Pygmy: The forest lovers
Dhrubo Ekramul/Daily Bangladesh
‘Pygmy’ the word refers to the people who are short in size. Many of us usually use this word as the mean of fun. But, there is a race ‘Pygmy.’ Commonly, Pygmies are represented as brutal and uncivilized. But, how they are actually? How many people know about the real lifestyle and background of ‘Pygmy’. Let’s know some in brief about Pygmies.
Basically Pygmy is not the name of an individual race. The word came from the Greek language which means small or short, Pygmy is a common name of a type of people. They are found in central Africa as well as parts of south-east Asia. Pygmy tribes maintain their own culture according to their own beliefs, traditions, and languages, despite interaction with neighboring tribes and various colonists. The Pygmies are considered as the oldest inhabitants of the African continent. The earliest reference to Pygmies was discovered in the tomb of Harkuf, an explorer for the young King Pepi II of Ancient Egypt. The text is from a letter sent from Pepi to Harkuf around 2250 B.C.
Later, more mythological references were found in the Greek literature of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle. Why the Pygmies of West Africa have such short stature, while neighboring groups don’t, has been somewhat of a mystery. Now new research suggests unique changes in the Pygmy’s genome have both led to adaptations for living in the forest as well as kept them short. Researchers analyzed the genomes, the ‘building code’ that directs how an organism is put together, of Western African Pygmies in Cameroon, whose men average 4 feet, 11 inches tall, and compared them with their neighboring relatives, the Bantus, who average 5 feet, 6 inches, to see whether these differences were genetic or a factor of their environment. “There’s been a long-standing debate about why Pygmies are so short and whether it is an adaptation to living in a tropical environment,” study researcher Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “Our findings are telling us that the genetic basis of complex traits like height may be very different in globally diverse populations.”Central to the identity of these peoples is their intimate connection to the forest lands they have lived in, worshiped and protected for generations.