Only 250 miles separates the island of Madagascar from the southeast coast of Africa.  The short distance between the two land masses traditionally led the outside world to assume that the native inhabitants of Madagascar – known as the Malagasy – originally came from the west, probably from the present day southeast African nation of [...]

Tags: Austronesian, Bantu, Borneo, Madagascar, Malagasy, mtDNA, Y-chromosome

Throughout the history of our species there has been one constant:  movement.  Since the origin of Homo sapiens nearly 200,000 years ago in East Africa, humans have journeyed around the globe, ultimately inhabiting every continent save Antarctica.Scientists have traditionally used archaeology, and more recently genetics, to understand the timing and scope of these ancient migrations.  [...]

Tags: agriculture, Bantu, Genes, Historical Linguistics, Indo-European