Tribe of little people in Africa. Interesting facts about the smallest people that you did not know before
The first mentions of pygmies were made in ancient Egyptian records dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. Later, ancient Greek historians wrote about pygmies Herodotus, Strabo, Homer. Real existence these African tribes were only confirmed in the 19th century by a German traveler Georg Schweinfurt, Russian explorer Vasily Junker and others.
The height of adult male pygmies is from 144-150 cm in height. Women - about 120 cm. They have short limbs and light brown skin, which serves as excellent camouflage in the forest. The hair is dark, curly, the lips are thin.
Occupation
Pygmies live in forests. For them, the forest is the highest deity - the source of everything necessary for survival. The traditional occupation for most pygmies is hunting and gathering. They hunt birds, elephants, antelopes and monkeys. For hunting they use short bows and poisoned arrows. In addition to various meats, pygmies are very fond of honey from wild bees. In order to get to their favorite treat, they have to climb 45-meter trees, after which they use ash and smoke to disperse the bees. Women collect nuts, berries, mushrooms and roots.
Pygmies live in small groups of at least 50 members. Each group has a special area for building huts. Marriages between members of different tribes are quite common here. Also, absolutely any member of the tribe, whenever he wishes, can freely leave and join another tribe. There are no formal leaders in the tribe. Issues and problems that arise are resolved through open negotiations.
Weapon
Weapons are a spear, a small bow, and arrows (often poisoned). Pygmies trade iron for arrowheads from neighboring tribes. Various traps and snares are widely used.
Pygmies are the most famous dwarf tribes living in the forests of tropical Africa. The main areas of concentration of pygmies today: Zaire (165 thousand people), Rwanda (65 thousand people), Burundi (50 thousand people), Congo (30 thousand people), Cameroon (20 thousand people) and Gabon (5 thousand people).
Mbutis- a tribe of pygmies living in the Ituri forest in Zaire. Most scientists believe that they were most likely the first inhabitants of this region.
Twa (Batwa)- a tribe of pygmies equatorial Africa. They live both in the mountains and on the plains near Lake Kivu in Zaire, Burundi and Rwanda. They maintain close ties with neighboring pastoral tribes and know how to make pottery.
Tswa (batswa)- this large tribe lives near the swamp south of the river Congo. They, like the Twa tribe, live in cooperation with neighboring tribes, adopting their culture and language. Most Tswa are engaged in hunting or fishing.
Baka pygmies inhabit rainforests in southeastern Cameroon, northern Republic of Congo, northern Gabon and southwestern Central African Republic. In February 2016, photographer and journalist Susan Shulman spent several days among the Baka pygmies, reporting on their lives.
Tropical rain forests - their natural environment a habitat. Their main occupations are hunting and gathering; in this harmonious unity with nature they live for centuries, and their world is determined by the presence of forests. Pygmy tribes are scattered across Africa over an area of 178 million hectares.
Pygmies are distinguished from representatives of other African tribes by their miniature size - their height rarely exceeds 140 cm. In the photo above, members of the tribe are conducting a traditional hunting ceremony.
Susan Shulman became interested in the life of the Baka pygmies after hearing about Louis Sarno, an American scientist who has been living among the Baka pygmies in Central Africa for 30 years. rain forest between Cameroon and the Republic of Congo.
Louis Sarno is married to a woman from the tribe, and all these years he has been studying, helping and treating the Baka pygmies. According to him, half of the children do not live to be five years old, and if he left the tribe for at least a year, he would be afraid to return, because he would not find many of his friends alive. Louis Sarno is now in his early sixties, and the average life expectancy of Baka pygmies is forty years.
Louis Sarno not only provides medical supplies, but also does other things: he acts as a teacher for children, a lawyer, a translator, an archivist, a writer and a chronicler for a community of 600 Baka pygmies in the village of Yandoubi.
Louis Sarno came to live with the Pygmies in the mid-80s after he heard their music on the radio one day and decided to go and record as much of their music as possible. And he doesn’t regret it one bit. He has the opportunity to regularly visit America and Europe, but always returns to Africa. You could say that a song led him to the heart of Africa.
Baka Pygmy music is yodeling-like multi-sound chanting set to the natural sounds of the rainforest. Imagine the polyphony of 40 female voices and a drum beat tapped by four men on plastic barrels.
Louis Sarno claims he's never heard anything like it before, and it's divine.
Their hypnotic music usually acts as a prelude to a hunt, as the tribe sings to summon the forest spirit called Bobi and ask him for permission to hunt in his forest.
Dressed in a suit of leaves, the "spirit of the forest" grants permission to the tribe and blesses those who will take part in tomorrow's hunt. In the photo above, a pygmy is about to go hunting with a net.
The diet of the tribe is based on the meat of monkey and blue duiker, a small forest antelope, but in Lately There are fewer and fewer of these animals in the forest. This is due to poaching and logging.
“Poachers hunt at night, they scare the animals with torches and calmly shoot them while they stand paralyzed with fear. The nets and arrows of the tank pygmies can't compete with firearms poachers.
Deforestation and poachers seriously devastate the forest and greatly harm the way of life of the Baka pygmies. Many of these poachers are members of the neighboring Bantu ethnic group, which makes up the majority of the population in the region,” says Susan Shulman.
As the rainforests in which the Baka live are gradually depleted, the future of their forest home is in doubt as it is unclear where this will all lead.
Historically, the Bantu tribe considered the Baka pygmies to be “subhuman” and discriminated against them. Currently, relations between them have improved, but some echoes of the past still make themselves felt.
As the traditional life of the Baka pygmies becomes more difficult and problematic day by day, the younger generation has to look for work in the Bantu-dominated cities.
“Young people are now at the forefront of change. There are very few opportunities for them to earn money. As the forest's resources for hunting are depleted, we have to look for other opportunities - and this is usually only temporary work for the Bantu, who offer, say, $1 for five days of hunting - and even then they often forget to pay,” says Susan.
Do you know how the word “pygmies” is translated? People the size of a fist. This is the smallest people on the planet.
Most people by the word “pygmies” mean short people living in Africa. Yes, this is partly true, but even the African pygmies are not one people. Various nationalities live on the Dark Continent: the pygmies Batwa, Bakiga, Baka, Aka, Efe, Sua, and this is not the whole list. The height of an adult man usually does not exceed 145 centimeters, and a woman - 133 cm.
How do the smallest people on the planet live?
The life of pygmies is not easy. They live in temporary villages in the forests. Why temporary, you ask? The smallest people have a nomadic lifestyle, they are constantly in search of food and look for places rich in fruits and honey. They also have ancient customs. So, if a person dies in the tribe, then he is buried under the roof of the hut and the settlement is abandoned forever.
Near temporary villages, pygmies hunt deer, antelope and monkeys. They also collect fruits and honey. With all this, meat makes up only 9% of their diet, and they exchange the bulk of their production for garden vegetables, metal, fabrics, and tobacco from people who keep farms near the forest.
Little people are considered excellent healers: they prepare medicinal and poisonous potions from plants. It is because of this that other tribes dislike them, as they attribute magical powers to them.
For example, the pygmies have a curious way of catching fish: first, they poison the pond, which causes the fish to float to the surface. And that’s it, the fishing was a success, all that remains is to collect the catch. No gatherings with fishing rods on the shore or harpoon fishing. After a few hours, the poison stops working and the live fish returns to its normal life.
The lifespan of pygmies is very short: from 16 to 24 years. People who live to be 40 years old are truly long-livers. Accordingly, they reach puberty much earlier: at 12 years of age. Well, they start having offspring at the age of fifteen.
Still in slavery
Africa is the most controversial continent. Slavery has long been prohibited throughout the world, but not here. For example, in the Republic of Congo, according to established tradition, pygmies are inherited among the Bantu people. And these are the real slave owners: the pygmies give them their spoils from the forest. But, unfortunately, the small people are forced to endure such treatment, since the “owners” give them the products and goods necessary for survival, without which it is impossible to live in the forest. Moreover, the pygmies use tricks: they can be “slaved” by several farmers at the same time in different villages. If one owner did not provide food, then perhaps another will make him happy.
Pygmy genocide
The smallest people have been under constant pressure from other tribes for many centuries. And here we are talking not only about slavery, but even about... cannibalism! Moreover, in our modern world, in the 21st century. So, during the period civil war in the Congo (1998-2003), pygmies were simply caught and eaten. Or, for example, in one of the African provinces, North Kivu, at one time there was a group working to prepare the territory for mining. And during the cleansing process they killed and ate the pygmies. And some peoples of the Dark Continent generally believe that the flesh of a pygmy will give magical power, and a relationship with a woman from some low-statured tribes will relieve diseases. That's why rape happens very often here.
Of course, all this affects the life of a small people: there are no more than 280 thousand people left, and this figure is decreasing every year.
Why is he so short?
In fact, the miniature nature of these peoples is explained by evolution. Moreover, in different peoples the reasons are different, this is exactly the conclusion scientists came to. Thus, genetic analyzes have shown that in some tribes (for example, among the Sua and Efa pygmies), a child’s growth limiter is activated already in the womb and babies are born very small. And in other nations (Baka), children are born normal, the same as among representatives of European races, but in the first two years they grow very slowly. All these changes at the genetic level are provoked by various factors.
Thus, poor nutrition contributes to short stature: the body of pygmies has decreased in the process of evolution. The fact is that they need much less food to survive than larger nations. It is also believed that the tropics “helped” short stature: after all, body weight affects the amount of heat produced, so large peoples have a much greater chance of overheating.
Well, another theory says that miniature makes life easier in the tropics, making pygmies more nimble, because in impenetrable forests this is an excellent quality. This is how evolution helped little people adapt to their lifestyle and climate.
Interesting Facts about pygmies you didn't know before
Fact No. 1. Many people believe that pygmies live in forests. However, this is not always the case: for example, the Twa pygmies live in deserts and swamps.
Fact No. 2. Moreover, some anthropologists classify the pygmies as dwarf peoples, where the man’s height does not exceed 155 centimeters. In their opinion, pygmies live in different parts of the world: in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bolivia and Brazil. Here, for example, are the Philippine pygmies:
Fact No. 3. Most of the words among pygmies are associated with honey and plants. In general, they have lost their native language and now speak the languages of the peoples around them.
Fact No. 4. Some researchers believe that pygmies are representatives of an ancient people who existed more than 70 thousand years ago.
Fact No. 5. Pygmies were known back in Ancient Egypt. Thus, black dwarfs were brought as gifts to rich nobles.
Fact No. 6. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, pygmy children were sold to zoos in the United States and Europe as exhibits.
Fact No. 7. The smallest people in the world are the pygmies of Efe and Zaire. The height of women does not exceed 132 cm, and that of men - 143 cm.
Fact No. 8. In Africa there live not only the shortest people, but also the tallest. In the Dinka tribe, the average height of a man is 190 cm, and a woman is 180 cm.
Fact No. 9. Pygmies even today do not use a calendar, so they do not know the exact age.
Fact No. 10. A Caucasian child aged 2.5 years is approximately the same height as a five-year-old pygmy.
Pygmies differ from other African tribes in their height, which ranges from 143 to 150 centimeters. The reason for such a small growth of pygmies is still a mystery to scientists, although some researchers believe that their growth is due to adaptation to difficult living conditions in the tropical forest.
Pygmies were sold to zoos!
The origin of the pygmies still remains a mystery to scientists. No one knows who their distant ancestors were and how these little people ended up in equatorial forests Africa. There are no legends or myths that help answer these questions. There is an assumption that in ancient times the pygmies occupied the entire central part of the Dark Continent, and were later forced out by other tribes in rainforests. From Greek, pygmies translates as “people the size of a fist.” The scientific definition interprets pygmies as a group of short Negroid peoples living in the forests of Africa.
Pygmies are mentioned in ancient Egyptian sources of the 3rd millennium BC. e., later Herodotus and Strabo, Homer wrote about them in his Iliad. Aristotle considered the pygmies to be a very real people, although in ancient sources a lot of fantastic things were written about them: for example, Strabo listed them along with big-headed, noseless, cyclops, dog-headed and others mythical creatures ancient period.
It is worth noting that because of their growth, pygmies have suffered many disasters and humiliations since ancient times. Taller Africans drove them out of the most favorable places and drove them into green hell equatorial forests. Civilization also brought them some joy, especially at the beginning of contact with white people. Some travelers and colonial officials captured the pygmies and took them with them to Europe and the USA as a curiosity. It got to the point that pygmies, especially their children, were sold as living exhibits to Western zoos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
It would seem that now these people can live much calmer and more confident in their future, but, alas, this is not so. It's hard to believe, but in the period 1998-2003 during the civil war in the Congo, it happened quite often that pygmies were caught and eaten like wild animals. In the same area, a sect of “erasers” is still operating, whose members are hired to clear the territory of pygmies if mining is planned on it. Cultists kill pygmies and feed on their flesh. Enlightenment has not yet penetrated into the deep layers of the African population, so many inhabitants of the Dark Continent believe that by eating a pygmy, they acquire some kind of magical power that protects them from witchcraft.
The presence of a considerable number of peculiar pygmy slaves will also seem incredible, although slavery is legally prohibited in all countries. Pygmies become slaves in the same Republic of the Congo, and they are even inherited; according to the tradition existing here, their owners are representatives of the Bantu people. No, pygmies do not walk in shackles, but their owner can simply take away from the slaves fruits and meat obtained in the forest, sometimes he still provides them with some kind of provisions, tools and metal for arrowheads. Amazingly, the pygmies do not organize any uprisings against slave owners: as some researchers say, without maintaining relations with the Bantu, things can only get worse for them,
Why are they so small?
The height of pygmies ranges from 140 to 150 cm. The smallest people in the world are considered to be the pygmies of the Efe tribe, in which average height for men it does not exceed 143 cm, and for women - 130-132 cm. Of course, as soon as scientists learned about the existence of pygmies, they immediately had a question - what is the reason for their such insignificant growth? If the small pygmies made up only a small part of their tribe, their diminutiveness could be explained by a genetic failure. However, due to the universal low growth, this explanation had to be immediately discarded.
Another explanation, it would seem, lies right on the surface - pygmies do not have adequate nutrition, and they are often malnourished, which affects their growth. The study showed that diet African pygmies almost the same as their neighboring farmers (the same Bantu), however, their daily volume of food consumed is very small. It is possible that this is why their bodies, and therefore their height, decreased from generation to generation. It is clear that little man Even less food is enough to survive. There was even a very interesting experiment: for a long time, a small group of pygmies was fed to their full capacity, but, alas, neither the pygmies themselves nor their offspring grew up because of this.
There is also a version about the effect of deficiency on the growth of pygmies sunlight. Spending their entire lives under the canopy of a dense forest, pygmies do not receive enough sunlight, which leads to insignificant production of vitamin D by the body. The lack of this vitamin causes inhibition of bone tissue growth, which is why pygmies end up with a very miniature skeleton.
Some researchers believe that the miniature size of pygmies is caused by an evolutionary process that adapts them to life in dense thickets. It is clear that it is much easier for a small and nimble pygmy to make his way through a palisade of trees, fallen trunks, entangled in vines than for a tall European. It is also known that the pygmies are addicted to collecting honey. While searching for honey, pygmy men spend approximately 9% of their lives in trees in search of wild bee habitats. Of course, climbing trees is easier for a person of short stature and weighing up to 45 kilograms.
Of course, the pygmies were carefully studied by doctors and geneticists; they found that the concentration of growth hormone in their blood is not very different from the average indicators of an ordinary person. However, the level of insulin-like growth factor was 3 times lower than normal. According to researchers, this explains the small growth of newborn pygmies. In addition, the low concentration of this hormone in the blood plasma prevents the onset of a period of active growth in pygmy adolescents, who completely stop growing at the age of 12-15 years. By the way, genetic research has made it possible to call the pygmies the descendants of the most ancient people who appeared on Earth about 70 thousand years ago. But scientists did not identify any genetic mutations in them.
The small stature of pygmies is also explained by their short life span. Alas, these little people live on average only from 16 to 24 years; those who reach 35-40 years old among them are already long-livers. Due to small life cycle In pygmies, early puberty occurs, causing inhibition of body growth. Pygmies reach puberty at the age of 12, and the highest birth rate in women is observed at 15.
As you can see, there are many factors that contribute to the small growth of pygmies. Perhaps one of them is the main one, or maybe they all act together. Yes, due to their short stature, some scientists are even ready to distinguish pygmies as a separate race. It is curious that in addition to height, pygmies have other differences from the Negroid race - they have light brown skin and very thin lips.
"Lilliputians" from the rainforest
Now pygmy tribes can be found in the forests of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic. The life of these little people is constantly connected with the forest, they spend the main part of their lives in it, get their food, give birth to children and die. They do not engage in agriculture; their main activities are gathering and hunting. Pygmies lead a nomadic lifestyle; they leave their camp as soon as there is no game, fruit, edible plants, or honey left around the camp. Resettlement occurs within boundaries established with other groups; hunting on someone else's land can become a cause for conflict.
There is another reason for relocation. It happens when someone dies in a small pygmy village. Pygmies are very superstitious, they believe that since death visited them, it means that the forest does not want them to continue living in this place. The deceased is buried right in his hut, funeral dances are held at night, and in the morning, abandoning their simple buildings, the pygmies move to another place.
The main occupation of pygmy men is hunting. Unlike “civilized” hunters who come to Africa to stroke their pride and get hunting trophies pygmies never kill Living being, if there is no need for it. They hunt with bows with arrows poisoned with plant poison and spears with metal tips. Their prey includes birds, monkeys, small antelopes and deer. Pygmies do not store meat for future use; they always divide the spoils fairly. Despite the usual luck of small hunters, the meat they hunt makes up only 9% of their diet. By the way, pygmies often hunt with dogs; they are very hardy and, if necessary, are ready to protect their owner from the most ferocious beast at the cost of their lives.
A significant portion of the pygmies' diet consists of honey and other forest products. Honey is extracted by men who are ready to climb the most tall trees, but women collect the gifts of the forest. Around the camp they look for fruits, wild roots, edible plants, and do not disdain worms, larvae, snails, frogs and snakes. All this goes into food. However, at least 50% of the pygmies’ diet consists of vegetables and fruits, which they exchange with farmers for honey and other forest products. In addition to food, through exchange, the pygmies obtain the fabrics they need, pottery, iron and tobacco.
Every day, a part of the women remains in the village, making a kind of material from tree bark called “tana”, it is from this that the famous aprons of the pygmies are made. For men, such an apron is attached to a leather or fur belt, and they wear a bunch of leaves at the back. But the women wear only aprons. However, the settled pygmies that have already appeared often wear European clothes. Civilization is slowly but persistently penetrating the everyday life of the pygmies; their culture and traditions may become a thing of the past in just a few decades.
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