African Pygmies, What’s Behind a Name?

Abstract

African Pygmies, What’s Behind a Name? Paul Verdu and Giovanni Destro-Bisol Keywords African Pygmy, Genetic Diversity, Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Pygmy Stature, Linguistics, Evolution, Adaptation, Interdisciplinary Perspectives Numerous populations spread out across Central Africa were named Pygmies by Western explorers, since the 19th century, in reference to the mythical Pygmy population from Homer (“A people of short stature at war with migrating birds,” Iliad, song 3, v. 1–6). For more than 40 years, Pygmy populations have attracted the interest of biological anthropologists because they are seen as a lively example that the adaptation to the environment shapes the diversity of external physical or physiological characters (e.g., Campbell and Tishkoff 2010; Froment 1993; Perry and Dominy 2009). Some biological anthropologists and geneticists wrongly perceived Central African Pygmies as a homogeneous group with similar cultural, morphological and biological features, and somewhat opposed to non-Pygmy populations (often designated as “Bantu populations,” though they do not necessarily speak Bantu languages which Pygmy populations often speak). This view may be seen as the consequence of two misleading notions widespread in Western culture. First, the prevalent historical use of the single exogenous term “Pygmy” to designate more than twenty human groups from the Congo Basin suggests that common historical, cultural, and even biological or morphological features are shared by Central African Pygmies. Second, Pygmy populations are often viewed as being exclusively forest hunter-gatherers, isolated from non-Pygmy farmers, and living in the same way as ancestral human populations did before the Neolithic revolution. Since the 1960s, scientific research has repeatedly challenged such stereotypes. For instance, cultural anthropologists observed that the various Pygmy populations do not share a common myth of origin. Most of them do not know each other and are unaware of a common designation as “Pygmies” from [End Page 1] outsiders; in fact, the various Aka, Baka, Bongo, Efe (…) Pygmy populations are not a federated group of populations (Bahuchet 1993; Hewlett 1996). Additionally, physical anthropologists have observed a wide diversity of average height across African Pygmy populations and found no height discontinuity between Pygmies and non-Pygmies—some neighboring non-Pygmy populations also are of short stature (Froment 1993; Hiernaux 1974). Finally, highlights are: Pygmies are not exclusively hunter-gatherers—they often practice fishing and agriculture (e.g., Bahuchet et al. 1989; Bahuchet 1992; Hewlett 1996)—and Pygmies are not isolated from neighboring non-Pygmy populations—these groups of populations have close socio-economic relationships including intermarriages (e.g., Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982; Hewlett 1996; Joiris 2003; Kazadi 1981; Turnbull 1965). The Short Stature of African Pygmies The issues raised by the common view that Pygmies form a uniform group are best (but not only) exemplified by extensive research focusing on the short stature of these populations. Three “classical” hypotheses were proposed to explain this phenotype: an adaptation to the hot and humid environment of the rainforest (Cavalli-Sforza 1986), an adaptation to the difficult mobility in a densely forested environment (Diamond 1991), or, finally, the outcome of the scarcity of food resources in the forest (Bailey et al. 1989). A fourth hypothesis was recently proposed: The short stature of Pygmy populations could be an adaptation to the earlier onset of reproductive life in a context of high rates of mortality from parasitism and poor nutrition (Migliano et al. 2007). While being relevant approaches to the understanding of Pygmy height, each one of these hypotheses fails to explain the variability of adult stature observed today within and among the various Central African Pygmy populations when considered separately. Nor can such theories account for the differential stature between specific Pygmy and neighboring non-Pygmy populations that live in comparable climatic, nutritional, or parasitic environments (Becker et al. 2010; Froment 1993; Perry and Dominy 2009). In fact, understanding the evolution of stature differences across Central African populations requires a tremendous effort in gathering much more anthropometrical, physiological, and demographic data than those currently available and previously used. More specifically, one must gather longitudinal data in the various populations designated as Pygmies instead of taking a single Pygmy group (e.g., the widely studied Aka from Central African Republic) as being representative of all Pygmies across Central Africa (Becker et al...