This is how the word pygmalios is translated from the Greek, which was the name of the smallest people living in the tropical forests of Africa. There is an assumption that the pygmies once occupied the whole of Central Africa, but were then driven out of there by other tribes. Today they can be found in the forests of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Rwanda and the Central African Republic.
Until now, the origin of the pygmies remains a scientific mystery. They have no legends, no myths, no fairy tales that would help solve it. Nevertheless, this people has been known since ancient times.
Colorful myths about real people
The first mentions of strange little people are in the ancient Egyptian inscriptions of the 3rd millennium BC. The story of the Egyptian Khufkhor, a nobleman of the era of the Old Kingdom, has survived, in which he boasts that he brought a dwarf from his campaign. It was intended for the fun of the young king and was called "dng". It is significant that even today this name has been preserved in the languages of the peoples of Ethiopia, in which the dwarf is called "deng" or "date".
Many centuries later, Homer wrote about fabulous dwarfs, which did not exceed frogs in size and often became victims of cranes. His cranes appear as people from the other world, and the meaning of the myth is in the struggle between life and death.
Some ancient scholars explain the enmity between pygmies and cranes by turning into a crane a pygmy girl who was at enmity with the tribe. At the same time, it is not entirely clear whether we are talking about real Africans or about mythical creatures.
Usually pygmies in Greek myth-making are a fabulous dwarf people living in Libya or Asia Minor. They were in size from an ant to a monkey. The "father of history" Herodotus has pygmies - a special tribe that lives in Africa in the upper Nile. According to him, they are closely related to the cult of the god of fertility, the Nile and are identified with the dwarfs, surrounded by the Nile. Hence the idea of pygmies as an agricultural tribe, hairy and black men living in a fertile layer of the earth.
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However, Aristotle considered the Pygmies to be a very real people. In turn, the geographer Strabo listed them along with the big-headed, noseless, cyclops, half-dogs and other mythical creatures of antiquity. Indicative is the legend in which Hercules defeated the son of the earth goddess - the Libyan giant Antaeus. When the hero was resting after the struggle, the pygmies, who lived like ants in the sand, attacked him with weapons. Hercules took them all in a lion's skin and took them with him. Perhaps the legends about pygmies among the Egyptians and Greeks are associated with the existence of dwarfs in tropical Africa. After all, their images are found on frescoes in Pompeii and Herculaneum. And the favorite subject on Greek vases was the comic war of pygmies with cranes.
In the 7th century, the Chinese historian Li Tai described in detail the 90 centimeters dwarfs living south of the Roman Empire. His information overlaps strangely with ancient Greek mythology. Europeans first encountered the stunted Matimba people in West Africa back in the 16th-17th centuries. And in the 19th century, the existence of pygmies was finally confirmed by German and Russian researchers.
Avoiding the sun
It turned out that in Africa there really is the smallest people in the world. In pygmy men, growth ranges from 142-150 centimeters. They are characterized by a large body with short legs, light brown skin, curly dark hair, and thin lips. But there are tribes in which the average height of men does not exceed 141 centimeters, and women - 130-132 centimeters. Despite the fact that these people resemble Negroids, they are considered a separate race. The exact number of the tribe is not known. According to various sources, there are from 40 to 280 thousand people. The average life expectancy for men is no more than 45 years, while women live a little longer.
Because of their height and other differences, these people have always experienced a lot of disasters and humiliations from their taller neighbors. Before the settlement of the Bantu, the pygmies occupied the whole of Central Africa, but then they were forced out of the most favorable places into the green hell of the equatorial forests. Now they are so accustomed to living in the thicket that they cannot stand the direct rays of the sun, and once they find themselves in an open space, they try to return to their native wilds as soon as possible. Ordinary Africans despise their little neighbors. Because of this, pygmies almost do not mix with other tribes, although cases of foreign men marrying tiny women do happen.
When white people appeared, little Africans had even more problems. Some "civilized" travelers and colonial officials in the late 19th and early 20th centuries looked at pygmies as a rare curiosity. There are cases when they were taken to Europe and the United States, where adults, and especially their children, were sold as living exhibits to zoos. There they were shown to idle onlookers along with exotic wild animals from different countries of the world.
This is not possible in the West today. But at home, the situation has hardly changed. It's hard to believe, but in Africa there is still a belief that by killing and eating a pygmy, you can get magical power that protects against witchcraft. And this is not only a belief, but also practice. Not only in the distant past, but literally in our days - during the civil war in the Congo in 1998-2003, pygmies were caught and eaten like wild animals.
But especially unlucky for those tribes on whose territory minerals are found. In this case, local residents are simply exterminated. For these purposes, there is even a sect of "erasers", whose members not only kill pygmies, but also feed on their flesh.
In the 21st century, slavery is prohibited in all countries. But in the same Republic of the Congo, there are still pygmy slaves in Bantu families who are inherited. It is almost impossible to eradicate this phenomenon, since the slaves themselves do not protest against their position. On the contrary, despite their lack of rights, they are convinced that without living together with the Bantu, they can only get worse.
Rainforest dwarfs
The life of pygmies is invariably associated with the forest. In the tropical wilderness, they feed themselves, marry, have children, and die. Pygmies do not engage in farming, preferring gathering and hunting. Therefore, they lead a nomadic lifestyle and leave their camp only when there is no game and edible plants around it or someone dies. These people are very superstitious, since the death of a fellow tribesman is explained by the fact that the forest does not want them to live in this place. Resettlement takes place within the borders existing with neighbors, since hunting on a foreign land can become a pretext for conflict.
The main occupation of pygmy men is hunting for birds, monkeys, antelopes, deer and other inhabitants of the forest. Unlike professional hunters, they never kill an animal unnecessarily and do not store meat for future use. The prey is always divided fairly and eaten immediately after the hunt. Fishing is a seasonal industry. When fishing, pygmies use a special grass that is thrown into the water, and the fish falls asleep, but does not die. The catch is collected downstream. The tropical jungle is not only a home, but also a constant threat to people. They are teeming with various dangerous animals, which even hunters are afraid of. They are especially afraid of pythons. If you accidentally step on a python, then there is practically no chance of salvation, and life ends in the deadly embrace of a snake.
A significant share in the diet of pygmies is honey, but fruits, berries, various roots and plants, as well as worms, larvae, snails, frogs and snakes are also eaten.
Meat in the forest menu is only 9%, while at least 50% are vegetables and fruits, which are exchanged with neighbors in exchange for jungle gifts.
The life of the little people who live in the jungle is devoid of romance and consists in a constant struggle for survival. The main task of each of them is to get food, so a successful hunt is the most desirable occasion for a holiday and a feast. After a plentiful meal, they selflessly sing and dance. In these cases, the rumble of drums can sound in the jungle for 4-5 hours in a row, or even all night. And in the morning you have to look for food again. And so from year to year, and so all life, until civilization destroys primitive traditions.
Evgeny YAROVOY
