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123-400: They are notable for, and named for, their short stature (described as " pygmyism " in anthropological literature). They are assumed to be descended from the original Middle Stone Age expansion of anatomically modern humans to Central Africa, albeit substantially affected by later migrations from West Africa, from their first appearance in the historical record in the 19th century limited to

246-491: A death squad known as Les Effaceurs ("the erasers") who wanted to clear the land of people to open it up for mineral exploitation. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman", and some say their flesh can confer magical powers. Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognize cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide . According to Minority Rights Group International there

369-653: A Cameroonian musical artist. Polyphonic music is found among the Aka–Baka and the Mbuti, but not among the Gyele (Kola) or the various groups of Twa. In the Republic of Congo , where Pygmies are estimated to make up between 1.2% and 10% of the population, many Pygmies live as slaves to Bantu masters. The nation is deeply stratified between these two major ethnic groups. The Pygmy slaves belong from birth to their Bantu masters in

492-585: A blend of typological and racial criteria. Thus, Friedrich Müller , in his ambitious classification (1876–88), separated the 'Negro' and Bantu languages. Likewise, the Africanist Karl Richard Lepsius considered Bantu to be of African origin, and many 'Mixed Negro languages' as products of an encounter between Bantu and intruding Asiatic languages. In this period a relation between Bantu and languages with Bantu-like (but less complete) noun class systems began to emerge. Some authors saw

615-494: A branch co-ordinate with Niger–Congo as a whole; consequently, he renamed the family Congo-Kordofanian , later Niger–Kordofanian . Greenberg's work on African languages, though initially greeted with scepticism, became the prevailing view among scholars. Bennet and Sterk (1977) presented an internal reclassification based on lexicostatistics that laid the foundation for the regrouping in Bendor-Samuel (1989). Kordofanian

738-481: A case study on the Pygmies of Africa and concluded that deforestation has greatly affected their everyday lives. Pygmy culture is threatened today by the forces of political and economic change. Short stature Short stature refers to a height of a human which is below typical. Whether a person is considered short depends on the context. Because of the lack of preciseness, there is often disagreement about

861-439: A clear preference for open syllables of the type CV (Consonant Vowel). The typical word structure of Proto–Niger–Congo (though it has not been reconstructed) is thought to have been CVCV, a structure still attested in, for example, Bantu, Mande and Ijoid – in many other branches this structure has been reduced through phonological change. Verbs are composed of a root followed by one or more extensional suffixes. Nouns consist of

984-603: A common ancestral population. Moreover, most Pygmy-like groups around the world dwell in tropical forests, and hence are likely to have iodine-deficient diets. The possibility that independent adaptations to an iodine-deficient diet might therefore have contributed to the convergent evolution of the short stature phenotype in Pygmy-like groups around the world deserves further investigation. The African Pygmies are particularly known for their vocal music, usually characterized by dense contrapuntal improvisation. Simha Arom says that

1107-487: A comparatively small area within Central Africa, greatly decimated by the prehistoric Bantu expansion , and to the present time widely affected by enslavement at the hands of neighboring Bantu , Ubangian and Central Sudanic groups. Most contemporary Pygmy groups are only partially foragers and partially trade with neighboring farmers to acquire cultivated foods and other material items; no group lives deep in

1230-436: A consequence of genetic alterations in the thyroid hormone pathway. [...] [T]his would suggest that short stature [...] arose as an indirect consequence of selection in response to an iodine-deficient diet. Second, since different genes in the thyroid hormone pathway show signals of selection in Mbuti vs. Biaka Pygmies, this would suggest that short stature arose independently in the ancestors of Mbuti and Biaka Pygmies, and not in

1353-461: A disproportionate influence on conceptions of what Proto–Niger–Congo may have been like. The only stage higher than Proto-Bantu that has been reconstructed is a pilot project by Stewart, who since the 1970s has reconstructed the common ancestor of the Potou-Tano and Bantu languages, without so far considering the hundreds of other languages which presumably descend from that same ancestor. Over

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1476-517: A form in Bantu and in Atlantic languages, or between Bantu and Mande, we have all grounds to trace this form back to Niger–Congo. If we establish such a relationship between Mel and Kru or between Mande and Dogon, we don't have enough reason to claim it Niger–Congo. In other words, all Niger–Congo languages are equal, but Bantu languages are "more equal" than the others." Glottolog (2013) accepts

1599-452: A girl who is predicted to be 146 centimetres (4 ft 9 in) as an adult may result in her being 151 centimetres (4 ft 11 in) instead. Increasing final height in children with short stature may be beneficial and could enhance health-related quality of life outcomes, barring troublesome side effects and excessive cost of treatments. The cost of treatment depends on the amount of growth hormone given, which in turn depends on

1722-959: A group of 45 indigenous organizations successfully petitioned the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) government, and the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Indigenous Pygmy Peoples, the first legislation in the country that recognizes and safeguards the specific rights of the Indigenous pygmy peoples, was signed into law. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the Ituri Conflict , Ugandan backed rebel groups were accused by

1845-654: A group of Niger–Congo language speakers who migrated to the area at some point in prehistory where they were an isolated linguistic community from the beginning. There is more agreement regarding the place of origin of Benue–Congo , the largest subfamily of the group. Within Benue–Congo, the place of origin of the Bantu languages as well as time at which it started to expand is known with great specificity. Blench (2004), relying particularly on prior work by Kay Williamson and P. De Wolf, argued that Benue–Congo probably originated at

1968-688: A major organ system, mistreatment, treatment with certain drugs, chromosomal deletions. Human growth hormone (HGH) deficiency may occur at any time during infancy or childhood, with the most obvious sign being a noticeable slowing of growth. The deficiency may be genetic. Among children without growth hormone deficiency , short stature may be caused by Turner syndrome or Noonan syndrome , chronic kidney disease , being small for gestational age at birth, Prader–Willi syndrome , Wiedemann-Steiner syndrome , or other conditions. Genetic skeletal dysplasias also known as osteochondrodysplasia usually manifest in short-limbed disproportionate short stature. When

2091-521: A modern western Central African hunter-gatherer unit, a modern West African unit, existing locally before 8000 BP, and a modern East African /West African unit likely from further north in the regions of the Sahel and Sahara . The two earlier Shum Laka foragers from 8000 BP and two later Shum Laka foragers from 3000 BP show 5000 years of population continuity in region. Yet, modern peoples of Cameroon are more closely related to modern West Africans than to

2214-552: A number of cases correspond to modern groupings. An early sketch of the extent of Niger–Congo as one language family can be found in Koelle's observation, echoed in Bleek (1856), that the Atlantic languages used prefixes just like many Southern African languages. Subsequent work of Bleek, and some decades later the comparative work of Meinhof , solidly established Bantu as a linguistic unit. In many cases, wider classifications employed

2337-526: A period of isolation, during which current phenotype differences between Pygmies and Bantu farmers accumulated, Pygmy women started marrying male Bantu farmers (but not the opposite). This trend started around 40,000 years ago, and continued until several thousand years ago. Subsequently, the Pygmy gene pool was not enriched by external gene influxes. Mitochondrial haplogroup L1c is strongly associated with pygmies, especially with Bambenga groups. L1c prevalence

2460-456: A relationship that the Bantus call a time-honored tradition. Even though the Pygmies are responsible for much of the hunting, fishing and manual labor in jungle villages, Pygmies and Bantus alike say Pygmies are often paid at the master's whim: in cigarettes, used clothing, or even nothing at all. In 2022, after decades of facing these conditions and working to get legal protections for the Pygmies,

2583-462: A result of discovery of numerous related forms, for example, in Mande and Adamawa. It appeared as a result of comparison between the Bantu languages, for which the classical comparative method was possible to be applied and which were reliably reconstructed, with other African languages. Niger–Congo does not exist without Bantu. We need to say clearly that if we establish a genetic relationship between

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2706-407: A root originally preceded by a noun class prefix of (C)V- shape which is often eroded by phonological change. Several branches of Niger–Congo have a regular phonological contrast between two classes of consonants. Pending more clarity as to the precise nature of this contrast, it is commonly characterized as a contrast between fortis and lenis consonants. Many Niger–Congo languages' vowel harmony

2829-600: A series of articles published between 1949 and 1954, he argued that Westermann's 'West Sudanic' and Bantu formed a single genetic family, which he named Niger–Congo; that Bantu constituted a subgroup of the Benue–Congo branch; that Adamawa-Eastern, previously not considered to be related, was another member of this family; and that Fula belonged to the West Atlantic languages. Just before these articles were collected in final book form ( The Languages of Africa ) in 1963, he amended his classification by adding Kordofanian as

2952-498: A set of presently extinct Sub-Saharan West African languages . In the northeastern region of Nigeria , Jalaa , a language isolate, may have been a descending language from the original set(s) of languages spoken by West African hunter-gatherers. Genetic studies have found evidence that African Pygmies are descended from the Middle Stone Age people of Central Africa, with a separation time from West and East Africans of

3075-434: A single sound, however, the person using this instrument would wield their breath and inhale making high-pitched sounds; this allows the individual to make polyrhythmic music using a one-note instrument. Along with the different sounds of the breath and the n'dehou, the musician may also stomp their feet or tap on their chest to add even more dimension and complexity to the music. The n'dehou was popularized by Francis Bebey ,

3198-780: A split between eastern and western pygmy groups about 20,000 years ago. Ancient DNA was able to be obtained from two Shum Laka foragers from the early period of the Stone to Metal Age, in 8000 BP, and two Shum Laka foragers from the late period of the Stone to Metal Age, in 3000 BP. The mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome haplogroups found in the ancient Shum Laka foragers were Sub-Saharan African haplogroups. Two earlier Shum Laka foragers were of haplogroup L0a2a1 – broadly distributed throughout modern African populations – and two later Shum Laka foragers were of haplogroup L1c2a1b – distributed among both modern West and Central African agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers. One earlier Shum Laka forager

3321-443: A state level, Pygmies are not considered citizens by most African states, and are refused identity cards, deeds to land, health care and education access. There are roughly 500,000 Pygmies remaining in the rainforest of Central Africa. This population is rapidly decreasing as poverty, intermarriage with Bantu peoples, Westernization, and deforestation gradually destroy their way of life and culture. The greatest environmental problem

3444-599: A valid genealogical group. Likewise, Mande is often assumed to be the second-most distant branch based on its lack of the noun-class system prototypical of the Niger–Congo family. Other branches lacking any trace of the noun-class system are Dogon and Ijaw, whereas the Talodi branch of Kordofanian does have cognate noun classes, suggesting that Kordofanian is also not a unitary group. Pozdniakov (2012) stated: "The hypothesis of kinship between Niger–Congo languages didn't appear as

3567-529: Is [+ATR], the vowels appear in their underlying form. This form of vowel harmony control is best exhibited in West African languages. For example, in Nawuri, the diminutive suffix /-bi/ will cause the underlying [−ATR] vowels in a word to become phonetically [+ATR]. There are two types of vowels which affect the harmony process. These are known as neutral or opaque vowels. Neutral vowels do not harmonize to

3690-457: Is a geographic grouping, not a genetic one, named for the Kordofan region. These are minor languages, spoken by a total of about 100,000 people according to 1980s estimates. Katla and Rashad languages show isoglosses with Benue–Congo that the other families lack. The endangered or extinct Laal , Mpre and Jalaa languages are often assigned to Niger–Congo. Niger–Congo as it is known today

3813-634: Is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa . It unites the Mande languages , the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger–Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. Austronesian has almost as many member languages, although this

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3936-530: Is a ten-vowel language. This is a language in which all of the vowels of the language participate in the harmony system, producing five harmonic pairs. Vowel inventories of this type are still found in some branches of Niger–Congo, for example in the Ghana Togo Mountain languages . However, this is the rarer inventory as oftentimes there are one or more vowels that are not part of a harmonic pair. This has resulted in seven- and nine-vowel systems being

4059-407: Is based on the [ATR] ( advanced tongue root ) feature. In this type of vowel harmony, the position of the root of the tongue in regards to backness is the phonetic basis for the distinction between two harmonizing sets of vowels. In its fullest form, this type involves two classes, each of five vowels. The roots are then divided into [+ATR] and [−ATR] categories. This feature is lexically assigned to

4182-483: Is characterised by the noun class systems of its languages. Atlantic–Congo largely corresponds to Mukarovsky's "Western Nigritic" phylum. The polyphyletic Atlantic group accounts for about 35 million speakers as of 2016, mostly accounted for by Fula and Wolof speakers. Atlantic is not considered to constitute a valid group. The putative Niger–Congo languages outside of the Atlantic–Congo family are centred in

4305-655: Is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language ; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540. The proposed family would be the third-largest in the world by number of native speakers, with around 700 million people as of 2015. Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger–Congo speaking population. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba , Igbo , Fula , Lingala , Ewe , Fon , Ga-Dangme , Shona , Sesotho , Xhosa , Zulu , Akan , and Mooré . The most widely spoken by

4428-578: Is derived from πυγμή pygmē, a term for " cubit " (lit. "fist"), suggesting a diminutive height. The use of "Pygmy" in reference to the small-framed African hunter-gatherers dates to the early 19th century, in English first by John Barrow, Travels Into the Interior of Southern Africa (1806). However, the term was used diffusely, and treated as unsubstantiated claims of "dwarf tribes" among the Bushmen of

4551-437: Is expensive and requires many years of injections with human growth hormones. The result depends on the cause, but is typically an increase in final height of about 5 to 10 centimetres (2.0 to 3.9 in) taller than predicted. Thus, treatment takes a child who is expected to be much shorter than a typical adult and produces an adult who is still obviously shorter than average. For example, several years of successful treatment in

4674-637: Is extensive evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape of Pygmies, and they have urged the International Criminal Court to investigate a campaign of extermination against pygmies. Although they have been targeted by virtually all the armed groups, much of the violence against Pygmies is attributed to the rebel group the Movement for the Liberation of Congo , which is part of the transitional government and still controls much of

4797-433: Is helping to identify clusters and units that allow for the application of the historical-comparative method. Only the reconstruction of lower-level units, instead of "big picture" contributions based on mass comparison, can help to verify (or disprove) our present concept of Niger–Congo as a genetic grouping consisting of Benue–Congo plus Volta–Niger, Kwa, Adamawa plus Gur, Kru, the so-called Kordofanian languages, and probably

4920-497: Is supported. The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) also groups many Niger–Congo branches together. Dimmendaal , Crevels, and Muysken (2020) stated: "Greenberg's hypothesis of Niger–Congo phylum has sometimes been taken as an established fact rather than a hypothesis awaiting further proof, but there have also been attempts to look at his argumentation in more detail. Much of the discussion concerning Niger–Congo after Greenberg's seminal contribution in fact centered around

5043-445: Is that Kordofanian languages are part of the Niger–Congo language family and that these may be the first of the many languages still spoken in that region to have been spoken in the region. The evidence is insufficient to determine if this outlier group of Niger–Congo language speakers represents a prehistoric range of a Niger–Congo linguistic region that has since contracted as other languages have intruded, or if instead, this represents

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5166-461: Is that there is articulatory difficulty in advancing the tongue root when the tongue body is low in order to produce a low [+ATR] vowel. Therefore, the vowel inventory for nine-vowel languages is generally: And seven-vowel languages have one of two inventories: Note that in the nine-vowel language, the missing vowel is, in fact, [ə], [a]'s counterpart, as would be expected. The fact that ten vowels have been reconstructed for proto-Ijoid has led to

5289-480: Is used for disambiguation from "Asiatic Pygmy", a name applied to the Negrito populations of Southeast Asia. Dembner (1996) reported a universal "disdain for the term 'pygmy ' " among the Pygmy peoples of Central Africa: the term is considered a pejorative, and people prefer to be referred to by the name of their respective ethnic or tribal groups, such as Bayaka , Mbuti and Twa . There is no clear replacement for

5412-579: The Central Sudanic and Ubangian phyla beginning after about 5,500 years ago , and, beginning about 3,500 years ago , by the Bantu , adopting their languages. Substantial non- Bantu and non- Ubangian substrates have been identified in Aka and in Baka, respectively, on the order of 30% of the lexicon. Much of this vocabulary is botanical, deals with honey harvesting , or is otherwise specialized for

5535-479: The Kordofanian branches ( Lafofa , Talodi and Heiban ) or the difficult-to-classify Laal language have been demonstrated to be Atlantic–Congo languages. It otherwise accepts the family but not its inclusion within a broader Niger–Congo. Glottolog also considers Ijoid , Mande , and Dogon to be independent language phyla that have not been demonstrated to be related to each other. The Atlantic–Congo group

5658-698: The Napoleon complex , also known as "Napoleon syndrome" and "short man syndrome", is a purported condition normally attributed to people of short stature, with overly aggressive or domineering social behavior, and is named after Napoleon Bonaparte , the first Emperor of the French , who was estimated to have been 5' 2" tall (in pre–metric system French measures), which equals around 1.67 meters, or just under 5' 6" in imperial measure . Pharmaceutical companies Genentech and Eli Lilly , makers of human growth hormone, have worked to medicalize short stature by convincing

5781-640: The Napoleon complex , also known as "Napoleon syndrome" and "short man syndrome", is a purported condition normally attributed to people of short stature, with overly aggressive or domineering social behavior, and is named after Napoleon Bonaparte , the first Emperor of the French , who was estimated to have been 5' 2" tall (in pre–metric system French measures), which equals around 1.67 meters, or just under 5' 6" in imperial measure . Shortness in children and young adults nearly always results from below-average growth in childhood, while shortness in older adults usually results from loss of height due to kyphosis of

5904-487: The Niger–Congo and Central Sudanic language families. There has been significant intermixing between the Bantu and Pygmies. There are at least a dozen Pygmy groups, sometimes unrelated to each other. They are grouped in three geographical categories: African Pygmies are often assumed to be the direct descendants of the Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherer peoples of the central African rainforest . Genetic evidence for

6027-498: The forest–savanna region, were ultimately acculturated and admixed into larger groups of West African agriculturalists, akin to the migratory Bantu-speaking agriculturalists and their encounters with Central African hunter-gatherers. The term Pygmy , as used to refer to diminutive people, derives from Greek πυγμαῖος pygmaios (via Latin Pygmaeus , plural Pygmaei ), a term for "dwarf" from Greek mythology . The word

6150-463: The noun-classifier system of Central Sudanic, commonly reflected in a tripartite general - singulative - plurative number system, triggered the development or elaboration of the noun-class system of the Atlantic–Congo languages , with tripartite number marking surviving in the Plateau and Gur languages of Niger–Congo, and the lexical similarities being due to loans. Niger–Congo languages have

6273-478: The spine or collapsed vertebrae from osteoporosis . The most common causes of short stature in childhood are constitutional growth delay or familial short stature. From a medical perspective, severe shortness can be a variation of normal, resulting from the interplay of multiple familial genes. It can also be due to one or more of many abnormal conditions, such as chronic (prolonged) growth hormone or thyroid hormone deficiency, malnutrition , disease of

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6396-400: The 1960s. However, there has been active debate for many decades over the appropriate subclassifications of the languages in this language family, which is a key tool used in localising a language's place of origin. No definitive " Proto-Niger–Congo " lexicon or grammar has been developed for the language family as a whole. An important unresolved issue in determining the time and place where

6519-528: The Atlantic–Congo languages. The non-Atlantic–Congo languages within Niger–Congo are grouped as Dogon , Mande , Ijo (sometimes with Defaka as Ijoid ), Katla , and Rashad . Atlantic–Congo combines the Atlantic languages , which do not form one branch, and Volta–Congo . It comprises more than 80% of the Niger–Congo speaking population, or close to 600 million people (2015). The proposed Savannas group combines Adamawa , Ubangian and Gur . Outside of

6642-588: The Efe have adapted genetically to an iodine-deficient diet; we suggest that the signals of recent positive selection that we observe at TRIP4 in Mbuti Pygmies and IYD in Biaka Pygmies may reflect such genetic adaptations to an iodine-deficient diet. Furthermore, alterations in the thyroid hormone pathway can cause short stature. We therefore suggest that short stature in these Pygmy groups may have arisen as

6765-544: The Human Growth Foundation and the MAGIC Foundation , to measure the height of thousands of American children in schools and public places, and to send letters urging medical consultations for children whose height was deemed low. Parents and schools were not told that the charities were being paid by the drug companies to do this. Paired with a campaign to advertise the hormone to physicians,

6888-541: The Niger–Congo languages originated and their range prior to recorded history is this language family's relationship to the Kordofanian languages , now spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan , which is not contiguous with the remainder of the Niger–Congo-language-speaking region and is at the northeasternmost extent of the current Niger–Congo linguistic region. The current prevailing linguistic view

7011-458: The Pygmies face is the loss of their traditional homeland, the tropical forests of Central Africa. In countries such as Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo this is due to deforestation and the desire of several governments in Central Africa to evict the Pygmies from their forest habitat in order to profit from the sale of hardwood and the resettlement of farmers onto

7134-516: The Pygmy. Along with Raja Sheshadri, the fPcN-Global.org website conducted research on the Pygmies. The human rights organization states that, as the forest has receded under logging activities, its original inhabitants have been pushed into populated areas to join the formal economy, working as casual laborers or on commercial farms and being exposed to new diseases. This shift has brought them into closer contact with neighboring ethnic communities whose HIV levels are generally higher. This has led to

7257-523: The Savannas group, Volta–Congo comprises Kru , Kwa (or "West Kwa"), Volta–Niger (also "East Kwa" or "West Benue–Congo"), and Benue–Congo (or "East Benue–Congo"). Volta–Niger includes the two largest languages of Nigeria , Yoruba , and Igbo . Benue–Congo includes the Southern Bantoid group, which is dominated by the Bantu languages , which account for 350 million people (2015), or half

7380-532: The UN of enslaving Mbutis to prospect for minerals and forage for forest food, with those returning empty handed being killed and eaten . In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War , his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. In neighboring North Kivu province there has been cannibalism by

7503-431: The [ATR] value of the word, and instead maintain their own [ATR] value. The vowels that follow them, however, will receive the [ATR] value of the root. Opaque vowels maintain their own [ATR] value as well, but they affect the harmony process behind them. All of the vowels following an opaque vowel will harmonize with the [ATR] value of the opaque vowel instead of the [ATR] vowel of the root. The vowel inventory listed above

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7626-463: The ancient Shum Laka foragers. Modern Cameroonian hunter-gatherers, while partly descended, are not largely descended from the Shum Laka foragers, due to the apparent absence of descent from Basal West Africans. The Bantu expansion is hypothesized to have originated in a homeland of Bantu-speaking peoples located around western Cameroon, a part of which Shum Laka is viewed as being of importance in

7749-408: The assimilation and extinction of many of the indigenous Pygmy and Bushmen ( Khoisan ) populations there. The following is an overview of the language groups usually included in Niger–Congo. The genetic relationship of some branches is not universally accepted, and the cladistic connection between those who are accepted as related may also be unclear. The core phylum of the Niger–Congo group are

7872-403: The body segments affected by shortening, namely limbs versus trunk: Short-limb short stature can be further subcategorised in accordance with limb segment affected by shortening. These subcategories of limb shortening include, rhizomelic (humerus and femur), mesomelic (radius, ulna, tibia and fibula) and acromelic (hands and feet). Anthropometric measurements provide are very beneficial tools to

7995-456: The campaign was successful, and tens of thousands of children began receiving HGH. About half of them do not have growth hormone deficiency , and consequently benefited very little, if at all, from the hormone injections. Criticism of the universal screening program eventually resulted in its end. Short stature decreases the risk of venous insufficiency . During World War I in Britain,

8118-549: The cause is unknown, it is called idiopathic short stature . Short stature can also be caused by the bone plates fusing at an earlier age than normal, therefore stunting growth. Normally, the bone age is the same as the biological age but for some people, it is older. For many people with advanced bone ages, they hit a growth spurt early on which propels them to average height but stop growing at an earlier age. However, in some cases, people who are naturally shorter combined with their advanced bone age, end up being even shorter than

8241-436: The child's weight and age. One year's worth of drugs normally costs about US$ 20,000 for a small child and over $ 50,000 for a teenager. These drugs are normally taken for five or more years. From a social perspective, shortness can be a problem independent of the cause. In many societies there are advantages associated with taller stature and disadvantages associated with shorter stature, and vice versa. In popular culture ,

8364-621: The cleared land. In some cases, as in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this conflict is violent. Certain groups, such as the Hutus of the Interahamwe, wish to eliminate the Pygmy and take the resources of the forest as a military conquest, using the resources of the forest for military as well as economic advancement. Since the Pygmies rely on the forest for their physical as well as cultural survival, as these forests disappear, so do

8487-502: The conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these risks, Pygmy populations generally have poor access to health services and information about HIV. One British medical journal, The Lancet , published a review showing that Pygmy populations often had less access to health care than neighboring communities. According to the report, even where health care facilities exist, many Pygmies do not use them because they cannot pay for consultations and medicines, they do not have

8610-453: The confluence of the Benue and Niger Rivers in central Nigeria . These estimates of the place of origin of the Benue–Congo language family do not fix a date for the start of that expansion, other than that it must have been sufficiently prior to the Bantu expansion to allow for the diversification of the languages within this language family that includes Bantu. The classification of

8733-472: The continuing reassessment of Niger–Congo's "internal structure is due largely to the preliminary nature of Greenberg's classification, explicitly based as it was on a methodology that doesn't produce proofs for genetic affiliations between languages but rather aims at identifying "likely candidates."...The ongoing descriptive and documentary work on individual languages and their varieties, greatly expanding our knowledge on formerly little-known linguistic regions,

8856-519: The core with noun-class systems, the Atlantic–Congo languages , apart from the recent inclusion of some of the Kordofanian groups, but not Niger–Congo as a whole. They list the following as separate families: Atlantic–Congo, Mande, Dogon, Ijoid, Lafofa, Katla-Tima, Heiban, Talodi, and Rashad. Babaev (2013) stated: "The truth here is that almost no attempts in fact have been made to verify Greenberg's Niger–Congo hypothesis. This might seem strange but

8979-421: The deep separation of Congo Pygmies from the lineage of West Africans and East Africans , as well as admixture from archaic humans, was found in the 2010s. The lineage of African Pygmies is strongly associated with mitochondrial (maternal line) haplogroup L1 , with a divergence time between 170,000 and 100,000 years ago. They were partially absorbed or displaced by later immigration of agricultural peoples of

9102-405: The degree of shortness that should be called short . Dwarfism is the condition of being very short, often caused by a medical condition. In a medical context, short stature is typically defined as an adult height that is more than two standard deviations below a population’s mean for age and sex, which corresponds to the shortest 2.3% of individuals in that population. In popular culture ,

9225-429: The diagnostic process of genetic skeletal dysplasias . The anthropometric measurements include height, sitting height, arm span, upper/ lower-body segment ratio, sitting height/height ratio, and arm span/height ratio for age. They also aid in the differential diagnosis of skeletal dysplasia subtypes. The decision to treat is based on a belief that the child will be disabled by being extremely short as an adult, so that

9348-720: The documents and identity cards needed to travel or obtain hospital treatment, and they are subjected to humiliating and discriminatory treatment. Studies in Cameroon and the DRC in the 1980s and 1990s showed a lower prevalence of HIV in Pygmy populations than among neighboring groups, but recent increases have been recorded. One study found that the HIV prevalence among the Baka Pygmies in eastern Cameroon rose from 0.7 percent in 1993 to 4 percent in 2003. A consortium of researchers conducted

9471-447: The earliest divergent modern human group, having diverged from other groups around 250,000 BP – 200,000 BP, as a result of the sampling of the ancient Shum Laka foragers, Central African hunter-gatherers are shown to have likely diverged at a similar time, if not even earlier. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the short stature of African pygmies. Becker, et al., suggest African pygmyism may have evolved as an adaptation to

9594-502: The early period of this expansion. By 3000 BP, the Bantu expansion is hypothesized to have already begun. Yet, the sampled ancient Shum Laka foragers – two from 8000 BP and two from 3000 BP – show that most modern Niger–Congo speakers are greatly distinct from the ancient Shum Laka foragers, thus, showing that the ancient Shum Laka people were not the ancestral source population of the modern Bantu-speaking peoples . While Southern African hunter-gatherers are generally recognized as being

9717-581: The expansion of Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE . Similar classifications to Niger–Congo have been made ever since Diedrich Westermann in 1922. Joseph Greenberg continued that tradition, making it the starting point for modern linguistic classification in Africa, with some of his publications going to press starting in

9840-494: The forest and is shared between the two western Pygmy groups. This substrate has been suggested as representing a remnant of an ancient "western Pygmy" linguistic phylum, dubbed "Mbenga" or "Baaka". However, as substrate vocabulary has been widely borrowed between Pygmies and neighboring peoples, no reconstruction of such a "Baaka" language is possible for times more remote than a few centuries ago. An ancestral Pygmy language has been postulated for at least some Pygmy groups, based on

9963-735: The forest without access to agricultural products. A total number of about 900,000 Pygmies were estimated to be living in the central African forests in 2016, about 60% of this number in the Democratic Republic of Congo . The number does not include Southern Twa populations, who live outside of the Central Africa forest environment, partly in open swamp or desert environments. Additionally, West African hunter-gatherers may have dwelled in western Central Africa earlier than 32,000 BP and dwelled in West Africa between 16,000 BP and 12,000 BP until as late as 1000 BP or some period of time after 1500 CE. West African hunter-gatherers, many of whom dwelt in

10086-499: The genes encoding for human growth hormone and its receptor associated with low serum levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 and short stature. A study by Price, et al., provides insight into the role genetics plays in the reduced stature of African pygmies: [W]e found strong signals for selection in both African Pygmy groups at two genes involved in the iodide-dependent thyroid hormone pathway: TRIP4 in Mbuti Pygmies; and IYD in Biaka Pygmies. [...] These observations suggest that

10209-416: The height they normally would have been because of their stunted growth. Chronic illnesses, malnutrition, endocrine, metabolic disorders or chromosomal anomalies are characterized by proportionate short stature. On the other hand, most genetic skeletal dysplasias are known for short stature that may be proportionate or disproportionate. Disproportionate short stature can be further subdivided as specified by

10332-614: The hypothesis of an ancestral "Pygmy language", arguing that even if there is evidence for a common ancestral language rather than just borrowing, it will not be sufficient to establish a specifically "Pygmy" origin rather than any of the several potential language isolates of (former) hunter-gatherer populations that ring the rainforest. He argued that the Pygmies do not form the residue of a single ancient stock of Central African hunter-gatherers, but that they are rather descended from several neighboring ethno-linguistic groups, independently adapting to forest subsistence strategies. Blench adduced

10455-431: The hypothesis that the original vowel inventory of Niger–Congo was a full ten-vowel system. On the other hand, Stewart, in recent comparative work, reconstructs a seven-vowel system for his proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu. Several scholars have documented a contrast between oral and nasal vowels in Niger–Congo. In his reconstruction of proto-Volta–Congo, Steward (1976) postulates that nasal consonants have originated under

10578-410: The inclusion or exclusion of specific languages or language groups." Good (2020) stated: "First proposed by Greenberg (1949), Niger–Congo (NC) has for decades been treated as one of the four major phyla of African languages . The term, as presently used, however, is not without its difficulties. On the one hand, it is employed as a referential label for a group of over 1,500 languages, putting it among

10701-429: The influence of nasal vowels; this hypothesis is supported by the fact that there are several Niger–Congo languages that have been analysed as lacking nasal consonants altogether. Languages like this have nasal vowels accompanied with complementary distribution between oral and nasal consonants before oral and nasal vowels. Subsequent loss of the nasal/oral contrast in vowels may result in nasal consonants becoming part of

10824-526: The interior of Africa, until the exploration of the Congo basin . In the 1860s, two Western explorers, Paul Du Chaillu and Georg Schweinfurth , claimed to have found the mythical "Pygmies". A commentator wrote in 1892 that, thirty years ago (viz., in the 1860s), "nobody believed in the existence of African dwarf tribes" and that "it needed an authority like Dr. Schweinfurth to prove that pygmies actually exist in Africa" (referencing Georg August Schweinfurth's The Heart of Africa , published 1873). "African Pygmy"

10947-549: The lack of clear linguistic and archaeological evidence for the antiquity of the African Pygmies, that the genetic evidence, at the time of his writing, was inconclusive, and that there is no evidence of the Pygmies having a hunting technology distinctive from that of their neighbors. He argued that the short stature of Pygmy populations can arise relatively quickly (in less than a few millennia) under strong selection pressures. West African hunter-gatherers may have spoken

11070-455: The language groups traditionally classified as Atlantic." The coherence of Niger–Congo as a language phylum is supported by Grollemund, et al. (2016), using computational phylogenetic methods. The East/West Volta–Congo division, West/East Benue–Congo division, and North/South Bantoid division are not supported, whereas a Bantoid group consisting of Ekoid, Bendi, Dakoid, Jukunoid, Tivoid, Mambiloid, Beboid, Mamfe, Tikar, Grassfields, and Bantu

11193-633: The largest commonly cited language groups in the world. On the other hand, the term is also intended to embody a hypothesis of genealogical relationship between the referential NC languages that has not been proven." The lexicon of Proto–Niger–Congo (or Proto-Atlantic–Congo) has not been comprehensively reconstructed, although Konstantin Pozdniakov reconstructed the numeral system of Proto–Niger–Congo in 2018. The most extensive reconstructions of lower-order Niger–Congo branches include several reconstructions of Proto-Bantu , which has consequently had

11316-429: The latter as languages which had not yet completely evolved to full Bantu status, whereas others regarded them as languages which had partly lost original features still found in Bantu. The Bantuist Meinhof made a major distinction between Bantu and a 'Semi-Bantu' group which according to him was originally of the unrelated Sudanic stock. Westermann , a pupil of Meinhof, set out to establish the internal classification of

11439-484: The level of polyphonic complexity of Pygmy music was reached in Europe in the 14th century, yet Pygmy culture is unwritten and ancient, some Pygmy groups being the first known cultures in some areas of Africa. Music permeates daily life, with songs for entertainment, special events, and communal activities. The Pygmie people are known to use an instrument called the n'dehou which is a bamboo flute. The n'dehou only produces

11562-698: The lowest periphery of the spectrum among anatomically modern humans. Other proposed explanations include the potentially lesser availability of protein-rich food sources in rainforest environments, the often reduced soil-calcium levels in rainforest environments, the caloric expenditure required to traverse rainforest terrain, insular dwarfism as an adaptation to equatorial and tropical heat and humidity, and pygmyism as an adaptation associated with rapid reproductive maturation under conditions of early mortality. Additional evidence suggests that, when compared to other Sub-Saharan African populations, African pygmy populations display unusually low levels of expression of

11685-527: The minimum height for soldiers was 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm). Thus thousands of men under this height were denied the opportunity to fight in the war. As a result of pressure to allow them entry, special " Bantam Battalions " were created composed of men who were 4 feet 10 inches (147 cm) to 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm). By the end of the war there were 29 Bantam Battalions of about 1,000 men each. Officers were of normal size. Niger%E2%80%93Congo languages Niger–Congo

11808-416: The more popular systems. The majority of languages with [ATR] controlled vowel harmony have either seven or nine vowel phonemes, with the most common non-participatory vowel being /a/. It has been asserted that this is because vowel quality differences in the mid-central region where /ə/, the counterpart of /a/, is found, are difficult to perceive. Another possible reason for the non-participatory status of /a/

11931-643: The north, as well as their allies. Starting in 2013, the Pygmy Batwa people , whom the Luba people often exploit and allegedly enslave , rose up into militias (such as the "Perci" militia) in Northern Katanga Province and attacked Luba villages. A Luba militia known as "Elements" attacked back, notably killing at least 30 people in the "Vumilia 1" displaced people camp in April 2015. Since

12054-549: The observation of linguistic substrates . According to Merritt Ruhlen (1994), "African Pygmies speak languages belonging to either the Nilo-Saharan or the Niger–Kordofanian family. It is assumed that Pygmies once spoke their own language(s), but that, through living in symbiosis with other Africans, in prehistorical times, they adopted languages belonging to these two families." Roger Blench (1997, 1999) criticized

12177-772: The order 130,000 years . African Pygmies in the historical period have been significantly displaced by, and assimilated to, several waves of Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan speakers, of the Central Sudanic , Ubangian , and Bantu phyla. Genetically, African pygmies have some key differences between them and Bantu peoples . African pygmies' uniparental markers display the most ancient divergence from other human groups among anatomically modern humans, second only to those displayed among some Khoisan populations. Researchers identified an ancestral and autochthonous lineage of mtDNA shared by Pygmies and Bantus, suggesting that both populations were originally one, and that they started to diverge from common ancestors around 70,000 years ago. After

12300-448: The path laid by Joseph Greenberg to Proto–Niger–Congo was not followed by much research. Most scholars have focused on individual families or groups, and classifications as well as reconstructions were made on lower levels. Compared with the volume of literature on Atlantic or Mande languages, the list of papers considering the aspects of Niger–Congo reconstruction per se is quite scarce." Oxford Handbooks Online (2016) has indicated that

12423-434: The public that short stature is a disease rather than a natural variation in human height. Limiting sales of the hormone to children diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency , rather than being short for any reason, limited their sales market. Expanding it to all children whose height was below the third percentile would create 90,000 new customers and US$ 10 billion in revenue. In the early 1990s, they paid two US charities,

12546-542: The relatively divergent family of the Ubangian languages , centred in the Central African Republic , as part of the Niger–Congo language family is disputed. Ubangian was grouped with Niger–Congo by Greenberg (1963), and later authorities concurred, but it was questioned by Dimmendaal (2008). The Bantu expansion , beginning around 1000 BC, swept across much of Central and Southern Africa , leading to

12669-428: The risks of treatment (including sudden death ) will outweigh the risks of not treating the symptom of short stature. Although short children commonly report being teased about their height, most adults who are very short are not physically or psychologically disabled by their height. However, there is some evidence to suggest that there is an inverse linear relationship with height and with risk of suicide. Treatment

12792-407: The root to which they attach. The following examples of these suffixes alternate depending on the root. Furthermore, the directionality of assimilation in [ATR] root-controlled vowel harmony need not be specified. The root features [+ATR] and [−ATR] spread left and/or right as needed, so that no vowel would lack a specification and be ill-formed. Unlike in the root-controlled harmony system, where

12915-460: The roots because there is no determiner within a normal root that causes the [ATR] value. There are two types of [ATR] vowel harmony controllers in Niger–Congo. The first controller is the root. When a root contains a [+ATR] or [−ATR] vowel, then that value is applied to the rest of the word, which involves crossing morpheme boundaries. For example, suffixes in Wolof assimilate to the [ATR] value of

13038-446: The significantly lower average levels of ultraviolet light available beneath the canopy of rainforest environments. In similar hypothetical scenarios, because of reduced access to sunlight, a comparatively smaller amount of anatomically formulated vitamin D is produced, resulting in restricted dietary calcium uptake, and subsequently restricted bone growth and maintenance, resulting in an overall population average skeletal mass near

13161-427: The spread of HIV into the pygmy group. Since poverty has become very prevalent in Pygmy communities, sexual exploitation of indigenous women has become a common practice. Commercial sex has been bolstered by logging, which often places large groups of male laborers in camps which are set up in close contact with the Pygmy communities. Human rights groups have also reported widespread sexual abuse of indigenous women in

13284-495: The start of the conflict, hundreds have been killed, and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes. The weapons used in the conflict are often arrows and axes, rather than guns. Ota Benga was a teenage pygmy boy from the Congo. Ota was purchased from slave traders and was brought to the United States to be exhibited for his unique looks. Ota had sharpened teeth as a result of the traditions of his tribe, and he

13407-458: The term "Pygmy" in reference to the umbrella group. A descriptive term that has seen some use since the 2000s is "Central African foragers". Regional names used collectively of the western group of Pygmies are Bambenga (the plural form of Mbenga), used in the Kongo language , and Bayaka (the plural form of Aka/Yaka), used in the Central African Republic . The Congo Pygmy speak languages of

13530-403: The then Sudanic languages . In a 1911 work he established a basic division between 'East' and 'West'. A historical reconstruction of West Sudanic was published in 1927, and in his 1935 'Charakter und Einteilung der Sudansprachen' he conclusively established the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic. Joseph Greenberg took Westermann's work as a starting-point for his own classification. In

13653-437: The total Niger–Congo speaking population. The strict genetic unity of any of these subgroups may themselves be under dispute. For example, Roger Blench (2012) argued that Adamawa , Ubangian , Kwa , Bantoid , and Bantu are not coherent groups. Although the Kordofanian branch is generally included in the Niger–Congo languages, some researchers do not agree with its inclusion. Glottolog 3.4 (2019) does not accept that

13776-470: The total number of speakers is Swahili , which is used as a lingua franca in parts of eastern and southeastern Africa . While the ultimate genetic unity of the core of Niger–Congo (called Atlantic–Congo ) is widely accepted, the internal cladistic structure is not well established. Other primary branches may include Mande , Dogon , Ijaw , Katla and Rashad . The connection of the Mande languages especially has never been demonstrated, and without them,

13899-403: The two [ATR] values behave symmetrically, a large number of Niger–Congo languages exhibit a pattern where the [+ATR] value is more active or dominant than the [−ATR] value. This results in the second vowel harmony controller being the [+ATR] value. If there is even one vowel that is [+ATR] in the whole word, then the rest of the vowels harmonize with that feature. However, if there is no vowel that

14022-492: The upper Senegal and Niger river basins, south and west of Timbuktu ( Mande , Dogon ), the Niger Delta ( Ijoid ), and far to the east in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains (the Kordofanian families). They account for a total population of about 100 million (2015), mostly Mandé and Ijaw . The various Kordofanian languages are spoken in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains . "Kordofanian"

14145-512: The validity of Niger–Congo family as a whole (as opposed to Atlantic–Congo or a similar subfamily) has not been established. One of the most distinctive characteristics common to Atlantic–Congo languages is the use of a noun-class system, which is essentially a gender system with multiple genders. The language family most likely originated in or near the area where these languages were spoken prior to Bantu expansion (i.e. West Africa or Central Africa). Its expansion may have been associated with

14268-519: The village dwelling Bantu tribes and colonial authorities. This has translated into systematic discrimination. One early example was the capture of Pygmy children under the auspices of the Belgian colonial authorities, who exported Pygmy children to zoos throughout Europe, including the World's Fair in the United States in 1907. Pygmies are often evicted from their land and given the lowest paying jobs. At

14391-438: The years, several linguists have suggested a link between Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan , probably starting with Westermann's comparative work on the " Sudanic " family in which ' Eastern Sudanic ' (now classified as Nilo-Saharan) and ' Western Sudanic ' (now classified as Niger–Congo) were united. Gregersen (1972) proposed that Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan be united into a larger phylum, which he termed Kongo-Saharan . His evidence

14514-536: Was also short in stature. In 1906, Ota was brought to the Bronx Zoo and exhibited in the monkey house. Ota was given a bow and arrow for protection from the animals. After the exhibit was closed, Ota was not able to return home to the Congo. He lived out the rest of his life in Virginia, until he became depressed and died by suicide at the age of 33. Historically, the Pygmy have always been viewed as inferior by both

14637-471: Was mainly based on the uncertainty in the classification of Songhay , morphological resemblances, and lexical similarities. A more recent proponent was Roger Blench (1995), who puts forward phonological, morphological and lexical evidence for uniting Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan in a Niger–Saharan phylum, with special affinity between Niger–Congo and Central Sudanic . However, fifteen years later his views had changed, with Blench (2011) proposing instead that

14760-399: Was of haplogroup B and one later Shum Laka forager haplogroup B2b, which, together, as macrohaplogroup B , is distributed among modern Central African hunter-gatherers (e.g., Baka , Bakola , Biaka , Bedzan ). The autosomal admixture of the four ancient Shum Laka forager children was ~35% Western Central African hunter-gatherer and ~65% Basal West African – or, an admixture composed of

14883-425: Was only gradually recognized as a linguistic unit. In early classifications of the languages of Africa , one of the principal criteria used to distinguish different groupings was the languages' use of prefixes to classify nouns, or the lack thereof. A major advance came with the work of Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle , who in his 1854 Polyglotta Africana attempted a careful classification, the groupings of which in quite

15006-405: Was presented as one of several primary branches rather than being coordinate to the family as a whole, prompting re-introduction of the term Niger–Congo , which is in current use among linguists. Many classifications continue to place Kordofanian as the most distant branch, but mainly due to negative evidence (fewer lexical correspondences), rather than positive evidence that the other languages form

15129-870: Was variously reported as: 100% in Ba-Kola , 97% in Aka (Ba-Benzélé) , and 77% in Biaka , 100% of the Bedzan (Tikar) , 97% and 100% in the Baka people of Gabon and Cameroon , respectively, 97% in Bakoya (97%), and 82% in Ba-Bongo . Mitochondrial haplogroups L2a and L0a are prevalent among the Bambuti . Patin, et al. (2009) suggest two unique, late Pleistocene (before 60,000 years ago) divergences from other human populations, and

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