African Pygmies, What's Behind a Name?

Abstract

Numerous populations spread out across Central Africa have been 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 forty years, Pygmy populations have attracted the interest of biological anthropologists because they were seen as the lively example that the adaptation to the environment shapes the diversity of external physical or physiological characters (e.g. Froment 1993; Perry and Dominy 2009; Campbell and Tishkoff 2010). 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 the Western culture. First, the prevalent historical use of the single exogenous term “Pygmy” to designate more than twenty human groups from the Congo Basin, de facto 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 1960's, such stereotypes have been repeatedly challenged by scientific research. 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 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 the wide diversity of average height across African Pygmy populations and found no height discontinuity between Pygmies and Non-Pygmies—some neighbouring Non-Pygmy populations being also of short stature (Hiernaux 1974, Froment 1993). Finally, it has been highlighted that Pygmies are not exclusive hunter-gatherers, as they often practice fishing and agriculture (e.g. Bahuchet et al. 1989; Bahuchet 1992; Hewlett 1996) and, further challenging stereotypes, Pygmies are not isolated from neighbouring Non-Pygmy populations since these groups of populations have close socioeconomic relationships including intermarriages (e.g. Turnbull 1965; Kazadi 1981; Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982; Hewlett 1996; Joiris 2003).