African pygmy falcon video12/21/2023 A descriptive term that has seen some use since the 2000s is "Central African foragers". There is no clear replacement for the term "Pygmy" in reference to the umbrella group. "African Pygmy" is used for disambiguation from "Asiatic Pygmy", a name applied to the Negrito populations of Southeast Asia.ĭembner (1996) reported a universal "disdain for the term 'pygmy '" among the Pygmy peoples of Central Africa: the term is considered a pejorative, and people prefer to be referred to by the name of their respective ethnic or tribal groups, such as Bayaka, Mbuti and Twa. Schweinfurth to prove that pygmies actually exist in Africa" (referencing Georg August Schweinfurth's The Heart of Africa, published 1873). A commentator wrote in 1892 that, thirty years ago (viz., in the 1860s), "nobody believed in the existence of African dwarf tribes" and that "it needed an authority like Dr. In the 1860s, two Western explorers, Paul Du Chaillu and Georg Schweinfurth, claimed to have found the mythical "Pygmies". However, the term was used diffusely, and treated as unsubstantiated claims of "dwarf tribes" among the Bushmen of the interior of Africa, until the exploration of the Congo basin. The use of "Pygmy" in reference to the small-framed African hunter-gatherers dates to the early 19th century, in English first by John Barrow, Travels Into the Interior of Southern Africa (1806). The word is derived from πυγμή pygmē, a term for " cubit" (lit. The term Pygmy, as used to refer to diminutive people, derives from Greek πυγμαῖος pygmaios (via Latin Pygmaeus, plural Pygmaei), a term for "dwarf" from Greek mythology. Name Congo Pygmy father and son ( Belgian Congo at War, 1942) Pygmy family posing with a European man for scale ( Collier's New Encyclopedia, 1921) A group of Pygmy men from Nala ( Haut-Uele, northeastern Congo) posing with bows and arrows ( c. West African hunter-gatherers, many of whom dwelt in the forest–savanna region, were ultimately acculturated and admixed into larger groups of West African agriculturalists, akin to the migratory Bantu-speaking agriculturalists and their encounters with Central African hunter-gatherers. The number does not include Southern Twa populations, who live outside of the Central Africa forest environment, partly in open swamp or desert environments.Īdditionally, West African hunter-gatherers may have dwelled in western Central Africa earlier than 32,000 BP and dwelled in West Africa between 16,000 BP and 12,000 BP until as late as 1000 BP or some period of time after 1500 CE. A total number of about 900,000 Pygmies were estimated to be living in the central African forests in 2016, about 60% of this number in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most contemporary Pygmy groups are only partially foragers and partially trade with neighboring farmers to acquire cultivated foods and other material items no group lives deep in the forest without access to agricultural products. They are assumed to be descended from the original Middle Stone Age expansion of anatomically modern humans to Central Africa, albeit substantially affected by later migrations from West Africa, from their first appearance in the historical record in the 19th century limited to a comparatively small area within Central Africa, greatly decimated by the prehistoric Bantu expansion, and to the present time widely affected by enslavement at the hands of neighboring Bantu, Ubangian and Central Sudanic groups. They are notable for, and named for, their short stature (described as " pygmyism" in anthropological literature). The more widely scattered (and more variable in physiology and lifestyle) Southern Twa are also grouped under the term Pygmoid. the central and southern Batwa, or Twa ( Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Angola and Namibia).the eastern Bambuti, or Mbuti, of the Congo basin ( DRC).The western Bambenga, or Mbenga ( Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic),.They are divided into three roughly geographic groups: The African Pygmies (or Congo Pygmies, variously also Central African foragers, "African rainforest hunter-gatherers" (RHG) or "Forest People of Central Africa") are a group of ethnicities native to Central Africa, mostly the Congo Basin, traditionally subsisting on a forager and hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Baka dancers in the East Province of Cameroon (2006) Aka mother and child, Central African Republic (2014) A map showing the distribution of Congo Pygmies and their languages according to Bahuchet (2006).
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