Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
This is the other topic s I also want to critically review a supposed Pygmy West Africa before the mid-late Holocene.
I know many feel pygmy is pejorative but there's no other recognizable term that covers all their ethnies since all of them are not Twa. Pygmy just means "shorties" or "little people," which I don't use because of fantasy race "wee folk." I will accept an alternative term if one exists.
Anyway does the archaeology, physical anthropology, industries/economies, population genetics, etc. in any way support that Shorties were alone in West Africa until the metal ages when non-Shorties as some propose suddenly arrived from the east.
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If the Pygmy physical features are adaptive to a tropical rainforest environment, I would think their range would be restricted to the coastal forest regions if they ever lived in West Africa at all. In fact, during the last glacial period, there barely was any forest on the whole continent:
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I think I had discussed this topic before. It was that modern day West Africans were not always in West Africa. Me personally I believe during the Holocene the Batwa people and Twa people originally inhabited west Africa. While the Sahara was still wet, that's where originally modern day west Africans came from. http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=98viuKQnIWU
^^^That video in a way touches base on what I am saying. Heck a lot of modern day west African ethic groups claim they are not even originally from West Africa. Ethic groups like the Yoruba.
Posts: 1135 | From: Top secret | Registered: Jun 2012
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Cheikh Anta Diop and other historian stated the first inhabitant of Africa south of the Sahara were the Twa and Khoisan, the later West African and Bantu come from the Sahara, the Nile Valley and West asia.
Powerful video by British historian Basil Davidson.Sahara wall images of the green Sahara Maa confederation show horse with saddle, cattle with plow, chariot and man with tunic.Mainstream historian never credited the Saharan for domesticating the horse and inventing the plow and chariot.Basil Davidson also show African migrating from the Sahara to west Africa and the Nile valley.Good historian.
quote:Originally posted by Son of Ra: I think I had discussed this topic before. It was that modern day West Africans were not always in West Africa. Me personally I believe during the Holocene the Batwa people and Twa people originally inhabited west Africa. While the Sahara was still wet, that's where originally modern day west Africans came from. http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=98viuKQnIWU
^^^That video in a way touches base on what I am saying. Heck a lot of modern day west African ethic groups claim they are not even originally from West Africa. Ethic groups like the Yoruba.
For the record Batwa and Twa are the same thing. The prefix 'Ba' or 'Va' in virtually all Bantu languages means 'all' and is meant to designate a group. Thus the whole Twa people would be called Batwa. 'Bantu' itself means 'all people' or 'all humans' since 'ntu' means human or person in Bantu languages.
I agree with Truthcentric, though. Pygmism itself is the result of adaptation to low protein environment which is exactly the case in rainforests. Note that even other large fauna adapted to rainforest conditions are pygmy sized as well including rainforest elephants. Mind you this adaptation not only stunts the growth in stature of these populations but also interferes in the allometric growth of limbs which explains why some Pygmy groups may exhibit cold-adapted like limb proportions. Like Truth said, there were hardly any rainforests during the LGM meaning that pygmism doesn't take that long to take effect.
Does anyone have any genetic info on the various Pygmy populations. I read in a book on African peoples years ago that genetically there could be 4 maybe 5 different 'Pygmy' populations.
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What about the Tellem inhabitants of old Bandiagara (pre-Dogon)? The Dogon described them as "red-skinned" pygmies who lived in make-shift "caves" on the Bandigara rock face:
They left behind artifacts and even skulls but not sure what interpretations surround them. Given what we already can ascertain I wouldn't be surprised if they were in some way related to the "Troglodytes".
-------------------- mr.writer.asa@gmail.com Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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^ 'Troglodyte' is the generic term for cave dwellers in general. There were 'Troglodytes' from Libya, to the eastern desert, to Arabia. And there were even 'Troglodytes' in Europe as well during Roman times.
As for the Tellem specifically, I've only heard about them in excerpts about Dogon legends. If their skulls were found, it would be interesting to see the conclusions about them from craniometric studies.
Posts: 26260 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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What I've noticed is that Euronuts love to fixate on Pygmies (as well as San) and call them 'Palaeo-Africans', even though the Palaeolithic skeletal remains in Africa are almost all of 'normal' stature, and even though Pygmies have made it to our current day and age, like all humans. Euronuts always try to racialize phenotypes that are adaptive, not static.
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Anyway does the archaeology, physical anthropology, industries/economies, population genetics, etc. in any way support that Shorties were alone in West Africa until the metal ages when non-Shorties as some propose suddenly arrived from the east.
Aside from the non-Pygmy nrY E1 bearing predecessors of the Dogon in Mali, the early Holocene skeletal record at Gobrero and Iwo Eleru in Western Africa have yielded no pygmy-like populations. Although, that doesn't mean they weren't there of course.
*NRY E1 (E-M33), which seems to me to be decidedly non-pygmy haplogroup since its Pn2 derrived, seems to have been a big group in Western Africa prior to the influx E-M2 carrying Niger-Congo speakers. Apparently a big portion of it got passed on to the Dogon in Mali, by their predecessors in the region, who were the earliest African pottery producing culture 11kya.
*Pre Niger Congo haplogroup E1 seems to have made its way into Portugal very early, if we're to believe Goncalves et al:
"The prescence in Portugal of both the A and E1 haplogroups may be independent from the slave trade (otherwise E3a would be well represented since it comprises the majority of West African lineages). These findings either suggest a pre-neolithic migration from North Africa or a more recent origin from a founder population of small size that did not carry haplogroup E3a, which is a major component in North African populations today. TMRCA for Portuguese E1 lineages estimated as 22.9 +/- 7.2 ky favors the first scenario"
Remember Casas et al and their dates? Hmm, very interesting. Not the dates I mean (they weren't borne out of in-depth phylogenetic analysis and aren't reproduced elsewhere), but the possible correlation prehistoric mtDNA L1b1 and nrY E1 in Iberia.
*Also:
quote:Data for 80 autosomal loci16 from different African populations showed the western Pygmy Biaka and the eastern Pygmy Mbuti to be closely related, with both these groups more similar to west African than to east African populations (Tishkoff & Kidd 2004). More recently, we have conducted a sequence-based study of 20 genome-wide autosomal regions to determine the mode and timing of divergence between western and eastern Pygmies. This study has revealed an early divergence of the ancestors of PHG and AGR populations ~60,000 years ago, a date that is in perfect agreement with that inferred from the maternally-inherited mtDNA. In addition, our autosomal data indicate that the split of the Pygmies’ ancestors into the western and eastern PHG groups occurred ~20,000 years ago (Patin et al. 2009).
--Van der Veen et al, 2009
^So I guess this means that Pygmies got their short stature at least 20kya, either that or Eastern and Western Pygmies evolved their stature separately.
Note that even other large fauna adapted to rainforest conditions are pygmy sized as well including rainforest elephants. Mind you this adaptation not only stunts the growth in stature of these populations but also interferes in the allometric growth of limbs which explains why some Pygmy groups may exhibit cold-adapted like limb proportions.
Any illustration and accompanying notes detailing this pattern in rain forest elephants and other large fauna?
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Tishkoff and colleagues have found an unexpected surprise in genetic evidence for Pygmy height, which reaches an average of 4 feet 11 inches in Pygmy men in Cameroon. They report in PLOS Genetics today on a set of genes that regulate immune and hormonal processes, and which only secondarily may be linked to height. Pygmies receive an intense assault from pathogens that flourish in the forest and that turn up routinely in their bush-meat diet: expected lifespan is less than 18 years. It may be that genes that protect against microbes may also hinder growth. Diminished stature could be a byproduct of bolstering immune and metabolic defenses and not a direct adaptation to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The study was the most incisive to date looking at the genetics of height in Pygmies. Over many generations, pygmies have interbred with neighboring Bantu populations. The researchers scanned the genomes of 67 Pygmies and 58 Bantus for genetic markers, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, throughout the genome. They found that more Bantu ancestry translated into a taller individual, a confirmation that genes were involved with height differences. They then looked more closely at the genomes of the two groups. A section of chromosome 3 differed greatly in Pygmies, a segment that also turned out through further analysis to show signs of being subject to selective pressures and to be correlated with height.
In the area that stood out, a genetic variant in CISH, a gene known to regulate immune responses and linked to resistance to bacteremia, malaria and tuberculosis, attracted notice. CISH also happens to inhibit production of human growth hormone. Mice genetically engineered to produce high levels of the CISH protein are undersized.
Patterns of Ancestry, Signatures of Natural Selection, and Genetic Association with Stature in Western African Pygmies Joseph P. Jarvis,
Laura B. Scheinfeldt equal contributor, Sameer Soi equal contributor, Charla Lambert equal contributor, Larsson Omberg equal contributor, Bart Ferwerda,Alain Froment, Jean-Marie Bodo, William Beggs, Gabriel Hoffman, Jason Mezey Sarah A. Tishkoff Posts: 42932 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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this is another recent article I'm not sure if it corresponds to the Jarvis et al, Tishkoff conclusions don't have access to the full article. It makes no mention in the abstract of being an immunity adaptation to bushmeat pathogens as did the Tishkoff et al
European Journal of Human Genetics 21, 653-658 (June 2013) | doi:10.1038/ejhg.2012.223
The role of GHR and IGF1 genes in the genetic determination of African pygmies’ short stature
Noémie SA Becker, Paul Verdu, Myriam Georges, Philippe Duquesnoy, Alain Froment, Serge Amselem, Yves Le Bouc and Evelyne Heyer
Abstract African pygmies are at the lower extreme of human variation in adult stature and many evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenotype. We showed in a recent study that the difference in average stature of about 10 cm observed between contemporary pygmies and neighboring non-pygmies has a genetic component. Nevertheless, the genetic basis of African pygmies’ short stature remains unknown. Using a candidate-gene approach, we show that intronic polymorphisms in GH receptor (GHR) and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) genes present outlying values of the genetic distance between Baka pygmies and their non-pygmy Nzimé neighbors. We further show that GHR and IGF1 genes have experienced divergent natural selection pressures between pygmies and non-pygmies throughout evolution. In addition, these SNPs are associated with stature in a sample composed of 60 pygmies and 30 non-pygmies and this association remains significant when correcting for population structure for the GHR locus. We conclude that the GHR and IGF1 genes may have a role in African pygmies’ short stature. The use of phenotypically contrasted populations is a promising strategy to identify new variants associated with complex traits in humans.
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Things should be put in perspective here. The average height of diminutive Central African people(Twa, etc.) male is put at some 4' 11". But the average height of a Japanese female is also 4' 11". Mayan males[from Central America] average 5' 2". Chinese males are reported as 5' 5" in height.
So for the the Chinese(20% of the world's population), Central Africans(Twa, etc.), Maya, etc. there would be much overlap in terms of heights.
The diminutive Central Africans are less than 0.001 of Africa's 1 billion+ population. And given China's population there would obviously be many more Chinese males of 4' 11" than the diminutive Central Africans.
In Europe Southern Europeans are noted for their reduced stature--in some cases approaching dwarfism.
The heights of goups of diminutive average height is no mystery since individuals of such heights are found on all continents. Explanation: genetic drift and selective mating. The same principle explains the average heights of the Tutsis and Dinka--selective mating and genetic drift.
No need to exoticise the Central Africans(Twa, Mbuti, etc.) Eurocentric style.
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And your point? All that band-with for nothing? Why not show a Japanese female next to a Twa or a Mayan or a Chinese or--some well-known Europeans--"high-heels Sarkozy or the Bunga-Bunga dwarf Silvio".
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Donald Trump once infamously said that "I would rather have short guys with yamulkas doing my books than black guys". What was his cut-off height: 5' 3" or 5' 4"?
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The Twa people of Africa were among the first African to peopled the world.They created the first advance civilization worldwide.The Twa stated advance civilization bring them problem.They abandoned their advance civilisation to lived a simple primitive life.That may explain the sudent abandonement of Ancient temple cities in central America and Indochina.
Many Chinese, Japanese and Mayan are the same 5'0" size of the Twa because they are descendant of Twa people.If you look closely you can see their Twa phenotype.Its look like outside Africa the Twa and other African ethnic group mixed with other people and their descendant who are realy the same African people look different.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: And your point? All that band-with for nothing? Why not show a Japanese female next to a Twa or a Mayan or a Chinese or--some well-known Europeans--"high-heels Sarkozy or the Bunga-Bunga dwarf Silvio".
a fair comparision would be people of the same gender, a Japanese man next to a Twa man or a woman compared to a woman. When you see a photo it brings home how small the people look.
However, I see your point:
An Ohio State University study determined that European men during the 17th century averaged 5 feet 5 inches tall, whereas today they are a few inches taller. He attributes this to the abnormally cold weather and widespread political crisis in Europe during that century. The study also found that the Cheyenne people of North America were some of the tallest human beings ever to inhabit earth. He attributes this to the high protein, buffalo based diet of the Cheyenne.
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: Things should be put in perspective here. The average height of diminutive Central African people(Twa, etc.) male is put at some 4' 11". But the average height of a Japanese female is also 4' 11". Mayan males[from Central America] average 5' 2". Chinese males are reported as 5' 5" in height.
So for the the Chinese(20% of the world's population), Central Africans(Twa, etc.), Maya, etc. there would be much overlap in terms of heights.
The diminutive Central Africans are less than 0.001 of Africa's 1 billion+ population. And given China's population there would obviously be many more Chinese males of 4' 11" than the diminutive Central Africans.
In Europe Southern Europeans are noted for their reduced stature--in some cases approaching dwarfism.
The heights of goups of diminutive average height is no mystery since individuals of such heights are found on all continents. Explanation: genetic drift and selective mating. The same principle explains the average heights of the Tutsis and Dinka--selective mating and genetic drift.
No need to exoticise the Central Africans(Twa, Mbuti, etc.) Eurocentric style.
While its true that East Asian relatively short stature might be genetically determined (improved economic conditions doesn't seem to bring their stature up to the level of other well-nourished groups of average height), obviously, the same is not true in the case of Southern Europeans and Pygmies.
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Correction, the same IS true for pygmies, but NOT for Southern Europeans. In the former its not genetically determined, while in pygmies it is.
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You mean to say that if Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Nikolas Sarkozy had eaten better food when they young they would have been taller. Hard to believe that for these 2 height challenged Europeans. It's not food--they and millions of others in Southern Europe are short and squat.
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The Twa aka Anu lived from the Nile Valley to Mali(called Tellen).They lived in Portugal, Germany and England(called Picts and Lapps).They lived in Scandinavia were they are called Finns(Finland name after them).
The Twa lived in Groeland, Canada(called Skraelings), North America(called mounds builders).They lived in the tip of South America where they are called the Fuegians.
Moving West to Hawaii where the Twa were called Menehune.In the Phillipine Islands they were called Negritos by the Spanish.In Indonesia on the Island of Flores skeletons of Twa were called Hobbits.In India we find the Twa in a Islands in the bay of bengals where they are called Andaman Islanders.The Twa are found all over the world.
From the book The First American were African by David Imhotep.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: You mean to say that if Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Nikolas Sarkozy had eaten better food when they young they would have been taller. Hard to believe that for these 2 height challenged Europeans. It's not food--they and millions of others in Southern Europe are short and squat.
But that's a fallacy. Every population has short individuals in their population. The socio-economic factor comes into play so far as genetics allows for it. So, no, if Sarkozy's genetics code for a short stature, improved socio-economic factors would have little say in the matter.
I myself stand 1.83m, which is a tad bit taller than the Dutch average, but unlike some nations I've visited (including the Caribbean, where my parents are from) Southern Europeans have never struck me as noticeably shorter than the people in Amsterdam.
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About prehistoric West Africa. Excavated Stone building of the city of Walata of the Ancient Ghana empire dated to 1000 BC.Some people states Ghana was created in 4000 BC.
75,000 years old ruins of buldings and road found in South Africa and Kenya.African Prehistory need to be rewriten.
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The first Paleolithic man was the Twa who was evolved in Central Africa at the source of the Nile Valley and from here all originated (civilization) and was carried throughout the world.The Twa created religion. They are the first human. Connection between Twa, Khoi, Masaba connected with Nilotic black created religion. The first Nilotic Egyptian Gods were Twa(Ptah, Bes) and the Goddess were Twa.
Pygmy/Twa have an Adam story, God, Garden of Paradise, sacred tree.A noble Pygmy man made of earth and a wicked Pygmy woman who led him to sin.God ban a single fruit,the woman asking the man to eat the fruit.God punnished Pygmy sinners.The Pygmy believed in a father God who was killed.A virgin mother who gave birth to a Savior son who avenged the death of his father.These become Osiris, Isis, Horus of Egypt.
The Pygmy had developed in the distant past a highly technical and advanced type of material culture and that they built boat traveling all over the world.But civilization brought them nothing but bad luck, so prefering happiness to misery, they finaly gave up this high material civilization.Pygmy fossils have been found in all parts of the world.
Pygmy/Twa have an Adam story, God, Garden of Paradise, sacred tree.A noble Pygmy man made of earth and a wicked Pygmy woman who led him to sin.God ban a single fruit,the woman asking the man to eat the fruit.God punnished Pygmy sinners.The Pygmy believed in a father God who was killed.A virgin mother who gave birth to a Savior son who avenged the death of his father.These become Osiris, Isis, Horus of Egypt.
Can you post and cite verbatim quotes from geneticists/anthropologists/archeaologists in support of those assertions?
Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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" Hallet's Pygmy friends told him that in the distant past they developed a highly technical and advanced type of material culture and that they built boats and traveled widely around the world, but that this technical excellence bought them nothing but bad luck, so, preferring happiness to misery, they finally gave up this high material civilisation. There may be a lot of truth in these traditions, for Pygmy fossils have been found in all parts of the world." -John G. Jackson 'Christianity Before Christ'
For twenty years, Jean-Pierre Hallet, an anthropologist, lived in the Congo and studied the people and the culture of the Pygmies of the Ituri Forest and concluded that Christianity originated with the Pygmies.
Jean-Pierre Hallet (1927 – 1 January 2004) was a Belgian (born in Africa) ethnologist, naturalist, and humanitarian best known for his extensive work with the Efé (Bambuti) pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest. He wrote the 1964 autobiographical book, Congo Kitabu, the 1973 ethnologic book Pygmy Kitabu (a more detailed description of life with the Efé and neighboring pygmies), and the 1968 book Animal Kitabu, which details his extraordinary collection of animals in the Congo and in Kenya. He founded the Pygmy Fund for the benefit of the Efé.
Congo Kitabu, Pygmy Kitabu, and Animal Kitabu have been translated into 21 languages, including Chinese and Russian, and a Reader's Digest version of Congo Kitabu was also released.
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I can't access the complete sentence that Jackson may be referring to on p 142, Pygmy Kitabu:
".....build an urban civilization that approached the technological level of our own "
Note that even other large fauna adapted to rainforest conditions are pygmy sized as well including rainforest elephants. Mind you this adaptation not only stunts the growth in stature of these populations but also interferes in the allometric growth of limbs which explains why some Pygmy groups may exhibit cold-adapted like limb proportions.
Any illustration and accompanying notes detailing this pattern in rain forest elephants and other large fauna?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_elephant So-called pygmy elephants are reported to be living in both Africa and Asia. The African pygmy elephant, formerly described as "Loxodonta pumilio", is currently considered to be a tiny morph of the African Forest Elephant (L. cyclotis); see Debruyne et al. (2003).
^ Although it's not shown, the (African) pygmy elephant which is diminutive form of the forest elephant is about 1.7 meters in height.
There is also the pygmy hippo and various species of pygmy antelopes all adapted to forest regions.
Posts: 26260 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Schematics are well and good, but any actual photographs?
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Pygmies are not a homogeneous group but are comprised of multiple groups of different origins.
Genes Shed Light on Pygmy History (2016) Previous research had shown that the common ancestor of the pygmies and Bantu farmers lived about 60,000 to 70,000 years ago.
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