The most surprising journeys around the year 1000 took place between the Malay Peninsula and Madagascar on the east coast of Africa some 4,000 miles (6,500 km) away (just under the 4,400 miles, or 7,000 km, of Columbus’s first voyage). Although Madagascar is only some 250 miles (400 km) off Africa’s east coast, the language of the islands, Malagasy, is related to Malayic languages and not—as you’d expect—to the Bantu family of languages predominant in Africa and along the East African coast. Malagasy turns out to be in the same language group as Malay, Polynesian, Hawaiian, and the indigenous
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