Did Humans Cause the Demise of Madagascar’s Megafauna?

ANTANANARIVO, MADAGASCAR—A small population of Asians who stopped mixing with other groups of people about 2,000 years ago traveled to Madagascar and began mixing with a small African population living there some 1,000 years ago, according to a Science Magazine report. Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa of the University of Antananarivo and his colleagues analyzed DNA samples from people living in more than 250 villages on the island, in addition to musical and linguistic data. They had previously determined that the modern Malagasy population is most closely related to Bantu-speaking people of eastern Africa and Austronesian-speaking people of southern Borneo. The new study indicates the ancestral population began to grow at the peak of the island’s megafaunal mass extinction. Archaeological evidence also suggests that as their numbers grew, the ancestral population switched from hunting and foraging in small groups to building large settlements, planting rice, and grazing cattle. When combined with a hotter, drier climate, the human population explosion might have driven the extinction of giant creature such as elephant birds and human-sized lemurs, the researchers concluded. For more on the island's colonization, "World Roundup: Madagascar."