Posted on 03/23/2012 7:46:23 PM PDT by Theoria
Madagascar was first settled and founded by approximately 30 women, mostly of Indonesian descent, who may have sailed off course in a wayward vessel 1200 years ago.
The discovery negates a prior theory that a large, planned settlement process took place on the island of Madagascar, located off the east coast of Africa. Traditionally it was thought to have been settled by Indonesian traders moving along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.
Most native Madagascar people today, called Malagasy, can trace their ancestry back to the founding 30 mothers, according to an extensive new DNA study published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B,. Researchers focused on mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mothers to their offspring. Scientists assume some men were with the women.
“I’m afraid this wasn’t a settlement by Amazon seafarers!” lead author Murray Cox told Discovery News. “We propose settlement by a very small group of Indonesian women, around 30, but we also presume from the genetics that there were at least some Indonesian men with them. At this stage, we don’t know how many.”
Cox, a senior lecturer at Massey University’s Institute of Molecular BioSciences, and his colleagues analyzed genetic samples from 2745 individuals hailing from 12 Indonesian archipelago island groups. They then compared the results with genetic information from 266 individuals from three Malagasy ethnic groups: Mikea hunter-gatherers, semi-nomadic Vezo fishermen and the dominant Andriana Merina ethnic group.
Many Malagasy carry a gene tied to Indonesia. The DNA detective work indicates just 30 Indonesian women founded the Malagasy population, with a much smaller biological contribution from Africa. The women may have mated with their male Indonesian travel companions, or with men from Africa.
“The small number of Indonesian women is consistent with a single boatload of voyagers,” Cox said, adding that “typical Indonesian trading ships in the mid first millennium A.D. could hold around 500 people. “
The distance between Indonesia and Madagascar is close to 5000 miles, so the women and their travel mates must have had quite a journey, especially if it was unintended.
“The small founder population of Indonesian women makes this scenario fairly unlikely,” Cox said. “Instead, our new evidence favors a small movement of people, and perhaps even an unplanned crossing of the Indian Ocean.”
Scant archaeological evidence, consisting of a few bones marked by stone tools and an increased rate of forest fires, suggests people may have first visited, but not settled, Madagascar around 2000 years ago. Even that is very recent in terms of overall human history.
Madagascar was one of the last places on earth to have been settled, with remote islands like New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island being in the short group of places that were settled later -- about 900 years ago.
“Our best argument is that these islands were just extremely difficult to get to,” Cox said.
Matthew Hurles, a senior group leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, has also studied the genetic heritage of Madagascar’s native people. He and his team also noted the Indonesian connection.
"Malagasy peoples are a roughly 50:50 mix of two ancestral groups: Indonesians and East Africans,” Hurles said. “It is important to realize that these lineages have intermingled over intervening centuries since settlement, so modern Malagasy have ancestry in both Indonesia and Africa."
Cox concluded, “It is worth emphasizing that Madagascar wasn’t a ‘sealed box’ after its initial settlement. There are notable later contributions by Africans, Arabs and Europeans. All of these contributions show up in the DNA of Malagasy today.”
The distance between Indonesia and Madagascar is close to 5000 miles, so the women and their travel mates must have had quite a journey, especially if it was unintended.'
Travel, dna, ping
The one with the big basket is smiling at you.
Their hair seems a bit flat.
I think they call that faggot fashion.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Theoria. |
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...who may have sailed off course. Women drivers! :)
“Three men and one woman are trapped on an island. Send help immediately. If you can’t send help, send two more women.
I think there was some sperm involved in this somewhere...(shrug)
DNA stuff ping
The study only traces through the females. 30 women did not found the Madagascar population. The genetic line traces back to thirty women who were among the group of founders who did not necessarily even arrive all at the same time.
So... these 30 or so women “founded and settled” the island, rather than the men who tagged along behind them.
Amazing stuff, mitochondrial DNA. It apparently turns scientists into Womyn’s Studies professors.
Another island settlement story:
Madagascar was first settled and founded by approximately 30 women, ..... who may have sailed off course in a wayward vessel 1200 years ago.No, no, no. They weren't 'off course' they went there on purpose.
One day a ship with two women on it where sailing by and told the Captain they had to go to the bathroom.And thus, Madagascar was first settled.
The Captain said fine, here's two buckets, go on the Poop Deck.
The women replied hell no, there's an island stop there so we can get some privacy in the bushes.
The Captain was now really ticked but stopped to end all the nagging.
And women being women, when they did get to the island and finished their business - refused to leave.
Wow! Some of these scientists must be quite brilliant. I wonder if the Global Warming scientists could recruit some of these.
You’re right. The 30 founder women is easily seen in a group of 30 families. Have 30 mothers and 2-3 daughters + husbands and sons for a group of 200. Then you realize some women had only sons or daughters but only grandsons and the number doubles to 500.
A single ship of 500 people could have done it, but they’d have had more than 30 women.
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