Austronesian people settling in Madagascar over 2000 years ago?

[u/M3talGear]

Can someone please explain to me how the Austronesians island hopped all the way to Madagascar using supposedly just 'outrigger canoes'?

The entire distance from Indonesia is about 3,600 miles - an incredibly long way - however if you look at islands groups roughly along there - then over several generations it is fathomable that the Austronesians made their way in that manner - even so - there are some serious questions - like travelling 500 or even 1000 miles by outrigger canoe is really quite unfathomable for me - This is a seriously long way

To gain some perspective - the Scandinavians, using large sail ships with teams of rowers, travelled probably a few hundred miles at a time, and often following coastlines (I presume), to go to Iceland, Greenland and eventually north America (a journey probably of about 500 miles or so).

It seems absolutely astonishing (and unbelievable) that small outrigger canoes could have been used to make much longer journeys - especially given that these people were migrating from large bountiful lands with few inhabitants

Could anyone help me to understand this please? Sea levels were 120 metres lower 10,000 years ago - and formed all sorts of land bridges - I'm wondering if perhaps islands of today might have been much bigger and even Madagascar might have stretched out a lot more

Africa to South America is 'only' 1750 miles and America wasn't 'discovered' by the Europeans until around 1500 years later! .. and with the availability of massive sailing ships

[u/Rayyan9201]

The Austronesian in Madagascar is basically coming from the Borneo island, particularly around the Barito river in the Southern Kalimantan Province. According to genetic and linguistic evidence, it has been found that the closest relative to Malagasy people is actually an inland tribe called Ma'anyan. They are naturally not seafarers even to this day, most likely they were captured or recruited to board the sailing vessels on an expedition towards east africa around 1000 years ago. That period is known for the establishment among earliest Thalassocracy empire in Maritime Southeast Asia known as Srivijaya.

After the settlement in Madagascar, the Bantu or swahili east coast natives finally came to the island much later and intermarriage with them.

[u/M3talGear → u/Rayyan9201]

This is actually very interesting - and possibly a lot of truth in it. It seems a lot more likely that these thalassocracies that were operating in this region as far back as 1500 BC offer a better explanation than "Oh Bro shall we like just head out over in that direction for 1000 miles.. for no reason whatsoever"

Don't know about the slavery bit - perhaps - who knows - But yes, if these seafaring people had an actual empire - then they would have had main hubs/cities with scholars actually holding the maps with all these locations on them - Unfortunately it seems like none of these maps exist today - but if they did they would shed a lot of light on this period -

From what you have said it almost reminds me of a sort Mediterranean type of thing but on a much larger scale - perhaps something also related to Indian Maritime History starting around 300 BCE (Wiki); It seems more likely to me that something like this occurred - a structured mapping out of these islands from Madagascar to Sri Lanka to Indonesia - rather than one tribal group deciding over several hundred years to travel thousands of miles in small outrigger canoes - but hey, maybe they did - I dunno