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Madagascar

admin — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:28:47 +0000

Madagascar is an island nation on the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa.

Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world and is singularly the home of more than five percent of the world’s plant and animal species, more than eighty percent of which are endemic to the area.

Madagascar was a french colony until 1958.

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History of Madagascar

admin — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:28:29 +0000

The culture of Madagascar shows a strong influence of the Austronesian expansion.
Some of the earliest human settlers spoke the Malagasy language that belongs to the group of Malayo-Polynesian languages, the rest of which are spoken on the island nations of Southeastern Asia and the Pacific Ocean.

The written history of Madagascar didn’t come to fruition until the 7th century AD, when the Arabs established trading posts along the northwest coast. European contact began in the 1500s, when a Portuguese sea captain Diogo Dias sighted the island after his ship got separated from his fleet going through the area on their way to India.

In 1665, Francois Caron, the general director of the French East India Company sailed to Madagascar but failed to establish ports there. In the late 17th century, the French established trading posts along the east coast. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Madagascar was a favorite haunt for pirates, including American pirates.

Madagascar Tourism

admin — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:27:59 +0000

Most people go to Madagascar for its wildlife and nature wonders.
The island is small-roughly the size of Arizona. Even so, it has some of the highest biodiversity on the planet with almost 200,000 known species of wildlife. About 150,000 species are endemic to the area. Unique to Madagascar are about fifty types of lemurs, numerous frog species and 36 genera of birds that exist nowhere else in the world.

The island of Madagascar contains every one of the world’s lemurs, half of its chameleon species, six percent of its frogs and none of its toads. The closest relatives to many of Madagascar’s plant and animal life aren’t from Africa but are instead from the South Pacific and South America.

Madagascar has evolved to be one of the world’s most spectacular destinations for natural history travel. Among its wide variety of flora and fauna are seven of the world’s nine species of the lovely Baobab tree. It has several world-renowned national parks and a world heritage site. Madagascar boasts 3000 miles of coastline and 220 small islands that have their own degree of biodiversity.