Were pigs ferried across the channel during the Medieval era?

 

The island of Madagascar separated from the African mainland around 160 million years ago, resulting in a largely unique flora and fauna. Remarkably, the bushpig is the only large, wild terrestrial mammal species that has somehow historically crossed the 400-kilometer-wide Mozambique Channel and made it from mainland Africa to the island of Madagascar.

- “Our study establishes that the bushpig was introduced to Madagascar ≈1,000-5,000 years ago from South/South-East Africa”, Rasmus states. Their arrival therefore coincides with the arrival of humans to Madagascar from a region around southern Africa. Rasmus continues: “The likely explanation for this is that people transported these bushpigs across the channel. These results contradict previously published studies which dated the arrival of bushpigs ≈480,000 years ago, well before humans were present on the island”. It has been suggested that some endemic Madagascar species might have arrived by rafting as passengers on floats of vegetation.

- “Intriguingly, our results raise a host of new questions: was the bushpig actually brought to Madagascar as a somewhat domesticated species? There is no archaeological or other evidence of bushpig domestication ever occurring, despite them being an important source of protein for many rural communities. And who was it that transported these animals to Madagascar? Was it Bantu-speakers, Austronesian-speakers or both? These questions and others still remain to be explored,” explains Renzo F. Balboa, postdoc at the Department of Biology and one of the leading authors of the study.