 Adolescent and adult women often also wore a mat bandeau or halter top.It was historically forbidden for women to wear lambas made of cotton or any other material than woven raffia mats, as it was believed this could render them more attractive to men outside their clan, with whom they were forbidden to marry.The Antemoro were reputed across the island for being the only ethnic group to have developed a written form of the Malagasy language, sorabe, which used Arabic script; this form of writing was largely replaced elsewhere by the Latin alphabet under the Merina monarchy in the 19th century.