Advertisement
As we bumped along the pockmarked bitumen to Lakobe a truck filled with Ylang Ylang flowers heading for the distillery past us. I closed my eyes and inhaled, the smell of the fonnes of flowers overpowering even the diesel fumes. The hot heavy february madagascan weather expectant with rain seemed to momentarily liven the heavy scent and I realised I had smelled that before. I was in a 2000 year old ylang ylang plantation where the finest first press oils go directly to paris bouncing along in an ancient citroen with a cracked windscreen heading to trek through a national park to see Lemurs and Chameleons. I searched my memory for the smell and suddenly realised I had stood in a Ylang Ylang plantation before..In Tahiti. Almost 16000km away yet the people here like the people in Tahiti had been using the same plants to make insect repellent, skin creams, hair creams, oils and cure all for centuries also. They too considered it their national treasure. Knowing Ylang Ylang is native to the Philippines I pondered while we paddled across the mozambique channel to Lakobe National park how these two peoples so far apart held the same plant with the same
uses in such high regard. I looked over at a Pirogue gently slipping over the still waters.
In the quiet morning with just the sound of our paddles pushing aside the mangrove laced waters, I thought about the ancient trade routes used by the Arabs and Asians way before the European Golden Age of Maritime discovery. On these ancient currents, man traded everything including his fellow man for the things he wanted. Pearls, diamonds, spices, gemstones, silks, pottery, exotic animals, food, plants that we have transported around the world and continue to do so purely for our hedonistic needs.
I realised when I smelled the Ylang Ylang in Madagascar my last ten years travelling as a geographer purely for my own interest had lead me along some of the most important pre european maritime trade routes in history. I have been fortunate enough to visit and dive that arc from Tahiti across to Papua to Indonesia and South East Asia before heading down the Wallacea line into the Indian Ocean and to Madagascar. As I smelled mangos, and subsequently felt lemurs begin peeing on my head, i remembered a golden moment in Bora Bora
when I was walking along and a perfect sunblushed mango fell into my hand. Later that night, I watched a cruise ship head past and my thoughts turned back to those ancient maritime trade routes.
Madagascar and Tahiti occupy a similar latitude with Madagascar being at 18.7669°S and Tahiti at 17.6509°S yet separated by 15,473km as the crow flies. The climate in Madagascar is far more monsoonal, yet the similarities are surprising and often sublimely delightful. Both lushly forested with a huge array of trees, flowers, mosses and herbs Madagascar has rightly earned the title of the worlds Noahs Ark after it shook off its last terrestrial ties to Africa before floating away from the lands that would become known as India and Australia, Tahiti and her islands have remained free of fauna for the most part since their relatively recent volcanic birth. Too far for any animals to swim or hitch a ride on a tree trunk or palm frond, Tahiti has no endemic large mammals, having only a few insects and the gold dust day Gecko, 26 species of land birds and 28 species of sea birds. Madagascar has a rich and varied endemic fauna
from Lemurs and Fossas, bats, reptiles, amphibians, frogs and many small vertebrates uniquely evolved to fit a niche within Madagascar's 12 ecosystems. Roughly 95 Percent of its reptiles, 89 percent of its plantlife and 92 percent of its mammals exist nowhere else on earth.
Around 4000BC a wave of sea faring explorers from South East Asia began colonization and exploratory voyages within Micronesia and what is now referred to as the Polynesian Triangle. It is beleived the first ''ancestors'' came from Taiwan first settling Tonga then Samoa before venturing further south. Later in the year in Vanuatu I again spotted the wiry Clitoria Ternate rambling through the jungle. WHo bought it here? How long did they stop for before continuing on in large ocean going canoes often equipped with both sails and oars carrying pigs, chickens, plants and seeds. The hypothesised eastern maritime route sailors from Taiwan set off with skilled seafarers navigating by the clouds, stars and wave patterns.
Madagascar did not feel the human hand until sometime between 200BC and 500AD. Her first settlers set out in massive canoes from the Sunda islands in Indonesia. A replica vessel undertook the voyage
from Bali to Madagascar known as the Sariminok Voyage in 1985 to prove that this ancient Indian Ocean sea farers route had been used well before the "Golden Age" of European Maritime exploration. In fact, it was the Arab Seafarers who first opened up the world to trade by sea routes. These routes from Africa became known as the clove route and the cinnamon route. The land route, known as the Silk Route connected the East and the West running through the vast expanse of Asia into the middle east finally reaching the mediterranean had primarily been the manner of transfer of custom and commodity for centuries.
While a land route could be walked or transversed with Horses, Donkeys, Mules and Buffalo it also was fraught with dangers for caravans of goods in demand by civilizations who lived along the routes. A sea route by comparison held far less chance of ambush and conflict, with traders less likely to lose their cargo to hostile parties encountered along the land routes. With the collapse of the Ottoman empire the land routes became less used and the Arab Maritime Spice Routes became a highway where goods of all kinds
were transported in both directions and the cultures of arabia and asia collided and combined. The Asian to Polynesian route opened settlement and trade to the Asian east. Black pearls from Tahiti could adorn a Sultans headpiece in Oman.
While food was traded, languages were developed to facilitate trade, leading to the interchange of cultures. Man has always seemed to have a desire for the finer things in life, with the rarer or harder to find it is being a driving factor in its demand. Merchants learned communication and cultural skills and exchanged theological and philosophical ideas, leading to development of new languages, the death of some older languages and customs and the introduction of Islam to Asia. With trade came cultural understanding and interaction with different cultures, ideas and religions.
What had been a vague interest became a quest when I joined a liveaboard dive trip to Ternate, the heart of the spice islands. After a couple of years as a volunteer guide and sailor on the Replica 1606 tall ship the Duyfken, I wanted desperately to see where this little ship had originally left Fort Oranje before bumping into and charting Australia,
Terra Australis, thus completing modern maps. Crewing on a tall ship is a wonderful experience, The Little Dove as the Duyfken is known is the only ship of her kind still sailing in the world and a true labour of love. To dive Ternate plus see the sites like the Fort was an opportunity I had been dreaming of.
I had been diving the Wallacea line for about 5 years, trekking when not diving, following in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace but these islands that changed world history had eluded me. Thanks to a well organised 3 day extension tour before boarding the boat we not only got in some awesome diving, we visited the Volcanic Tidore opposite Ternate and toured the island. As a geographer living in the least seismically exciting place on earth, to see Gamalera volcano's previous explosion burnt rocks was simply amazing.
It is not uncommon to see two gentleman in Arab robes strolling along together in Ternate holding eachothers hands as they head to the mosque nor is it to see a young teenager sporting a mini mouse tshirt zooming along on a motorbike in the shadows of
the now Landlocked Fort Oranje . Ternate itself is muslim sultanate, with the sultans son continuing his ancient empire through generations. He may hold a day job as a civil servant these days but he is expected to also know the Moluccan traditions his birthright bestowed upon him, such as quietening a rumbling volcano. A jewelled crown with hair that is said to grow in his palace used for ceremonial ocassions such as this, he leaves his palace carrying the teachings of eons into a world of technology and meetings. a Mosque had fallen into the bay after the last eruption of the volcano but Islam is the religion here, there is no alcohol on the island yet Ternate holds her holds history - from the magic of the sultans to the central part this tiny island played in the Spice wars alongside her religion with grace.
The diving heaven of Raja Ampat means 4 kings, one for each of the Sultanates. Tradition runs deep here, especially Ternate where this tiny island offers you a climb to the original Clove tree Afo where the dutch finally lost the monopoly on the spice wars when a French man
stole a cutting and managed to propagate it to give birth to fields of cloves in Zanzibar and other Asian nations. After a steep climb up to see the still barely alive Afo one can visit the Spanish, Portugese and Dutch forts, Wallace's house before buying a shiny new appliance in the new stores built on reclaimed land out from the dutch Fort. VOC cannons crowd the footpath outside false teeth shops. The ships that lie below the land now atop them will forever hold their secrets.
With the exchange of cultures came the introduction of spices and ingredients in every day cuisine at both ends of the trail, religion, art and music. The Malagasy national instrument the Valiha, a round stringed zither made of bamboo actually originated in Indonesia and travelled to the Philippines before being taken to Madagascar. With music came dance, with dance came fashion, the silk sari of India being really little more than a cloth which is tied around the body as is the Pareo of Madagascar and Tahiti, the Sarong of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Plants for agricultural, ornamental and medicinal purposes were traded extensively. A plant
I had spotted on my walk along the Wallacea line, the controversially named Clitoria Ternate is found in Northern Sulawesi, Ternate and Tidore and in other pockets of South East Asia. It is said to be endemic to Indonesia, Madagascar and Zanzibar and some other parts of Asia such as Bangladesh. Time and evolution may have created the subspecies regarded as native to Madagascar given that the first wave of people to populate Madagascar came through Borneo between the 5th and 10th centuries bringing with them Rice which they cultivated in the highlands it is not inconceivable to believe they bought the Clitoria with them allowing the plant centuries to adapt and evolve to perfectly become uniquely Madagascan.
Throughout my travels along the Wallacea line, through Micronesia and Polynesia and then to East Africa I often noticed plants common to all three places. The water lily is not just a source of food, but holds symbolic value as does the Frangipani. Gingers and sumatran Ixoria have become part of the landscape throughout both the ancient east and west maritime sea routes. Similar instruments, similar housing construction styles such as those at Lakombe Reserve in Nosy Be Madagascar
and those in Tidore and further south in Maros in South Sulawesi, similar tastes and hints of scents.
The further I explored the more ''clues'' I found. In Halmahera we went ashore to Tobelo village and saw a replica of a gigantic boat that the ancenstors had rowed to madagascar, a trip of some 9700km crewed by 300 men. Carvings on the walls of the hall showed the ancient way of sitting to trade, with your arms and legs locked face to face on the ground. Halmahera dusted us with volcanic ash from the ever erupting Dukono volcano as we explored land while the boat replenished drinking water.
I had the dive of my life on that trip, into the active vent of a volcano. I did that dive twice, and would do it every day if I could.
On my next trip with the excellent organisers we visited South Sulawesi at Maros, the worlds second largest and most unknown Karst system, while waiting for our plane to Sorong to check out some hills we had spotted flying in on our return. A paddle up a river, a walk for about
an hour through rice paddies and we were at the cave said to have ancient handprints within. Not expecting to be climbing into a cave I was appropriately dressed in thongs and sunglasses. With a lot of inching along the inky blackness of the cave wall I saw our guide shine the torch on the cave wall which was once a coral reef, uplifted by a geomorphic tantrum.
The guide told us his people had known there were people living in these caves 5000 years ago. Within the beam of the torch stood out a small handprint, in ochre, much like those of the Australian aboriginal. Mans need to have been known to exist. I looked at the size of the hand and wondered if it was an adolescents hand and where these people who lived in this cave high above a river came from and went. The cave artwork was recently carbon dated by Australian University and found to be older than any European cave art, once again, creating no answers, but only more questions.
Were they first settlers here? had they decided that their needs of shelter, food and water were met and called
these caves home? . Or were they hiding from someone or some thing. If hiding, one can only assume the threat disappeared or was tamed or seasons changed to allow the thousands of years occupancy in the Maros Pankep Karsts.
I began planning my trip to the east African islands to see the ''other side'' of the arab asia trade route. The spices and treasures of the east were valued and flaunted as a symbol of wealth in the arab world. The gold of the Arab world adorned the Rich asian merchants who traded all manner of goods from Opium to Rubies. The better the story about how difficult it was to get the item the more valuable it became. Ancient greek scholars mentioned spices that could only be got by battling vicious batlike creatures at a lake. One commodity that is often forgot is the human.
The trade was not just confined to spices and precious gems, stones and fabrics. Indian and Sri Lankan silks fetched high prices as did Pearls from Papua and the large game life of Africa gained mythical status as Chinese medical cures and aphrodisiacs, a practice that has
today left us with a world far poorer. Arab boats laden with Ivory and Lions skins headed north to China and returned with not only consumable goods, but slaves. It is estimated that between 10 - 18 million people enslaved by Arab Traders between 650AD and the 1960s. Most were used as forced labour, many female slaves were taken as concubines and housemaids. The trade in humans was conducted in both directions, with many African slaves being transported to Asia. In Sri Lanka a small ethnic group have been identified as having no common DNA with any other people on the Sri Lankan Island but common DNA with matrilineal African DNA.
Most of the slaves taken from Asia worked in plantations as agriculture became more sophisticated, with the East African Mascarene Islands being completely populated by slaves when plantations were established such as the tea and sugarcane plantations of Mauritius.
The entire population of the Mascarenes, a combination of Asian, African and Indian has slavery heavily embedded in its population, culture, music, food and outlook on life. Colonialism by Dutch, French and Arabs has left its scars and works of art, yet these islands
are uniquely their own.
In the Mauritian Museum at Mahebourg I looked at the heavy iron shackles slaves were forced to wear around their necks, wrists and feet. From such brutality and lack of regard for the human being these islands have grown into their own identity. While Reunion remains a french overseas territory Mauritius, Rodrigues and Madagascar along with its neighbour the Comoros are independant. While Madagascar struggles with poverty and corruption, it is a country unlike any other. It is a grab bag of animals, plants and people left largely in isolation to emerge from its cocoon into a fully fledged nation of its own. If the land is populated by stolen people, the people have stolen from a blend of their older cultures to create their own uniquely Malagasy culture.
At the same latitude on the other side of Terra Australis, the great southern Land, lies Tahiti and her islands. Also populated and settled by seafarers it has also seen its share of unrest. The Marquisas islands were the land of savages, as were the tuomotos, a land struggling to be left alone until the newborn culture was stamped out first
by missionaries then by the french, where it still remains a French overseas territory. Throughout Melanisia and Polynesia this story was repeated over and over, with Marais and traditional sites being torn down and built on by Missionaries then Colonised, their native tongue banned and a whole new culture forced upon them. Like Madagascar, the people of Melanesia are struggling to bring back their traditional ways while struggling with the demands of a world moving ahead at warp speed.
When man walked out of Africa some 200,000 years ago to begin populating the planet one can only speculate what he took with him. A few lumps of wood for protection? fruits for food? spears for hunting? The trepidation of early man can only be pondered, did he leave Africa for Environmental reasons - climactic change? a catastrophic natural disaster? the consequences of being too successful a species? Did he cast his eye over that hill when the riverbank he stood beside became too crowded, the water scarce, the fruits picked barren and decide to explore a little further to escape his ever multiplying fellow humans in search of newer lands as yet unknown. We will never know,
but we do know the great rivers and mountain ranges acted as road maps and highways, the oceans and stars, waves and clouds he navigated by were the freeways.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.152s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 22; qc: 82; dbt: 0.0771s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
wendy campbell
non-member comment
bring me that horizon, let me swoon n a field of ylang ylang, sea and stars, your sublime...
Being transported back to a time of indulgent ape from angry ape was pure delight. A beautiful time weaving tale of when the best of man was driven by eloquent trade. Thank you.