They are not dwarf

Nov 30, 2007 18:21 GMT  ·  By

Europeans regarded them as part of myths for long, the old Egyptian and Greek texts mentioned the existence of very short people in Africa. Ancient Greeks spoke about "Pugmaeus" ("foot" as a measure unit). But in 1874, a German explorer met the first pygmies ever seen by a European in the current Congo republic.

Still, pygmies are not dwarf individuals. Amongst those of pure blood, men have an average height of just 1.45 m (4 ft 10 in) and women of 1.33 m (4 ft, 1in)! They are not a dwarf variant of the Black Africans. Their body proportions are the same with those of other people, that's why their heads look large compared to the rest of the body. But otherwise, they are perfectly proportioned (the dwarfs are deformed).

This is an ancient race and only the Khoi-San people (bushmen), now restricted to South Africa, are older amongst current human races. They are closer to the so-called Asian Blacks, that inhabit much of India, New Guinea, Melanesia and Australia (Aborigines) and have a great deal of genes in many populations from South Asia and Polynesia.

Unlike typical African Blacks, pygmies have hairy bodies and faces and rather aquiline noses, not flattened and also a lighter skin. In fact, pygmies were amongst the first people to have left Africa to colonize Asia, and at a moment, they inhabited large areas of south Asia.

Modern relict populations of pygmy race are found not only in Africa, but also in many parts of southern Asia: Aeta in Philippines, Semang in Malaya, Mani in Thailand, the Andamanese tribes from the Andaman archipelago, Rampasasa from Flores island and many pygmy tribes inhabiting the mountains of New Guinea or in Vanuatu archipelago. A pygmy population went extinct in the middle of the 20th century in northeastern Australia (Queensland).

Pygmies were restricted to the most inhospitable places, isolated from the surrounding populations, like dense tropical forests, where they can still bear their traditional life style of hunters-gatherers, like humans did 200,000 -10.000 years ago.

Two millennia ago, pygmies inhabited most of Central Africa (Congo basin), but when the Bantu people (typical taller Black Africans) migration started from southeastern Nigeria, these newly arrived tribes, practicing agriculture and having an advanced iron technology, displaced easily the Stone Age pygmies.

Today, pygmies lost their initial languages, speaking neighboring Bantu idioms. In fact, they have to speak those languages, as they trade with their neighbors. Today, in Africa pygmies are found in Gabon, Camerun, Zaire, Congo, Central African Republic, Rwanda and Burundi. It is believed there are around 200.000 pygmies. African pygmies call themselves baKola, baBongo, baAka, baMbenzele, baTwa or baMbuti.

Pygmies live in "villages" (rather camps) made of 10-15 huts, placed in a circle. The huts are built by women from forest branches and leaves, resembling a cupola and are extremely small (even for the height of the pygmies, being a little more than 1 m (3 ft) height, so they must go on all fours to get inside. Inside they make a fire used for preparing the food and keeping away the wild animals. The huts are just sleeping places and rain shelters, as pygmy's life deploys outside.

Their settlements are rather camps, because pygmies are nomadic people. Efforts to settle them have had little success and sometimes they disappear for months in the heart of the forest.

Pygmies are usually monogamous but they can divorce easily or separate for living with another partner. The father or the oldest member of the camp is the most respected person, but there is not an authoritative leader. Children are extremely priced by the pygmies.

Pygmies enjoy playing music and use drums made of hollow tree trunks covered by a skin patch, copied from the Bantu people, and reed-made panpipes. They dance in a very expressive and agitated way, imitating the movements of the animals they want to hunt, as they believe this way they put a spell on the animals, hunting them easier.

Pygmies do not practice agriculture, their main source of food being the animals they hunt. In fact, their only domestic animals are dogs employed for hunting. They are extremely resistant and have special senses for detecting the prey in the dense forest. They use bows with arrows (poisoned with plant venoms that paralyze even the elephant hearts!), spears, maces and sometimes knifes, axes and the hunting webs, made of vines. They rarely use traps, heavily used by Bantu tribes. They can also use crossbows, a Bantu weapon.

Like Bushmen, they hunt on the run and in groups, chasing the prey till they can shoot their arrows. Pygmies hunt everything, from monkeys and birds to buffaloes, squirrels and other rodents, antelopes, wild pigs, and even the largest animals of the forest, the elephants.

When the hunt is abundant, they eat enormously, as the aliments can not be stored, and after that they can live for many weeks on minimal food. Hunt does not provide a steady supply, that's why the women's and children's task of gathering food is important: they collect forest fruit, berries, fungi, nuts, leaves, roots, rodents, snakes, lizards, frogs, termites and other insects, caterpillars, larvae, worms and honey. Surrounding Bantu people get these products mainly through trade with the pygmies.

In fact, pygmies make barter with the neighboring Black people: they offer extra hunt meat and the other forest products, receiving weapons, pots, knives, maces, axes, salt, fabrics, palm oil, manioc, green bananas, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. Sometimes, pygmies are asked to work on coffee or cacao plantations. They work for a few weeks, but after being paid they disappear for months deep in the forest.

Pygmies have an excellent knowledge of the forest pharmacopeia, knowing plants that cure from gut worms to snake bites and eye diseases. They are very reticent in their relations with the neighboring people, as throughout time these varied from scorn to racism (being considered inferior and less intelligent by tall African people).

During the recent civil war from Zair, Lendu soldiers even committed acts of cannibalism against the pygmies. The Lendu superstition says that the pygmy viscera transmits magic powers, invulnerability and courage to the consumer.

During the years of conflict, the pygmies entered deeper into the forest, but they never abandoned it. Now, they got out of the forest, extremely frightened by the cannibalism accounts, joining the waves of refugees and having to survive as refugees in a hostile environment. About 3,000 of them have fled to neighboring countries.

Weakly adapted to the sunlight and food offered in the refugee camps (they still transport lighted fire and never eat raw food, including bananas and forest fruit, which are always roasted), many died of diseases.

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African pygmies
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