Polynesia’s Westernmost island is a gem
off Africa's east coast

Earth’s furthest Polynesian outpost is a species-rich island off of Africa

In 1947, the Norwegian Thor Hyerdahl attempted to prove that the South Sea Islands had been settled over thousands of years by peoples traveling west on rafts from South America. Setting off from Peru on a reed craft built from the same material used by boat builders on Lake Titicaca in the Andes, Hyerdahl thus began his famous Kon-Tiki voyage.

Although Hyerdahl reached Tahiti on his voyage, narrowly avoiding disaster as his reed craft slowly disintegrated in the saltwater, later findings, based on DNA studies, proved conclusively that Asia was the homeland of the Polynesian peoples that eventually settled much of the Pacific Basin.

Ironically, Hyerdahl’s theory of a people migrating on fragile craft west across a great ocean to settle new territory was off by one ocean. And it is even more ironic that the people who did it were his beloved Polynesians. For it was Polynesians from Indonesia who set out around the first century A.D. to cross 5,000 miles of Indian Ocean and settle in Madagascar, the great island satellite of Africa.

Here, on a landmass about the size of France and only 200 miles from the African mainland, they created an exotic admixture of African and Malayo-Polynesian cultures as they took slaves and wives from the mainland.

Today, Madagascar is not only the strange farthest-flung outpost of Polynesian culture, it is also home to some of the most exotic animal and plant species on the earth. Here, all the world’s 32 species of lemurs live. Lemurs are tree-dwelling prosimians, primitive members of the primate order (which also includes tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans).

Unlike their more visually oriented cousins, lemurs rely extensively on smell, a sensory orientation that is far more ancient than the heavy reliance on stereoscopic vision by monkeys, apes and humans.

Other exotic animals include half the world’s chameleon species and pygmy hippos, massive baobab trees and exotic fish. Eighty percent of the island’s flora are found nowhere else on earth.

At one time, this biological diversity was even greater. Human hunting and habitation eliminated 16 species of lemur, including one ground-dweller that was as large as a small gorilla. The elephant bird, which stood 10 feet high, was probably the island’s main predator before the arrival of man. But it was no match for armed, intelligent hunters. Today, 1,000 years after its extinction, huge fossilized elephant bird eggs still surprise the wary hiker or scientist.

The island is mostly mountains and a high central plateau, lined by narrow coastal shelves. Climates range from tropical at sea level to temperate in the mountains and plateaus, to arid on the savannah-like south. Despite it’s great size and comparatively small population of 16 million people, the island’s bio-diversity is under great pressure from primitive and wasteful agricultural practices.

But there is a growing global awareness of Madagascar’s status as a treasure house of species. More and more organizations at the international level are attempting to protect and preserve crucial habitats while helping the country’s people move over to less destructive patterns of settlement and farming.