Download Civilizations of Africa: The History and Culture of the Mbuti (Pygmy) AudioBook Free
- Points out the origins, background, religion, and interpersonal composition of the Mbuti
- Includes ancient information of pygmies and theories about their progression.
"[T]heir eyes experienced an untameable wildness about them that struck me as very remarkable." (French-American explorer Paul du Chaillu, 1867) The indigenous Africans known as pygmies have interested outsiders for thousands of years. Within the 2200s BC, the Egyptian pharaoh Pepi II described one as a "dancing dwarf of the god from the land of spirits", and the Ancient Greeks were also familiar with them. Homer makes mention of pygmies in
The Iliad, and Herodotus recounted the encounters of any Persian explorer who encountered "dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the hand tree", on the american coastline of Africa. In fact the term
pygmy comes from the Greek word for "dwarfish". And in addition, foreigners' involvement in pygmies has never waned. When medieval Europeans first traveled to Africa and elements of Asia, many of them were stunned when they encountered people who have been considerably smaller than the average height. Possibly the most famous consideration comes from the renowned Marco Polo, who was so puzzled about individuals known as pygmies that he refused to trust these were actually human. In his famous consideration, Marco Polo wrote about seeing a few of them in Indonesia, "I might tell you additionally that when people buying pygmies which they allege to come from India, 'tis all a rest and a cheat...for nowhere in India nor somewhere else on the globe were there ever before men seen so small as these pretended pygmies." Marco Polo presumed that the pygmies were actually monkeys that individuals manipulated and shaved to resemble smaller people. Today, of course, anthropologists know a lot more about the pygmies, a collective of indigenous groups in Africa who remain defined by the fact that they have an average height of less than five feet high.
