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It is assumed that the population of Madagascar was formed through successive migrations of peoples from southeast Southeast Asia, the Arabian peninsula and East Africa and were grafted onto an aboriginal population of unknown origin, called the ''Vazimba''. Once established, all these groups created a common language known as Malagasy, spoken and practiced throughout the island.

According to some assertions, the Malagasy are Africans as their country is not far from the African continent, but this is only true for some groups and not the entire population despite the existence of Bantu and Swahili words in the linguistic vocabulary of north western northwestern Madagascar. This may be explained by the fact the individuals from the other side of the Mozambique Channel were the objects of the slave trade carried out by Arab and Indian merchants, who came to sell slaves in some ports of the big island. Snatched from the African coastal regions such as Somalia and Zanzibar, these slaves intermarried with the indigenous population continuing to speak their own language while practicing that of the host country.

From the early part of the 19th century , eminent scientists from several countries around the world suggest it would be a mistake to consider that all those who have dark skins in Madagascar are of African descent, as among the migrants from southeast Asia there were numbers of Melanesians whose skin colour is similar to that of Africans.

Designated under the collective name of ''mozambika'', the Africans sold in Madagascar were emancipated by a royal edict signed by Queen Ranavalona II in 1877 forbidding their sale and immigration to Madagascar and those released could choose between staying as free men in Madagascar or going home. But as many did not know where they came from they remained and integrated themselves into the population, forming part of the nation's lineage.

The Arabs have left their mark through the Islamisation of the people with whom thay they had lived such as those in north western northwestern Madagascar, some of whom are their descendants. They could have spread their religion during the many centuries of their settlement in the country, but apparently this was not the purpose of their presence in Madagascar.

If these migrations have been highlighted and the actors identified, it is thanks to philology, because according to various researchers, certain words in the Malagasy language have the same roots as the language spoken in the countries of the Malay peninsula, Polynesia, Melanesia and the Philippine islands. As examples of vocabulary common to the Malagasy and these far away peoples, there are those used in the everyday life for numbers, body parts, family, the observed heavenly and earthly phenomena, many plants and other creatures, basic foods and the adjectives designating the five colours. Another basis for thse these assumptions made by several researchers is the extraordinary physical resemblance between individuals from Madagascar and these countriscountries, the different skin colours and the habits and customs. In this context there working tools, looms, blacksmithing, irrigated rice fields and terraced fields, use of tree bark for making cloth, mut mud walls, ''fatidra'' or blood alliance, the achitecture architecture of the houses of Sumatra resembling that of the houses that used to be found in Imerina, outrigger canoes, etc... In short, a culture not found in Africa, providing much evidence for Malayo-Polynesian origins of the Malagasy population in general.