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Pygmy peoples

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Baka dancers in the East Province of Cameroon
Batwa dancers in Uganda
This article is about the Pygmy people. For other uses, see Special:Prefixindex/Pygmy.

Pygmies (singular: Pygmy) refers to various peoples of central Africa whose adults have an average height of 150 centimetres (4 feet 11 inches) or shorter.[1] The term is also sometimes applied to the so-called Negrito peoples of Asia,[2] and occasionally indiscriminately to individuals of unusually short stature.[2]

Members of so-called Pygmy groups often consider the term derogatory, instead preferring to be called by the name of their ethnic groups.[3] Nevertheless, the term is widely used as no other term has emerged to replace "Pygmy".[4]

Etymology

Main article: Pygmy (mythology)

The term pygmy derives from Greek Pygmaioi and Latin Pygmaei (sing. Pygmaeus) which is literally was a measure of length corresponding to the distance between the elbow and knuckles, used to refer to diminutive people. In Greek mythology the word describes a tribe of dwarfss, first described by Homer, and reputed to live in Ethiopia.[5]

African Pygmies

Origins

A commonly held view is that the Pygmies are the direct descendents of the Late Stone Age hunter-gatherer peoples of the central African rainforest, who were partially absorbed or displaced by later immigration of agricultural peoples, and adopted their Central Sudanic, Adamawa-Ubangian, and Bantu languages. This view has no archaeological support, and ambiguous support from genetics and linguistics. [6] [7] [7][8] There is some common botanical and honey-collecting vocabulary between the Aka and Baka, who are both western Pygmy populations but speak quite different languages. This has been taken by some as the remnants of an indigenous (western) Pygmy language.[citation needed]

Genetically, the eastern Mbuti pygmies are extremely divergent from other human populations, as well as being the shortest of the Pygmy populations, suggesting they are an ancient indigenous lineage. Their closest relatives appear to be the Hadzabe, who live in the savannas east of the forest and were quite short in stature before heavy recent intermarriage with their taller neighbors. Other Pygmy groups which have been genetically tested are not very distinct from their non-Pygmy neighbors, suggesting either that their indigenous ancestry has been diluted through interbreeding with neighboring agricultural populations, or that they have a different ancestry than the Mbuti. Indeed, the genetic mutations responsible for the short stature of the eastern and western Pygmies are different and unrelated, supporting the view of some scientists that the Pygmies, or at least some Pygmies, are the descendants of the initial waves of Bantu and Adamawa-Ubangi speakers who took up living in the deep forest.[citation needed]

There are a number of southern "Twa" populations in Angola and neighboring countries, living in swamps and deserts far from the forest. They are little studied, and it is not known if they are indigenous to the area or more recent migrants from the forest.

Genocide

During the Congo Civil War, Pygmies were hunted down like game animals and eaten. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers. UN human rights activists reported in 2003 that rebels had carried out acts of cannibalism. Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, has asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.[9]

Groups

Distribution of Pygmies according to Cavalli-Sforza

Pygmies live in several ethnic groups in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia.[3] Most pygmy communities are hunter-gatherers, living partially but not exclusively on the wild products of their environment. They trade with neighbouring farmers to acquire cultivated foods and other material items.[3]

There are several Pygmy groups, including:

Asian pygmies (Negritos)

Some so-called Negritos in Southeast Asia (including the Batak and Aeta of the Philippines, the Andamanese of the Andaman Islands, and the Semang of the Malay Peninsula), and occasionally Papuans and Melanesians in adjacent Oceania, are sometimes called pygmies (especially in older literature[citation needed]). Some of them are small-statured, dark-skinned and are hunter-gatherers, like many African Pygmies. However, they are related to Africans, having arrived during migrations from Africa to Southeast Asia and Oceania as much as 60,000 years ago[10][11], and being genetically more closely related to the surrounding Asian populations than to Africans.[10]

The name "Negrito" comes from the Portuguese "little black" and was given by early explorers who assumed the Andamanese they encountered were from Africa. This belief was discarded when anthropologists noted that apart from dark skin and curly hair, they had little in common with any African population, including the African pygmies.[12]

References

  1. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica: Pygmy
  2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.
  3. ^ a b c Forest peoples in the central African rain forest: focus on the pygmies
  4. ^ Hewlett, Barry S. "Cultural diversity among African pygmies." In: Cultural Diversity Among Twentieth-Century Foragers. Susan Kent, ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  5. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary
  6. ^ R. Blench and M. Dendo. Genetics and linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa, Cambridge-Bergen, June 24, 2004.
  7. ^ a b Klieman, Kairn A. The Pygmies Were Our Compass: Bantu and BaTwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900, Heinemann, 2003.
  8. ^ Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca, ed. African Pygmies. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1986
  9. ^ DR Congo Pygmies appeal to UN
  10. ^ a b Thangaraj, Kumarasamy (21 January 2003). "Genetic Affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a Vanishing Human Population" (PDF). Current Biology. 13, Number 2: 86-93(8). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ Survival International, 2002, Siberia to Sarawak: Tribal Peoples in Asia
  12. ^ Liu, James J.Y. The Chinese Knight Errant. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967 (ISBN 0-2264-8688-5)

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to African Pygmies.
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