Editing Pygmy peoples (section)

=== Origins ===
Expansion to Central Africa by the ancestors of African Pygmies most likely took place before 130,000 years ago, and certainly before 60,000 years ago.<ref name=":0"/> A commonly held belief is that African Pygmies are the direct descendants of [[Late Stone Age]] hunter-gatherer peoples of the central African rainforest, who were partially absorbed or displaced by later immigration of agricultural peoples, and adopted their [[Central Sudanic]], [[Ubangian]], and Bantu languages.<ref name=Genetics_and_linguistics>{{Cite web |last1=Blench |first1=Roger M. |last2=Dendo |first2=Mallam |title=Genetics and linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa |date=27 June 2004 |publisher=SAFA 2004 |location=Cambridge-Bergen |via=Roger Blench Website |url=http://www.rogerblench.info/Genetics/SAFA%202004%20genetics%20paper.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721174821/http://www.rogerblench.info/Genetics/SAFA%202004%20genetics%20paper.pdf |archive-date=2011-07-21 }}</ref><ref name=Bantu_and_Batwa>{{Cite book |last=Klieman |first=Kairn A. |title=The Pygmies Were Our Compass: Bantu and BaTwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900 |publisher=Heinemann |date=2003 |isbn=978-0-325-07105-3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza|title=African pygmies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MQ8OAQAAMAAJ|access-date=11 October 2011|year=1986|publisher=Academic Press|isbn=978-0-12-164480-2}}</ref>

Some 30% of [[Aka language]] is not Bantu, and a similar percentage of [[Baka language]] is not Ubangian. Much of pygmy vocabulary is botanical, dealing with honey collecting, or is otherwise specialized for the forest and is shared between the two western pygmy groups. It has been proposed that this is the remnant of an independent western pygmy (Mbenga or "Baaka") language. However, this type of vocabulary is subject to widespread borrowing among the Pygmies and neighboring peoples, and the "Baaka" language was only reconstructed to the 15th century.<ref>Serge Bahuchet, 1993, ''History of the inhabitants of the central African rain forest: perspectives from comparative linguistics.'' In C.M. Hladik, ed., ''Tropical forests, people, and food: Biocultural interactions and applications to development.'' Paris: Unesco/Parthenon. {{ISBN|1-85070-380-9}}</ref>

African Pygmy populations are genetically diverse and extremely divergent from all other human populations, suggesting they have an ancient indigenous lineage. Their [[Genetic marker|uniparental markers]] represent the second-most ancient divergence, after those typically found in [[Khoisan]] peoples.<ref name="Tishkoff2009">{{cite journal | title = The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans | journal = Science | year = 2009 | display-authors = 1 | pmid = 19407144 | doi = 10.1126/science.1172257 | last1 = Tishkoff | first1 = SA | last2 = Reed | first2 = FA | last3 = Friedlaender | first3 = FR | last4 = Ehret | first4 = C | last5 = Ranciaro | first5 = A | last6 = Froment | first6 = A | last7 = Hirbo | first7 = JB | last8 = Awomoyi | first8 = AA | last9 = Bodo | first9 = JM | volume = 324 | issue = 5930 | pages = 1035–44 | pmc = 2947357 | bibcode = 2009Sci...324.1035T }}Also see</ref> Recent advances in genetics shed some light on the origins of the various Pygmy groups. Researchers found "an early divergence of the ancestors of Pygmy hunter–gatherers and farming populations 60,000 years ago, followed by a split of the Pygmies' ancestors into the Western and Eastern pygmy groups 20,000 years ago."<ref name=":0">{{cite journal
| last1 = Patin | first1 = E.
| last2 = Laval | first2 = G.
| last3 = Barreiro | first3 = L. B.
| last4 = Salas | first4 = A.
| last5 = Semino | first5 = O.
| last6 = Santachiara-Benerecetti | first6 = S.
| last7 = Kidd | first7 = K. K.
| last8 = Kidd | first8 = J. R.
| last9 = Van Der Veen | first9 = L.
| last10 = Hombert
| first10 = J. M.
| last11 = Gessain
| first11 = A
| last12 = Froment
| first12 = A
| last13 = Bahuchet
| first13 = S
| last14 = Heyer
| first14 = E
| last15 = Quintana-Murci
| first15 = L
| editor1-last = Di Rienzo
| editor1-first = Anna
| title = Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter–Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set
| doi = 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000448
| journal = PLOS Genetics
| volume = 5
| issue = 4
| pages = e1000448
| year = 2009
| pmid = 19360089
| pmc = 2661362
| display-authors = 8
| doi-access = free
}}</ref>

New evidence suggests East and West African Pygmy children have different growth patterns. The difference between the two groups may indicate the Pygmies' short stature did not start with their common ancestor but instead evolved independently in adapting to similar environments, which adds support that some sets of genes related to height were advantageous in Eastern Pygmy populations, but not in Western Pygmy populations.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite web|title = We May Have Been Wrong About How African Pygmies Grow|url = http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150728-african-pygmies-height-science-health-nutrition|website = National Geographic News|access-date = 2015-07-28|first = Rachel A.|last = Becker| date = July 28, 2015|url-status = dead|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150729155612/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150728-african-pygmies-height-science-health-nutrition/|archive-date = 2015-07-29}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title = Growth pattern from birth to adulthood in African pygmies of known age|journal = Nature Communications|date = 2015-07-28|volume = 6|pages = 7672|doi = 10.1038/ncomms8672|pmid = 26218408|pmc = 4525207|language = en|first1 = Fernando V. Ramirez|last1 = Rozzi|first2 = Yves|last2 = Koudou|first3 = Alain|last3 = Froment|first4 = Yves|last4 = Le Bouc|first5 = Jérémie|last5 = Botton| bibcode=2015NatCo...6.7672R }}</ref>

However, [[Roger Blench]]<ref>{{Cite book |author-link=Roger Blench |last=Blench |first=Roger |date=1999 |chapter=Are the African Pygmies an ethnographic fiction |editor-last1=Biesbrouck |editor-first1=Karen |editor-last2=Elders |editor-first2=Stefan |editor-last3=Rossel |editor-first3=Gerda |title=Central African hunter-gatherers in a multi-disciplinary perspective: Challenging elusiveness |publisher=CNWS Leiden University |pages=41–60 |via=Roger Blench Website |url=http://www.rogerblench.info/Anthropology/Africa/Pygmies%20an%20ethnographic%20fiction.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150420030236/http://www.rogerblench.info/Anthropology/Africa/Pygmies%20an%20ethnographic%20fiction.pdf |archive-date=2015-04-20 }}</ref> argues that the Pygmies are not descended from residual hunter-gatherer groups but rather are offshoots of larger neighboring ethnolinguistic groups that had adopted forest subsistence strategies. Blench notes the lack of clear linguistic and archaeological evidence for the antiquity of pygmy cultures and peoples and also notes that the genetic evidence can be problematic. Blench also notes that there is no evidence of the Pygmies having hunting technology distinctive from that of their neighbors, and argues that the short stature of pygmy populations can arise relatively quickly (in less than a few millennia) due to strong selection pressures.