Allan Shumaker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "This is interesting but hardly news. It has been
> well established for a long time that Madagascar
> was settled by people from the Indonesian region
> bith linguistically and by the presence of a whole
> suite of Asian plants such as bananas, sugar cane
> and Asian yam.
> Bernard"
>
> Well I was aware of the bananna evidence but not
> sugar cane and yams nor the linguistic evidence.
> From what I read the bananna evidence dated back
> more than 3000 years so I am curious about the
> 2000 year date for the DNA evidence. Apparently
> there was a substantial migration of males (Y
> chromosome data).

Not only males... Some of the Malagasy have the Polynesian motif and other mtDNA sequences carried by SE Asian populations (including Taiwanese aborigines).

> What intriques me about this discovery is the
> implied navigational capabilities. Were these
> southeast asians setting out into the open ocean
> or were they hugging the coast of India and
> Africa? Did they venture up into the Persian Gulf?
> There might be more surprises!

These mtDNA sequences have not really been reported in India but the Nicobarese Islanders also have evidence of admixture from the east. Like the Malagasy, they have some haplogroup B sequences but of a different type.

Gisele