Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinentGondwana, Madagascar split from Africa during the Early Jurassic, around 180 million years ago, and split from the Indian subcontinent around 90 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation; consequently, it is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries, with over 90% of wildlife being endemic. The island has a subtropical to tropical maritime climate. Madagascar was first settled during or before the mid-first millennium AD by Austronesian peoples, presumably arriving on outrigger canoes from present-day Indonesia. These were joined around the ninth century AD by Bantu migrants crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. Consequently, there are 18 or more classified peoples of Madagascar, the most numerous being the Merina of the central highlands.
Until the late 18th century, the island of Madagascar was ruled by a fragmented assortment of shifting sociopolitical alliances. Beginning in the early 19th century, most of it was united and ruled as the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles. The monarchy was ended in 1897 by the annexation by France, from which Madagascar gained independence in 1960. The country has since undergone four major constitutional periods, termed republics, and has been governed as a constitutional democracy since 1992. Following a political crisis and military coup in 2009, Madagascar underwent a protracted transition towards its fourth and current republic, with constitutional governance being restored in January 2014. (Full article...)
This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia..
Lavanify is a mammalian genus from the late Cretaceous (probably Maastrichtian, about 71 to 66 million years ago) of Madagascar. The only species, L. miolaka, is known from two isolated teeth, one of which is damaged. The teeth were collected in 1995–1996 and described in 1997. The animal is classified as a member of Gondwanatheria, an enigmatic extinct group with unclear phylogenetic relationships, and within Gondwanatheria as a member of the family Sudamericidae. Lavanify is most closely related to the Indian Bharattherium; the South American Sudamerica and Gondwanatherium are more distantly related. Gondwanatheres probably ate hard plant material.
Lavanify had high-crowned, curved teeth. One of the two teeth is 11.2 mm high and shows a deep furrow and, is centered laterally in the crown, a V-shaped area that consists of dentine. The other, damaged, tooth is 9.8 mm high and has at least one deep cavity (infundibulum). Characters shared by the teeth of Lavanify and Bharattherium include the presence of an infundibulum and a furrow; they both also have large, continuous bands of matrix (unbundled hydroxyapatite crystals) between the prisms (bundles of hydroxyapatite crystals) of the enamel, and perikymata—wave-like ridges and grooves in the enamel surface. (Full article...)
Toamasina (Malagasy pronunciation:[toˈmasinə̥]), meaning "like salt" or "salty", unofficially and in FrenchTamatave, is the capital of the Atsinanana region on the east coast of Madagascar on the Indian Ocean. The city is the chief seaport of the country, situated 215 km (134 mi) northeast of its capital and biggest city Antananarivo. In 2018 Toamasina had a population of 325,857. (Full article...)
This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.
Madagascar lies off the east coast of Africa
The Madagascar Plan (German: Madagaskarplan) was a plan proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.
The idea of re-settling Polish Jews to Madagascar was investigated by the Polish government in 1937, but the task force sent to evaluate the island's potential determined that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could be accommodated, or even as few as 500 families by some estimates. As the efforts by the Nazis to encourage the emigration of the Jewish population of Germany before World War II were only partially successful, the idea of deporting Jews to Madagascar was revived by the Nazi government in 1940. (Full article...)
The following are images from various Madagascar-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1The ring-tailed lemur is one of over 100 known species and subspecies of lemur found only in Madagascar. (from Madagascar)
Image 2Matatana, represented in a picture of 1613, regarding a settlement of the beginning of the 16th century, in the Book of Humberto Leitão" (from Madagascar)
Image 3Malagasy ancestry reflects a blend of Southeast Asian, Oceanian and Bantu (Southeast African) roots. (from Madagascar)
Image 12A Sumatran village showing several traditional houses (Malagasy levu). The vahoaka ntaolo villages of Madagascar were probably similar in the first millennium AD. This model is still currently present on every coast and in the remote inland areas and forests. (from History of Madagascar)
Image 13Canoe-sarcophagus of the Dayak: a burial that recalls the Malagasy tradition that former Ntaolo Vazimba and Vezo buried their dead in canoe-sarcophagi in the sea or in a lake (from History of Madagascar)
Image 14National monument in Moramanga commemorating the beginning of the Malagasy Uprising on 29 March 1947. Between 11,000 and 90,000 Malagasy died during the uprising which lasted nearly two years. (from Madagascar)
Image 22The taro (saonjo in Malagasy) is, according to an old Malagasy proverb, "the elder of the rice" (Ny saonjo no zokin'ny vary), and was also a staple diet for the proto-Austronesians (from History of Madagascar)
Image 26Radama I, the first monarch of the kingdom unified central Madagascar. (from History of Madagascar)
Image 27An Austronesian outrigger canoe; Malagasy vahoaka "people" is from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian*va-waka "people of the canoe". The Vahoaka Ntaolo, the first Austronesian ancestors of the Malagasy, probably used similar canoes to reach the great island from the Sunda Islands (from History of Madagascar)
Image 28Men in an Outrigger Canoe Headed for Shore, an oil painting by Arman Manookian depicting the Vezo people, c. 1929 (from History of Madagascar)
Image 33Malagasy Embassy to Europe in 1863. Left to right: Rainifiringa Ralaimaholy, Rev. John Duffus and Rasatranabo aka Rainandrianandraina. (from History of Madagascar)
Image 47Map of Madagascar and surroundings, circa 1702–1707 (from History of Madagascar)
Image 48Vaγimba- "Those of the forest" in Proto–Southeast Barito, the reconstructed ancestor of the Southeast Barito languages, which includes the languages spoken by the Dayak peoples of the Barito River in Borneo (pictured) (from History of Madagascar)
.jpg)
_Madagascar.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
