History of Madagascar
The history of Madagascar is distinguished clearly by the early isolation of the landmass from the ancient supercontinents containing Africa and India, and by the island's late colonization by human settlers arriving in outrigger canoes from the Sunda islands between 200 BC and 500 AD. These two factors facilitated the evolution and survival of thousands of endemic plant and animal species, some of which have gone extinct or are currently threatened with extinction due to the pressures of a growing human population