settle on the island, arriving between 100 and 500 CE. In their outrigger canoes they carried food staples from home including rice, plantains, taro, and water yam. Sugarcane, ginger, sweet potatoes, pigs and chickens were also probably brought to Madagascar by these first settlers, along with coconut and banana. The first concentrated population of human settlers emerged along the southeastern coast of the island, although the first landfall may have been made on the northern coast. Upon arrival, early settlers practiced tavy (swidden, "slash-and-burn" agriculture) to clear the virgin coastal rainforests for the cultivation of crops. They also gathered honey, fruits, bird and crocodile eggs, mushrooms, edible seeds and roots, and brewed alcoholic beverages from honey and sugar cane juice. Game was regularly hunted and trapped in the forests, including frogs, snakes, lizards, hedgehogs and tenrecs, tortoises, wild boars, insects, larvae, birds and lemurs. The first settlers encountered Madagascar's wealth of megafauna, including giant lemurs, elephant birds, giant fossa and the Malagasy hippopotamus. Early Malagasy communities may have eaten the eggs and—less commonly—the meat of Aepyornis maximus, the world's largest bird, which remained widespread throughout Madagascar as recently as the 17th century. While several theories have been proposed to explain the decline and eventual extinction of Malagasy megafauna, clear evidence suggests that hunting by humans and destruction of habitats through slash-and-burn agricultural practices were key factors. Although it has been illegal to hunt or trade any of the remaining species of lemur since 1964, these endangered animals continue to be hunted for immediate local consumption in rural areas or to supply the demand for exotic bush meat at some urban restaurants. As more virgin forest was lost to tavy, communities increasingly planted and cultivated permanent plots of land. By 600 CE, groups of these early settlers had moved inland and begun clearing the forests of the central highlands. Rice was originally dry planted or cultivated in marshy lowland areas, which produced low yields. Irrigated rice paddies were adopted in the highlands around 1600, first in Betsileo country in the southern highlands, then later in the northern highlands of Imerina. By the time terraced paddies emerged in central Madagascar over the next century, the area's original forest cover had largely vanished. In its place were scattered villages ringed with nearby rice paddies and crop fields a day's walk away, surrounded by vast plains of sterile grasses. Zebu, a form of humped