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A family from a Ba Aka pygmy village. The term pygmy, as used to refer to diminutive people, comes via Latin pygmaeus from Greek πυγμαῖος pygmaîos, derived from πυγμή pygmḗ, meaning "short cubit", or a measure of length corresponding to the distance from the elbow to the first knuckle of the middle finger, meant to express pygmies' diminutive stature.
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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. [2]
If this is a common pattern with Twa groups, it may explain why the Twa are less physically distinct from their patrons than the Mbenga and Mbuti, where village men take Pygmy women out of the forest as wives. [6] The Congolese variant of the name, at least in Mongo, Kasai, and Katanga, is Cwa. [a]
Ethnic classifications vary from country to country and are therefore not comparable across countries. While some countries make classifications based on broad ancestry groups or characteristics such as skin color (e.g., the white ethnic category in the United States and some other countries), other countries use various ethnic, cultural ...
Due to their pygmy ancestry, they continue to suffer ethnic prejudice, discrimination, violence, and general exclusion from society. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] Batwa men struggle with alcoholism, known to occur in communities facing cultural collapse as men can no longer carry out traditional roles and provide for families. [ 10 ]
In some instances, women may hunt using a net more often than men. The women and the children herd the animals to the net, while the men guard the net. Everyone engages in foraging, and women and men both take care of the children. Women are in charge of cooking, cleaning and repairing the hut, and obtaining water.
Aka women have been observed hunting even during late stages of pregnancy and returning to hunting shortly after childbirth, sometimes even carrying newborns while hunting. [ 7 ] While tasks and decision-making were largely shared activities, leadership roles such as kombeti (leader), tuma (elephant hunter), and nganga (top healer) are ...