled (at least 60k years BP, at least one debated site from earlier). Except, the first record of boat use globally is 10k years BP. Some former archaeologists thought they'd got across the open waters by tsunami or other disasters. However, later archaeologists have argued that this is improbable for multiple reasons, and it is just easier to imagine they used some form of marine transport that aren't in the record. I've wondered if maybe, where all the wooden canoes are that point to concrete evidence, are located at settlements which were once on shorelines that are now well below sea level? Relative to sea rise since then. It'd be interesting to see underwater Paleolithic archaeologists find anything like that.
Good point. Its also worth mentiong that transportation over water is likley older than think, because most wooden vessels, such as log dugout canoes rarely preserve unless under very specific soil conditions. The boats that people used to get from Sundaland to Sahul have probably long decayed.
With it´s geography and geological past Madagascar is better to think about as tiny continent than huge island. It´s quite fascinating people managed to get there throw both paths other organisms dispurse there by their own.
If the genetic record means anything in this context. They did this 42,000-38,000 yrs ago this is when they became genetically "Distinct" from Basal "Asian"
I'd imagine the Swahili trading states of Kilwa or Zanzibar would have found Madagascar centuries before the Malaysians did but didn't see a need to colonize it.
There’s a study with evidence of bone cut marks that date human activity on the island to 10,500 years ago. But I can’t post the link because youtube keeps deleting it.
I wonder if the Swahili traders or other East African traders visited Madagascar. Since the language of the island, Malagasy, does have a lot of Bantu influence.
@@skp8748 Uh, I never said that the Bantus were indigenous to Madagascar. Secondly, the Swahili people were seafaring even going as far as modern day China and their language, Swahili, IS a Bantu language after all. So I was just wondering if the Swahili visited Madagascar because if I recall correctly there are some Swahili loanwords in Malagasy. Also the language of the Comoros, a country near Madagascar, shimaore, is also a Bantu language and I'm pretty sure that they had some contact with the Malagasy people.
@@Jkohnson-db9pk Don't feed the trolls. Also, the Bantu speakers have been in that region for the past 2000 years, that seems pretty indigenous to me, and the Bantu-Speakers didn't commit a mass genocide like this troll claims, they in fact intermingled with the Khoisan people, one of the rulers of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe was a Khoisan and I think Nelson Mandela had Khoisan ancestry. And yeah, you're statement is right.
Great video but the part in the population of the Americas is outdated. (Professional) Archeology is accepting older and older dates that better fit Indigenous history timelines here.
@@PFResearch Nowhere does anyone claim that "100 million" Americans were taken from Africa. The number is closer to 12.5 million over the course of 300 years and not all of them were American. Most went to Brazil actually. Also that's absolutely terrible logic. The time period in question was 4,000 years before the the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The world population has increased significantly since then. I also think it's borderlining flat-earther logic to claim that the slave trade never happened and an utter insult to our ancestors who endured those troubling times. Our history in this country sucks but denying it is not the answer...
@@EPUEPUEPUEPU indeed, but despite this, it seems mainland Africans populated the island in small numbers before the Australasian. During the time the permanent settlements were being made, the Australasians were already admixrd with Bantu speakers.
There were people there when the elephant bird still lived? Must have been an awesome sight. Still they may have seen ostriches or at least their ancestors may have. A giant ostrich still would have been quite something to see/interact with. ----Ooops! I just found this headline: Butchered bird bones put humans in Madagascar 10,500 years ago Cut marks on the remains of an ancient elephant bird pushes the timeline back 6,000 years. in a science news website. So Africans may have been there even earlier??? OMG
Does it matter if you got there if you didn't do anything when you got there. Like the Vikings making it Canada, but they didn't really do nothing here.
close kinship with Austronesian seafarers, providing a little encouragement so that Madagascar can join the Group of other Asian Countries (ASEAN). Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines will clearly support this, and we also hope that Madagascar can become an Official Member of the 12th ASEAN Countries.... 👍
Well that would be the Polynesians that reached Hawaii. The are just one of many sub-groups of Austronesians and only distantly related to the ones who settled Madagascar (from Borneo and Indonesia)
@@belstar1128hawaii is quite isolated itself. Maybe the technology couldn't travel back through space, but I can't see why. Currents might be a factor as well.
@@FromNothing Yeah, but my question is how the technology didn't travel back through space, or even why it wasn't everywhere. The australians lost the knowledge on how to make sea faring vessels, after all. Maybe the long voyage tech wasn't supper useful outside of expansion and migration. But I can't see how.
@@lloydgush The Pacific Ocean is also much more navigable, hence the name "Pacific" meaning peaceful. The Indian Ocean is prone to storms and full of coral reefs.
While I’m not yet convinced of the earliest findings I do not believe it has anything to do with Africans ability to get there or not. The bantu started pretty far so they had just as hard a time getting there if not harder because they traveled on land and over many different climates while austronesians were sea farers. If there were people before them my theory they may have been similar to negritos of the remote islands.
Greetings from Madagascar. Great video! Recent cut marks found on the bone of an elephant bird have (potentially) pushed the back the presence of humans in Madagascar even more - 10,000 years give or take. Nitpick: If you use the word "Christ" (e.g. "roughly 500 years after the birth of Christ") you are taking a religious position that is not relevant to the video.
What are they even talking about. If Africa is the birthplace of humanity, then every piece of land was "discovered" by Africans!! Don't that make sense?
They say AFRICAN DIDNT GO THERE ITS FUNNY WHAT ABOUT ADAMAN ISLAND OF INDIA THERE ARE AFRICANS THERE AND IF YOU HEAR FIJIAN HISTORIES FROM ELDERS THEY CAME FROM TANGANYIKA
It has less to do with distance or race. It has more to do with culture and traditions. Austronesias have maintained strong seafaring traditions for thousands of years. That's why they colonized places like Hawaii and New Zealand long before Europeans even managed to travel to West Africa. A much shorter distance. Africans as a whole had comparatively few such traditions for comparatively less time. Nothing funny about that at all. It's just the way it was.
DAS RITE! WE WUZ PIONEERS OF DEM ISLANDS TOO FAM! I BE SAYIN THES 4 YEARZ YO! GLAD TO SEE A HOMIE TELLIN OUR HYSTORY MAYNE, CUZ DEM WYPIPO BE TRYINA HIDE THESE CHANNEL YA FEEL? AIIGHT. WORD UP. PEACE!
You made 57 comments on this channel. What makes you keep coming back if you disagree so vehemently. Its not like your coming here to make a intellectual critique of the content in the video. You just sound goofy and mad. RENT FREE.
He's plagiarizing my Dr. Kangz. caricature 😂 I'll take the ad revenue though and the comment for the algorithm. His ignorance does more good than bad for my content tbh.