Polynesians in Africa? Vikings in America?

Polynesians in Africa? Vikings in America? Caucasians in Japan?

These are some of the historical oddities I have been researching on the internet:

"Polynesians" in Africa:

The prevalented theory is the first inhabitants of Madagascar were a Malayo-Polynesian speaking people of Austronesian, or mixed Austronesian-Negroid, ethnicity.

They are thought to have reached the giant African island in Biblical times, or shortly after, about when their ethnic kinsmen were travelling from Samoa and Tonga toward Tahiti.

Austroloid peoples originated in South East Asia and had been expanding into Australia and the Pacific since the Stone Age. They progressed as far as Fiji in the east. The Melanesian (black lands) are the islands inhabited by their descendants.

It seems there was a fresh wave of mixed Mongoloid-Austroloid migrations, beginning just a few thousand years ago, most probably as Mongoloid began to press down from North East Asia.

The migrations throughout the Pacific, as far as Hawaii, Tahiti, Easter Island and New Zealand are well-documented. It seems they may also have reached South America, without actually settling there, as South American crops featured in Pan-Polynesian trade routes of pre-European times.

Polynesia simply means 'many lands' and is the name given to the Austroloid-Mongoloid race which inhabited these islands.

Austroloid-Mongoloid also migrated west, along the southern coast of Asia and the east coast of Africa. Whether or not they mixed with African natives before their arrival in Madagascar remains a mystery. It is known that the Arabs introduced native Africans to the island after they began trading there in the seventh century AD.

Europeans did not discover Madagascar until eight years after Colombus had reached the Americas.

Diogo Dias of Portugal became the first Euorpean to sight the island in 1500. The French began trading there in the 17th century, then invaded in 1883, establishing a protectorate two years later.

The majority of the population remains of mixed Austronesian-Negroid ethnicity. The national language, Malagasy, is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian family. A caste system is active among the 18 ancient tribes of the island. The Merina are the largest among them.

In the early 19th century Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka united the Merina kingdom, a collection of Malayo-Austronesian speaking tribes in the highlands (they number about 3 million today). He went on to conquer most of the island. His successor Radama I signed a treaty with the British, outlawed slavery and admitted Christian missionaries.

He was followed by his widow, Queen Ranavalona I, who secured her place via the practice of fratricide, and ruled for 33 years. She prohibited Christianity, banished the missionaries, and engaged in a campaign of religious persecution leading to as many as 150,000 Christian deaths.

Ranavalona's heir, Radama II (son of Radama I), in turn, reversed many of her policies, signing treaties with the English and French and welcoming back the missionaries. He was assassinated in 1863, after just two years on the throne.

Queens Ranavalona II and III followed, before French victory brought an end to the Merina dynasty in 1897.

Madagascar did not regain full independence until 1960, 13 years after an unsuccessful uprising which claimed as many as 90,000 lives, all but 180 of them Malagasy. Thousands more had been sentenced to death or imprisonment.


"Vikings" were the first Europeans in America:

Although this became an established fact following the discovery of Norse ruins in Newfoundland in 1960, it is still not widely known that Europeans had reached the Americas half a millenia before Columbus, who arrived there half a millenia ago.

Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red (a Norwegian outlaw banished to Iceland, from whence he discovered Greenland in the early 980s), sailed from Greenland around 1000AD in search of a land sighted by countryman Bjarni Herjolfsson when blown off course during a storm in 986.

Ericson first reached Baffin Island (Canada), which he named Helluland (land of the flat stones), then Markland (forest land), generally considered to have been Labrador.

The first "permanent" settlement was at the northern tip of New Foundland, which Ericson named Vinland (wine land). The ruins were uncovered by Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine in the 1950s, finally confirmed in 1960.

The colonization was not led by Ericson, however, but by his brother-in-law Thorfinn Karlsefni some years later. According to the Icelandic sagas, Karlsefni took 160 people with him, all but 15 of them men.

They survived there only a few years. Their demise remains a mystery. It may have come about as a result of conflict with the natives, though the sagas recount efforts on the part of the settlers to appease the local chiefs.

A Viking coin has been discovered in Maine, and a Scandanavian stone carving in Minnesota, but there is no concrete evidence the Norsemen ventured as far south as the modern-day United States. More likely these artefacts arrived there through trade, whether in pre-Columbıan times or later.

"Caucasians" in Japan?

Although I have, in the past, read accounts which describe the Ainu aboriginals of Japan as "Caucasoid," it now seems that theory has fallen by the wayside.

Genetic testing has shown the Ainu to be a Mongoloid people whose closest relatives are in Tibet and the Bengal Bay islands of Andaman. Neither were they the original inhabitants of Japan. Tribes of various ethnicity had been making their way into the islands since the Stone Age.

It seems the Ainu were one of a number of tribes which existed on the continent before the rise of the Chinese Han dynasty.

Attempts have been made to include the Ainu language in the macro-Altaic, which includes Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and Turkic. However, it is commonly accepted to be a "language isolate."

Slightly more far-fetched hypotheses endeavoured to link Ainu with Austronesian, and even the hypothetical macro-Euroasiatic language. The latter perhaps gave rise to the "Caucasoid" theory.

Taller and more athletic than the Japanese, people of predominantly Ainu stock number around 50,000 today. There are a further 100,000 Japanese with minor Ainu ancestry.

end

Trials & Tribulations of a native English-speaker

(published in the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=74440 )

Native English speakers, they like to say, are not good at learning other languages.
In my case that certainly holds true.
I am handicapped, as a New Zealander, having grown up in a society where no other language was used.
Eight years ago I set off for Europe in search of adventure. One of the challenges I set for myself was to learn another language. I settled in Spain and spent the next five years learning Spanish.
The first year I was based in Jaen, central Andalusia. This provided an invaluable crash course, for English-speakers were few and far between.
The next year, spent in the Basque capital Vitoria, was similarly beneficial.
Then I moved to Barcelona, a veritable paradise on the Mediterranean. But like much of that sun-drenched coast, it is infested with English-speaking foreigners, not least the English themselves.
Among the locals, and even the immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, I stood more chance of having a discussion in Catalan than I did in Spanish.
When I spoke to people in Spanish they would invariably reply in English. If I insisted on Spanish they would raise the bar to a level above my comprehension, then smugly come to my aid in English.
My companion during these times, a blond Catalan, was regularly addressed in English by her own countrymen - in the heart of Barcelona, much to her annoyance
I have encountered similar difficulties since coming to Turkey. Perhaps due to the Turkish language's lack of international usage, the prevalent attitude seems to be that a foreigner attempting to speak it is clearly showing off. The raising-the-bar tactic is thus executed with particular relish.
Yet the Turks, like the Spanish, crave nothing more than an opportunity to practise their English with a native-speaker; a joy which surpasses even that of deriding the native English-speaker's lack of linguistic aptitude.
All this is, of course, a result of English-speaking America's domination of the world. A thousand years ago I might have encountered similar difficulties striking up a conversation in anything but Latin. Five centuries ago it might have been Spanish. Two hundred and fifty years ago, French.
While American domination of the world is encouraging its inhabitants to embrace English as the lingua franca of our times, it is simultaneously encouraging much animosity toward America.
I would be the first to endorse widespread grievances over the manner in which American domination of the world is being sustained. But a tallish, broad-shouldered redhead - the embodiment of the stereotypical 'Frankish' oppressor, I suppose - I tend to find myself a prime target for those with the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality.
But, if anything, resentment of my efforts to speak other languages seems even more proncounced among English-speakers themselves. For it is unnecessary in a world where everyone is learning English.
Clearly I have spent the past seven years struggling to learn other languages just to show off.
Had I not made that effort, however, I would have been perceived as the arrogant foreigner who expected everyone to speakEnglish; the embodiment of the stereotypical English-speaker incapable of learning another language.

end