Abstract

A connection between Eastern Africa and South East Asia has long been postulated, largely through ethnographic and the linguistic evidence for the settlement of Madagascar. However, recent fieldwork in the Comoros has opened up the possibility of sustained long distance trade networks across the southern Indian Ocean in the first millennium. The paper will share some of this new evidence, and review the SEA shipwreck finds that provide a technological solution to these lone distant voyages. We will argue that the better documented northern maritime routes are well known, but the southern maritime ‘silk route’ largely neglected.