Islands around the African Continent

Scientific evidence confirm that the origins of Mankind lie only in Africa. From Africa they moved to each area of the globe, and by two thousand years ago most of the planet, among them the Pacific Islands were occupied. Even so, the islands around Africa, the continent where it all begun were among the final places on the globe to be found. The following islands were all discovered late in history, although today they are among the most popular destinations in the world.

Canary Islands
The Canary Islands were most probably one of the initial islands in Africa to be inhabited. The highest point of Teide on Tenerife can be seen on cloudless days from the continent and the islands were seen by the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Carthaginians in ancient times. As stated by to Pliny the Elder, an expedition sent by the king of Numidia to the isles, found them to be unpopulated, but that there were remains of fantastic structures.

Archaeological findings imply that the initial people of the Canaries entered by the sea around 1000 BC or before and shared general source with African Berber tribes from the Atlas Mountains. When the Europeans started to investigate the Canary Islands, they met Guanche people, still living a prehistoric lifestyle. The islands were ultimately annexed by the Kingdom of Castille in the 15th century.

Mauritius
Mauritius was known to Austronesian, Swahili and Arab seafarers as early as the 10th century. The Portuguese sailors first visited the island in 1507. Five ships from the Netherlands, turned off course during a storm while on their voyage to the Asia, visited Mauritius in 1598, and named it in tribute to Prince Maurice of Nassau, the head of state of the Netherlands.

Cape Verde
The earliest written record of Cape Verde can be found in historic Greek writings where they are named as the islands Gorgades. The Cape Verde islands were relocated by European wayfarers around 1456. Some evidence indicates that the islands may have been navigated by Arabs, generations before the appearance of the Portuguese.

The Seychelles
The earliest detailed sighting of the Seychelles by Europeans happened in 1502 by the Portuguese Admiral Vasco da Gama but these African Islands were certainly travelled to by other people. Austronesian sailors were most likely the first to explore the unpopulated Seychelles hundreds of years. And an Arab document dated to the year 851 speak of higher islands below the Maldives.

The Comoros Islands
The initial people of the Comoros Islands are considered to have been Austronesian and African settlers. The very first known archaeological site, found on Nzwani, dates to 600 AD. The Comoros became inhabited by a sequence of various groups from the shoreline of Africa, Arabia, the Indonesia, and Madagascar. Portuguese explorers discovered the Comoros in beginning of the 16h century.

Madagascar
The Portuguese mariner Diego Dias was the first Western to visit Madagascar in 1500 when his boat, bound for India, blew off course. The Portuguese found Madagascar to be inhabited by Asian men and women instead of African. Madagascar folktale talks about a pygmy-like people named the Vazimba as the earliest inhabitants of the island. Historians today generally place the settling of Madagascar in the years between 300 BC and 500 AD, when men and women from Borneo appeared in their canoes. These were the initial Malagasy, who emerged to the island as part of the considerable Austronesian colonization, the movement of humans that came to control Indonesia and the Pacific islands.

Author Jared Diamond observed many similarities between Malagasy and Indonesians like cultivating rice in a related fashion and making use of outrigger canoes. Bantu refugees from the African continent certainly crossed the ocean either due to the interaction with Austronesians or because of the Arab traders, decades later.