Early Human Colonization of Madagascar and its long term Impact on the Landscapes – Madeogen

Madagascar has all the assets to be the focus of modern multidisciplinary research concerned with sustainability between societies and nature. Indeed, its ancient insularity has allowed an incredible specific diversity but at the same time fragile in the face of anthropogenic constraints that began more than 1000 years ago and which have intensified greatly recently. The current Malagasy people are the fruit of the meeting of Austronesian populations, coming from Asia and Bantu coming from Africa. These two societies each brought their own cultures (agricultural practices, plants, breeding, art, etc.), traces of which can still be seen today. The Madeogen project seeks to estimate the chronology of these colonizations, the diffusion of these populations in the island and the traces of their different agricultural practices as well as their impacts on the landscapes for the last 3000 years. An approach combining 3 independent and complementary disciplines, paleoecology, human genetics and ethnoecology, will be used to reconstruct long-term socio-ecological changes. For this, six geographical areas were chosen based on the experience of the research consortium which has been working in the territory for many years. For each zone, lake sediments will be sampled and analyzed to detect traces of natural and anthropogenic activities for the last 3000 years. The genetic diversity of the current populations of the surrounding villages will be analyzed and their relationship, their perception of the landscapes, the techniques and the practices which could have an effect on the dynamics of the landscapes, in the short and long terms will be questioned. The genetic analyzes will make it possible to estimate the age of admixture of the different populations, their demographic evolution. The ethnoecological surveys will test the coherence of these socio-cultural mixtures and the paleoecology will make it possible to establish a temporal and environmental framework.