1–200 CE: (The Malagasy-Bantu Exchange — The Ancestral Malagasy Adopting the Raising of Sheep and Cows from Their Bantu-Speaking Neighbors, in Return Introdu…

1–200 CE: (The Malagasy-Bantu Exchange — The Ancestral Malagasy Adopting the Raising of Sheep and Cows from Their Bantu-Speaking Neighbors, in Return Introducing the Banana and the Chicken Both Brought from Island South Asia, Also Introducing the Xylophone of Island South Asian Origin Which Over the Course of the First Millennium CE Spread from Society to Society Across the Continent Eventually as Far West as Mali, and Still Later in the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Century Enslaved Africans Bringing the Marimba the Central African Version of the Xylophone to the Americas): From the Bantu-speaking societies who settled in the Kenyan and far northern Tanzanian coastal areas, the ancestral Malagasy adopted the raising of sheep and cows. In return they introduced their neighbors to a major new crop, the banana, and a new domestic animal, the chicken, both brought from Island South Asia. They introduced as well a musical instrument new to Africa — the xylophone, also of Island South Asian origin. Over the course of the first millennium CE the use of this instrument spread from society to society across the continent, eventually as far west as Mali. Still later, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, enslaved Africans brought the marimba, the Central African version of the xylophone, to the Americas. The exchange between the ancestral Malagasy and their Bantu-speaking neighbors is a microcosm of the global process of agricultural and cultural exchange that Ehret has been documenting throughout the book. The Malagasy received African livestock — sheep and cattle — and gave in return Southeast Asian crops and animals — bananas and chickens — that would transform African agriculture and diet across the entire continent. The banana, in particular, would become one of the most important food crops of tropical Africa, enabling Bantu-speaking farmers to penetrate the equatorial rainforest zones that their yam- and grain-based agriculture had previously been unable to exploit. And the xylophone — a musical instrument from Borneo that crossed the Indian Ocean with a small community of Austronesian sailors — would spread across the entire breadth of Africa, from the East African coast to Mali, becoming so thoroughly Africanized that when enslaved Africans carried it to the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the marimba, no one in the New World suspected its Island South Asian origins. The marimba is a monument to the Indian Ocean exchange: born in Southeast Asia, naturalized in Africa, globalized by the African diaspora.