A.D 830: A storm sends an Indonesian trading ship drastically off course. Months later, dozens of ragged survivors make landfall en an island off the southeast coast of Africa, more than 3,000,miles from home. Today, Murray Cox, a computational biologist at New Zealand Masses University, says a scenario like this may describe.the gloomy origins of the first permanent settlement on. Madagascar, home to about 22 million 2 people today. Genetic and linguistic studied suggest the islands native Malagasypeople are mainly of Indonesian descent. The idea of early Indonesians traveling 3,000 miles to the island intrigued. Cox. Its a surprisingly long distance to come, he says. So he used computer modeling to purse the clue, running through 40 million settlement simulations. Cox soon pinpointed one that would explain the una pattern evident in Madagascar today. Surprisingly, the current populations descends primarily from just 30 or so Indonesian women who arrived 12 centuries ago. His conclusion is supported by prior finding that about 30 percent of Malagasy have the same mitechondrial una, which is passed from mother to child-far less diversity than in typical hum populations, which share less than 2 percent. This suggests rapid, recent growtg from a very small founded populations, Cox says. It is unclear how Madagascars founding mothers (and the fathers who must have been with them) arrived. Cox proposed seafaring merchants throws off course, or refugees fleeing political strive, the latter could oxplain why women, usually not found on trade ships, were on board. Now, Cox plans to explore whether small founding groups are characteristics of other early island settlement, including Hawaii. There may be general rules for settling islands, he says In presenting the ideas, the author starts by