The Mikea are not remnants of an early hunter-gatherer society. Although researchers remain uncertain when the Mikea first adopted a forest-dwelling, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they have determined that the Mikea were only recently established as a community. The current Mikea population is believed to be descended largely from Masikoro villagers who fled into the forest to escape advancing Merina and Sakalava armies in the 18th and 19th centuries. Colonial French documents dating to 1901 describe hunter gatherers by the name of Mikea living in the southwest of the island. The population is believed to have swelled during the 1947 uprising against French colonial rule, when many Malagasy families left towns and villages to hide in forests across the country. Oil exploration in the 1950s and 1960s entailed cutting paths through the formerly untouched forests of the southwest, which further contributed to the migration of villagers into the forest to adopt the Mikea lifestyle.