First settlers

Islands long uninhabited

The four islands are volcanoes that rose from the ocean long before humans arrived. No trace of human occupation is known before the second half of the 1st millennium AD. The oldest dated sites, such as Sima on Anjouan, go back to the 8th–10th centuries; in Mayotte, the site of Dembéni was occupied from the 9th to the 12th century.

Settlement therefore came relatively late, on the scale of the Indian Ocean, by sailors able to cross the Mozambique Channel or follow the coasts from East Africa.

An African language

The Comorian language, in its four forms (Shingazidja, Shimwali, Shindzuani, Shimaore), is a Bantu language of the Sabaki group, very close to Swahili. This kinship shows that the first inhabitants, or at least those whose language prevailed, came from the east coast of Africa. The pottery of the first villages, related to that of this coast, points the same way.

These communities farm, raise livestock, fish and sail. Their villages are built of wood and wattle and daub: coral stone would only appear later.

A very ancient Austronesian presence

The excavations at Sima have yielded grains of rice of two Asian varieties (indica and japonica), mung bean and cotton, dated to the 8th–10th centuries. For Alison Crowther's team (2016), these plants are the earliest archaeological trace of the expansion of the Austronesians, the seafarers from Southeast Asia who also settled Madagascar.

Genetics confirms this mixing: according to Nicolas Brucato's study (2018), the Comoros are the oldest known meeting place of African and Austronesian populations on the Swahili coast. The Malagasy influence, strengthened in the following centuries, is still visible today: in Mayotte, several villages speak Kibushi, a Malagasy language.

Dembéni, Sima and Bagamoyo

The archaeologist Henry T. Wright named this first period the Dembéni phase (9th–10th century), known in Mayotte as in the other islands. At Dembéni, a genuine trading post has yielded ceramics imported from the Persian Gulf and China: the archipelago was already linked to the great sea routes.

On Petite-Terre, the Bagamoyo necropolis holds some of the oldest Muslim-tradition tombs in the archipelago. At Acoua, in north-west Mayotte, burials from the Antsiraka Boira site have been dated to the 10th–11th centuries.

A port of call between three worlds

Set between Africa, Madagascar and the routes leading to the Persian Gulf and India, the islands became a natural port of call. Merchants found water, food and local produce there, which they traded for ceramics and other goods from afar. This role as a go-between, which would bring the archipelago first prosperity and then misfortune, is therefore very old.

What we still do not know

Many questions remain open. We do not know exactly when the first people landed, nor how Africans and Austronesians met and mixed. Few sites have been excavated, especially on Grande Comore and Mohéli.

The traditions tell a different story: the first inhabitants are said to have been djinns, then chiefs whom the tales call fani or bedja are said to have ruled the villages before the sultans. These tales are not chronicles, but they express how old the settlement is and the place of the invisible world in the Comorian imagination. Read: The time of the djinns.