We rarely consider the broader map when we have a specific destination in mind. Thirty years ago, I headed to the island of Taiwan without taking the necessary panoramic view of the surrounding world. Yet, a simple glance at the map would have revealed the vast Chinese mainland nearby (180 km) and the Philippines not so far away (360 km).
My psychological steps lead me southward, toward the Celebes and beyond, to the other great islands of Kalimantan-Borneo and the orchid-shaped island of Sulawesi. Four thousand years ago, in a fundamental and decisive momentum, the ‘Out of Taiwan’ migration took place—a massive and formidable departure from Taiwan when the Austronesians set sail toward the Philippines and Southeast Asia. They could not have known that one day, in an enigmatic rush toward the west of the Indian Ocean, some of them would become the mysterious ancestors of us Malagasy people.
Every day, for at least 400 years, palynology, DNA, archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and of course history, have continued to testify to the ‘most beautiful enigma in the world’: the eternal question of the peopling of Madagascar. How is it, for example, that I recognized ‘Neny’, my grandmother, in the portrait gallery of the Museum of Formosan Aborigines in Taipei?
The word ‘aborigine’, with a lowercase ‘a’, is to be taken here in its Latin sense of ‘those from the beginning’. An anteriority demonstrated by an exceptional fact: nine of the ten branches of Austronesian languages are spoken by the aborigines of Taiwan. All the others who left—future Malagasy, Indonesians, or Maoris—are attached to the single remaining branch.
Travel broadens the mind. In an almost retrospective journey, evoking an old trip backwards, it is an old man who continues to learn.
Nasolo-Valiavo Andriamihaja
Captured & Published at: 2026-09-07 06:24:24 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/09/voyage-rebours.html