Direct dating of cave art is notoriously difficult, and proved so in this case as the black pigment was made from dark inorganic minerals with only a small component of charcoal we could use for radiocarbon dating.
The common and strange M-figures demand description: we recommended, after searching many pertinent alphabets, that it's a perfect suit for just one, the letter "hawt" (ሐ) in the old Ethiopian Amharic alphabet, pronounced "ha".
Remarkably, however, we also found this symbol in cavern art from Borneo believed to have to do with 2,000 years of ages, and in nothing else cavern or shake art throughout the Indo-Pacific area. In some Austronesian languages (the varied language family that expands from Malagasy on the west to remote Hawaii and Rapa Nui in the Pacific), words "ha" is a describe for the "breath of life".
All these feasible links advise us that Madagascar's individuals, language, and society remain in themselves syncretic, mixing African and Eastern influences to produce a unique Malagasy individuals.
The highly detailed and varied art is significant also for what it does not show.
No Christian, Muslim or Hindu meaning is depicted, and no reasonably modern concepts such as the Latin alphabet, cars, aircrafts or flags. Also the common zebu (cattle), the culturally vital symbol of the last thousand years or more in Madagascar, are lacking.
It is hard to know exactly when these illustrations were made. Direct dating of cavern art is infamously tough, and proved so in this instance as the black pigment was made from dark inorganic minerals with just a small part of charcoal we could use for radiocarbon dating.
The presence of vanished pets, and the lack of modern concepts and the alphabet used in modern Malagasy, consider greatly versus the idea of a current beginning for the art.
We defendant that the art has to do with 2,000 years of ages - going back to the moment of Cleopatra or before, based upon the spiritual concepts. If it's, that's exceptional and useful to know because it may provide proof for that colonised Madagascar when.
If, on the various other hand, a set of pre-Christian spiritual ideas has endured for centuries or also centuries amongst certain ethnic teams in very remote locations of the tremendous island - maintaining recognisable influences from Egypt, Ethiopia and Borneo - that would certainly be perhaps more exceptional. Town informants hinted at that opportunity, by firmly urging that the "sorcerer" pictured was a participant of a strange team of "Vazimba" or "Bosy") that stayed in the woodland nearby.
So, whose art is this? We wish we recognized, but ideas are primarily doing not have. The just feasible writing, besides the M-figures, is a line of collapse manuscript in the lower right corner of this rock-art extravaganza.
Our best guess is that the readable center 6 of 8 personalities, inferred to be sorabe, archaic Malagasy writing in Arabic manuscript, may say "D-A-NT-IA-R-K".
Does that describe Antiochus IV Epiphanes? This king of the Seleucid Realm (western europe or australia) in the Ptolemaic duration built a large navy, overcome a lot of Egypt in 170 BCE, and sent out exploring and trading expeditions down the Red Sea and the eastern African coast. Cream color investors because duration spread out Roman items as much southern as ports in Tanzania southern of Zanzibar, to profession with Azania.
Until more art or pertinent historical proof shows up for old African and Eastern influences in Madagascar, we can just guess.
