Why Madagascar is mainly yellow
In Western taxonomy, the global population can be broadly divided into three major ethnic groups: yellow, white, and black. The yellow race is mainly found in eastern Asia and the Americas, the white race is mainly found in western Asia and Europe, and the black people are mainly found in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, due to the opening of new shipping routes and factors such as black slaves**, the global distribution of human races has changed significantly. For example, the Americas, which were once dominated by yellow people, are now the main group of whites, blacks, and mestizos.
Similarly, Oceania is also home to a large number of Caucasians. In general, historical developments and changes have led to dramatic changes in the global distribution of human races, but inter-ethnic differences and connections remain.
Africa, a continent that everyone has the impression of being inhabited mainly by blacks, actually has the existence of yellow people. One of the countries with a predominantly yellow population is Madagascar, Africa's largest island nation.
However, the country may be relatively foreign to many, and many people know almost nothing about Madagascar except for that animated film of the same name. The ethnic structure of this predominantly yellow country is not derived from the colonial activities of the modern West, but is the result of the primitive seafaring activities of human beings thousands of years ago.
Madagascar, located in the southeast corner of Africa, is the largest island in Africa, larger than the French mainland. Eighty million years ago, it was separated from the African continent, and as a result, the biome on this island is very different from the rest of the world.
Since there are no hominids living on the island, many strange species can thrive here. Madagascar is now a unique biological paradise with many unique flora and fauna.
Over the years, the population has become an independent ecosystem on Earth, where no human has ever set foot footsteps.
About 2,000 years ago, the Polynesians had become masters of seafaring. At that time, the civilizations of ancient India, China and the Middle East were quite mature, and they came to this island from the relatively backward Southeast Asia.
Polynesians are very famous in the Pacific, and many island nations in the South Pacific belong to them, such as the Maori people in New Zealand. In Southeast Asia, there are also a large number of indigenous ethnic groups belonging to the Polynesian branch, whose ancestors were formed by mixing Polynesians with the natives.
The Polynesians, who are dominated by the yellow race, arrived in Madagascar more than 2,000 years ago and settled in the coastal areas. Due to the danger of hot and humid coastal rainforests, people began to migrate inland to the cooler plateaus.
The southern part of Africa was still in a state of barbarism at that time, and the continent west of the Mozambique Channel was mainly inhabited by nomadic and hunter-gatherer Khoisan people, who lived inlandly and did not develop sophisticated seafaring skills, so they did not reach Madagascar.
The arrival of Polynesians brought a new culture and way of life to Madagascar.
Antananarivo had a relatively advanced agricultural planting technology and primitive religion during the Eastern Han Dynasty in China. Hundreds of years later, the Polynesians became the masters of Madagascar and spread these techniques and religions.
However, around the 7th century AD, the Arab empires in the Middle East rose, and the Arabs, who were skilled in navigation and commerce, extended their interests to the coastal areas of eastern Africa, bringing with them advanced seafaring technology and business ideas.
These changes have affected not only Madagascar, but the entire African region.
Migration of the Bantu and the formation of the Merina: At the height of the Arab Empire, the Bantu began to migrate to the island of Madagascar, by which time the Polynesians had settled down and developed into a local name"Merina"The new nation.
In addition to the Bantu, a small number of Arabs, Persians, and Indians also migrated to the island of Madagascar, where they intermarried with the native Merina to form other ethnic groups, but these groups remained a minority.
On the island of Madagascar, the Merina people in the interior are of purer blood and lighter in color, while the coastal plains are predominantly of mestizo descent.
The kingdom of Madagascar was founded by the Merina, who intermarried with other ethnic groups and established small kingdoms, but they were not yet unified due to their weak strength. In the 16th century, the Portuguese discovered and named Madagascar, but they only occupied the coastal area and did not manage it too much, which allowed Madagascar to develop for a period of relative peace.
By the end of the 18th century, the Kingdom of Merina had unified the island and was actively establishing ties with European countries. They signed treaties with the British, introduced Western technology, and created the Malagasy script.
Madagascar at this time was engaged in large-scale Westernization.
The history of Antananarivo, Madagascar is heavily influenced by Western colonizers. The British, who had gained a lot of money in the region through unfair means, used Madagascar as one of the transit points for the trade of black slaves in East Africa.
The inhabitants of Madagascar have adopted a compromise attitude in order to avoid conflict as much as possible. However, this has led to an increase in the number of blacks. In the late 19th century, while Britain was busy expanding, France incorporated the island of Madagascar into its colony and introduced black slaves on a large scale for plantation development.
These were the last blacks to enter the island en masse. Decades later, with the rise of the global abolitionist movement, hundreds of thousands of black slaves were emancipated in Madagascar.
Although modern Madagascar experienced a colonial period and a large influx of blacks, this did not change the reality that the majority ethnic group in the region was yellow. The Merina had already dominated and grown on the island, while the Negroes were relatively few later.
The blacks who were introduced to the island as labor came from all over the continent, they belonged to different tribes, different languages and cultures, and could not compete with the local Merina people at all, so they could only be subordinated to others, and gradually intermarried with the local tribes, becoming a minority group in Madagascar.
At present, among the four major ethnic groups in Madagascar, the yellow Merina still occupy the main body, and the second to fourth places are all black and yellow mixed race groups, and the number is not large.
As the only country in Africa with a predominantly yellow population, the locals of Madagascar feel more like Southeast Asia and the South Pacific than typical of Africa.
Malagasy's ** color is more skewed towards tanned yellow people.