A recent study to check out: “Schooling, marriage, and age at first birth in Madagascar” - Maya

The educational attainment of young women in developing countries is often associated with the age they marry and bear their first child; less education is correlated with early childbearing. Policy options / NGO strategies for reducing population growth and increasing the human development index in such countries often include strategies for keeping young women in school, along with family planning efforts and the distribution of contraceptives. In addition to reducing early childbearing, increased female education can lead to greater marital equality and increased likelihood of a woman working outside of the home.  In a study published in Population Studies, July 2015, researchers simultaneously modeled the variables of school attainment, age at first birth, and age at marriage among women aged 12-25 in Madagascar to investigate the role of education in delaying fertility. To give some context, in 2005, only 56% of Malagasy women had completed primary school. In 2008-2009, only 29% of married women reported using contraception of any kind and the median age of first marriage was 18.9. The researchers used rigorous data analytics, accounting for family circumstances and other variables. Their simulations suggest that an additional year of school increases the median age at which women are married by 1.5 years and delays first birth by .5 years. Parents’ education also has a dramatic impact, particularly mother’s education: an increase of 4 years in a mother’s schooling resulted in a 1.6 year increase in her daughter’s median marriage age. Greater wealth also predicted later marriage. The death of a mother predicted earlier marriage.

For more in depth info, check it out: http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.stanford.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/00324728.2015.1053513

Madagascar and the Legend of the Man Eating Tree - Maya

During the late 1800s, as European imperialist governments and trading companies invaded and colonized much of the African continent in what is now known as the “Scramble for Africa,” sensational and often entirely-fabricated stories about the people, animals, and landscapes of Africa began to emerge in the European and American press. Madagascar, despite its unique status as an island, was not exempt from the Scramble; the Franco-Hova Wars, which lasted from 1883-1896, ended with the establishment of the French protectorate of Madagascar, which soon became a colony. Nor was Madagascar exempt from gross misrepresentation in the western press/rumor mill. One particular account, published in the New York World in 1874, captivated the public and, unlike other explorer’s tales, refused to fade from memory. The story was picked up by various papers, including the South Australian Register, which effectively catapulted it into circulation throughout the western world. The article features a letter purportedly written by the “eminent botanist” Karl Leche (who did not exist) to a colleague Dr. Omelius Friedlowsky (of whom there is also no record).

In the letter, Leche describes an expedition deep into unexplored Madagascar forest known to be inhabited by a tribe of “inhospitable savages” called the Mkodos (this “tribe” also does not exist). As he and his assistant Hendrick forge their way, members of the tribe emerge from the jungle and follow behind him, until the party arrives in a clearing dominated by “the most singular of trees.” The tree looks like a “pineapple eight feet high”, with a trunk “hard as iron.” Twelve-foot-long leaves hang from the top of the tree and touch the ground. The leaves are described as “two feet through in their thickest part and three feet wide, tapering to a sharp point… set with thorny hooks.” At the top of the tree, a concave “receptacle” is filled with “treacly liquid, honeysweet, and possessed of violent intoxicating and soporific qualities.” The top of the tree also has long, bobbing, serpent like tendrils that wave in the air and make Leche “shudder.” The Mkodo men, upon reaching the tree, start shouting “Tepe! Tepe!” and surround one of their women and force her to climb to the top of the tree and drink the liquid. She drinks, and rises with a “wild frenzy” in her face. Before she can jump down, the tree springs to life: “the slender delicate pulpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then, as if instinct with demonic intelligence, fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms…” The tree proceeds to fold itself around the screaming, hysterically laughing woman, and then its giant leaves rise up and fold around her, releasing fluid from the tree that mixes with her blood and slides down the trunk. The Mkodos rush forward and drink the mixture of blood and sap, go “mad and frantic” and have an “indescribably hideous orgie.” Leche runs away with Henrick. A few weeks later, Leche returns, and finds the woman’s skull beneath the tree.

The fabricated tale persuaded several explorers to search for the tree. Chase Salmon Osborn, who was the Governor of Michigan fro 1911 to 1913, became obsessed with the idea of the man eating tree and traveled extensively throughout Madagascar searching for it. He eventually published Madagascar: Land of the Man Eating Tree a book that admitted to his never having found the plant and actually focused on other topics. Many other scientists and anthropologists that traveled to Madagascar in the early 20^th century purportedly inquired about the tree, even if it was not their primary topic of interest.  

Sources:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/27399/madagascars-legendary-man-eating-tree

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/man_eating_tree_of_madagascar

http://scribol.com/environment/plants/the-legend-of-the-man-eating-tree-of-madagascar/

http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2011/New%20York%20NY%20World/New%20York%20NY%20World%201880-1881%20Grayscale/New%20York%20NY%20World%201880-1881%20Grayscale%20-%200070.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-eating_tree

Using Artificial Intelligence to Prevent Deforestation in Madagascar

Clear-cutting forests for valuable timber is a serious problem in Madagascar. The trade of illegally collected and extracted timber is a multibillion-dollar industry motivating the aggressive deforestation. Clear-cutting is known to have significant and long-lasting effect on the carbon content of forest soil. Despite the need to protect forests from harmful practices like clear-cutting, many forest protection organizations are vastly understaffed and underfinanced. In order to address this problem, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), have teamed up with the nonprofit organization, Alliance Vohoary Gasy in Madagascar. After converting the available resources relating to deforestation to quantified parameters, researchers developed algorithms to allocate resources in order to optimize prevention of deforestation. The algorithm has proven to be more effective than random resource allocation, which many would argue demonstrates its merit as a resource-allocation strategy. In my opinion, this is an excellent start, but comparing the algorithm’s results to the allocations decisions actually made is a more realistic metric. Regardless of if the policies in place are more or less effective than random selection, the goal of the algorithm is to make more effective decisions than the human counterpart, not pure chance.  Hopefully work such as this continues and the rate of deforestation will decrease in the near future.

The Linguistic Origins of Malagasy and Convergent Research that Sheds Light on the Origins of Madagascar’s Original Indonesian Settlers - Maya Lorey

I did my previous blog post on the mystery of who the original Indonesian settlers of Madagascar were, focusing specifically on recent mtDNA analysis suggesting that the island was colonized by about 30 women in 830 AD. While researching the linguistic origins of Malagasy a few days later, I stumbled upon some cutting edge lexicostatistical analysis that sheds more light on the original colonization event and identity of Madagascar’s colonizers.
Let’s start with some basic information about about Malagasy, the official language of Madagascar. There are about 13 million first language speakers of Malagasy today, and while there are 23+ dialects, they are almost all mutually intelligible (70-90% lexical similarity). Malagasy is a member of the Austronesian Language Family, more specifically, part of the East Barito Group of the Malayo Polynesian Branch. Its closest relative is Ma’anyan, which is spoken today in inland southeastern Kalimantan by a small population of Dayak. The two languages share 45% of their basic vocabulary and are more closely related to each other than they are to any other languages. The remarkable similarity between Malagasy and Ma’anyan—first officially diagrammed by linguist Otto Christian Dahl in 1951—lead many researchers to postulate that that the Indonesian ancestors of the Malagasy people sailed from the southeastern region of Kalimantan where Ma’anyan is spoken today. As mentioned in my previous post, this hypothesis is challenged by the reality that the community has thus far offered no archaeological, ethnographic, or historical evidence for maritime tradition during the range of time Madagascar was most certainly settled. It is plausible that sailors and ships of the Srijava empire, a maritime and commercial empire centered on Sumatra, could have reached Madagascar. The Buddhist empire traded with China and India, controlled the strait of Malacca, and was powerful between the 7th and 13th centuries. The Srivijaya spoke proto-Malay. Tellingly, the Malagasy words for compass points, wind, sea, boats and other nautical/directional terms are all Malay loan words. The Malagasy orientation system, which is defined by fixed cardinal points, is also typical of Malay and Javanese maritime orientation systems and distinctly un-Bornean. This may suggest that whoever was captaining the vessel that reached Madagascar was indeed a Srijava sailor (and his crew). Given the small founding population of 30 women, who likely would not have been aboard a trading vessel, some have postulated that an errant Srijava slave ship carrying Bornean Ma’anyan speaking peoples wrecked on Madagascar. Others, who favor the idea that Madagascar was settled in waves, believe that the linguistic composition of Malagasy reflects multiple different “founding populations”. In 2012, researchers (Serva et al.) used new quantitative methodology that can find the kinship relationships among languages to analyze 23 dialects of Malagasy in addition to Malay and Ma’anyan. They were primarily looking to find more evidence about whether there was one founding population of Madagascar or many, and if there was only one founding population, as suggested by the recent mtDNA analysis, when and where on Madagascar they landed. The major findings are as follows:
 1.All of the dialects have almost the same lexical distance from Malay to distance from Ma’anyan ratio. This indicates that the underlying linguistic makeup is the same for all of the dialects and therefore that they all originated from the same founding population. These findings suggest that there was only one Indonesian founding population, made up of people speaking some mix of Malagasy and Malay – i.e there were no waves of migration to the island. These findings are consistent with the findings of Cox et. al (mtDNA analysis).
 2.The variance in the dialects suggests that the landing in Madagascar occurred around 650 AD. This is slightly earlier than Cox et al.’s estimate of 830 AD, but not too far off.
 3.They used an incredibly complicated algorithm to estimate the “linguistic homeland” of Malagasy. In essence, it draws upon the basic premise that the homeland of a biological species or language group corresponds to the current area of greatest diversity; “for each language variant a diversity index is calculated as the average of the proportions between linguistic and geographical distances from the given language variant and to each of the other language variants.” The model suggests that the initial landing occurred between Mahanoro and Ambovobe, where Farafanga is (southeastern coast of the island).
 4.The authors point out that there is some unexpected supporting evidence for this landing location. In 1883, after Mount Krakatoa erupted, pumice washed ashore on Madagascar between Farafanga and Mahanoro—right where the linguistic analysis puts the landing area. During WWII, wreckage from ships that had been sailing between Java and Sumatra washed up in the same location. This suggests that at certain times of year, there is an ocean current connecting Sumatra and southeastern Madagascar. I am looking further into this now, and wonder if currents have changed since 650-830 AD.
 In conclusion—there are still so many questions! One last interesting point: The Srivijaya empire was Buddhist, and then subject to much Hindu influence. The Malagasy are neither Buddhist nor Hindu. Neither are the Ma’anyan speaking Dayak, who are known for ancestor worship and elaborate funeral rituals… sound familiar?

- Maya Lorey