This is the third chapter on the entertaining toponymy of the world. I traditionally hid a part under the cuts, I left the part open. So Africa! America is coming next. By the way, I love African countries because their self-names most often do not differ from our names, but they use the European alphabet ... This is due to the fact that writing as such was brought to most African countries by Europeans in the 15th-17th centuries, when conquered Africa.
Algeria(الجزائر, al-Jazā’ir) is the Arabic word “الجزائر” (al-ǧazāʼir) distorted by Europeans, which translates as “islands”. The bottom line is that the ancient city of Algeria previously stood part of the islands, which XVI century merged with the land - and the country is named after the city.
Angola came from the word "ngola" - such a title was worn by the monarch of the state of Ndonga, located on the territory of present-day Angola in the 16th-17th centuries. The Portuguese seized the country and gave it a name according to the local word.
Benin until 1975 it was called Dahomey. The name "Benin" was chosen for two reasons: this was the name of the coastal bay, and in 1440-1897 the Benin Empire was one of the strongest countries in Africa. This word comes from the Yoruba word - Ile-ibinu, which means "country of quarrels", "country of wars". This name came from the fact that the Yoruba people in those days constantly fought with other tribes and among themselves for this territory. The word "Dahomey" is even more ancient, it was the name of the kingdom that existed before the founding of the city of Benin, and its exact etymology is unknown.
Botswana: “tswana” is a people representing the ethnic majority of the country, and “ba” (“bo” is already a distorted version) means “people”, “people”. By the way, the clans of the Tswana people (there are 8 of them) all begin with “ba”: bakwen, ballet, bamangwato, etc. I don’t know the origin of the word “tswana”.
Burkina Faso: in translation from the language of the sea "burkina" - an honest person, and in translation from the language of Diula "faso" - home, homeland. Thus, Burkina Faso is translated from two national languages as "country of honest people." The old name, "Upper Volta", the country wore because of the three large rivers - White, Black and Red Volta, flowing through its territory (and merging into one Volta). The word volta itself is Portuguese, meaning “turn, bend”: it was the Portuguese who gave the name to the river.
Burundi(Burundi) literally means "land of rundi". And, for example, Kirundi is the language spoken by 6 million Burundians. The very word "Rundi", the root of all this, has a common origin with the name "Rwanda": that was once the name of the people who lived in southern Africa. The exact etymology is unknown.
Gabon. This name has a technically simple but ornate origin. The name of the country was given by the Portuguese (Gabão) after the name of the delta of the Como River. The river delta was named so because it resembled a jacket with a hood (in Portuguese - gabão). In Portuguese, this word came from Arabic: قباء (qabā’), which also means outerwear.
Gambia got its name from the river of the same name, and that one was named again by the Portuguese. The word comes from the distorted Portuguese câmbio - trade, exchange. It is easy to guess that the Portuguese used the Gambia River as a sea route - they called it that.
Ghana gained independence from Great Britain in 1957, and before that it was called the Gold Coast. The name "Ghana" was adopted in 1960 as a sign of independence and ancient history countries, because in 790-1076. on approximately this territory there was an independent ancient kingdom of Ghana. The word "ghana" was the royal title of the monarch of the Empire of Ghana. The self-name was "Wagadou", "Wagadou" (literally translated from the Mande language "country of fat herds"). But in Europe, the kingdom was heard precisely as “Ghana”, and they gave it such a name.
Guinea Susu means "woman" in English. The name was given by the Portuguese (Guiné) after one of the first words they heard in the local language. According to another version, the name comes from the Berber akal n-iguinawen, which means "land of the blacks". However, this is unlikely.
Guinea-Bissau. The Portuguese gave the name “Guinea” to the whole region, and therefore the second part of the region, which gained independence 15 years later than Guinea (that one from France, this one from Portugal), came up with an addition to the name to distinguish itself. The addition was the name of the capital of the country - Bissau. The city was founded, by the way, by the Portuguese in 1687. But the origin of the word "Bissau" I, damn it, did not find.
Djibouti(Arabic جيبوتي) got its name in honor of the lowest point of the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean. This name comes from the Afar word gabouti (something like a rug at the entrance to the house, made of palm leaves). There is another version that "Djibouti" is a distorted "Tehuti", that is, in fact, the land of Thoth, the Egyptian moon god. But the first version is more common. By the way, in some languages it sounds like Yiwuti.
Egypt. The historical name of the country is Kemet (written with two hieroglyphs - km and t). The first hieroglyph meant "black", the second - "earth". The Egyptians called their homeland the black earth because of the fertile black earth soils in the places where the Nile flooded. They were actually black in color. This name has migrated to different languages. For example, in ancient Greek it looked like Χημία. Today the whole world is divided into two parts, which call Egypt differently. The first part is actually Egypt, Egypt, Ägypten, Egitto and so on. The path of this word is as follows: French (Egypte) - Latin (Aegyptus) - Ancient Greek (Αἴγυπτος) - Arabic (qubṭī) - and it means "Coptic". The very word "Copt" in this form was borrowed from the Egyptians themselves, from the form Hwt-ka-Ptah (house-soul-Ptah) - this is the name of the temple of the god Ptah in Memphis. The second part of the world calls the country Mısır (Turkish, for example), Mysyr (Kazakh), Mesir and so on. This name comes from the Semitic Mitzráyim ("two streams"), which goes back to the division of the territory into Lower and Upper Egypt. Subsequently, this word has seriously changed: the root “metro” (“metropolis” in Greece, for example) came from it.
Zambia It takes its name from the Zambezi River. Where did this name come from, I did not find it, sorry. But earlier this territory was called Northern Rhodesia. And she received it on behalf of Cecil Rhodes (Cecil Rhodes, 1853-1902), a well-known politician, businessman and diamond magnate. He founded not only Rhodesia, but also a number of universities in Africa, a bunch of funds to help the African people and raised South Africa to the level of the richest country in Africa, and at this level it still is.
Zimbabwe bears an African name. In the Shona language, Dzimba dza mabwe means "big stone houses". The bottom line is that in the XV-XVIII centuries, a very developed Zimbabwean Empire existed on this territory, the capital of which, Great Zimbabwe, was characterized by stone urban planning. The stone towers of the Great Zimbabwe are still preserved and are not inferior to the best examples of European castle building of that time. And the village people marveled at the capital - and so they called it.
Cape Verde refers to that unique group of countries that require that they be called one way in all languages and nothing else. Actually, I call this country the "Green Cape Islands", as was customary in normal Soviet geography. The fact is that the Portuguese, who sailed along the yellow and dry Sahara, suddenly saw a green coast. So the islands were called - Cabo Verde, Cape Verde. However, the whole world does not pay attention to conventions and translates this name into its own language. For example, Πράσινο Ακρωτήριο (Greek) or Grønhøvdaoyggjarnar (Faroese).
Cameroon. The word "Cameroon" comes from the Portuguese "Rio de Camarões" (shrimp river). The name was given to the Vouri River by Portuguese sailors as early as the 15th century, because the river was indeed full of shrimp.
Kenya named after the mountain of the same name, and the mountain takes its name from the local language, where it is called Kere-Nyaga, "mountain of whiteness". Well, the snow is up there, that's all.
Comoros(الاتّحاد القمريّ, al-Ittiḥād al-Qumuriyy) are so named by the Arabs. Djazair al Qamar means "islands of the moon". Probably, Arab sailors sailed to them at night.
Democratic Republic of the Congo well known to us by its former name "Zaire". The name "Zaire" was given to the country by the Portuguese. They corrupted the local word nzere or nzadi which means "main river", "river of all rivers". The word "Kongo" comes from the name of the local people - "Bakongo" (we return and look at the etymology of the word "Botswana", the principle is the same). The word "Kongo" in the local language means "hunter", that is, "bakongo" - "people of hunters." The country received a new name in 1997. Probably in order to get as confused as possible with their neighbor - the Republic of the Congo.
Republic of the Congo- there is nothing to explain, look above one point. Only this country was called "Congo" from time immemorial, in contrast to the former Zaire.
Ivory Coast- another country that requires that their toponym not be translated. In French Côte d "Ivoire -" Ivory Coast ". However, I also say in Russian "Coast ...", not "Cat ...". The reason is clear: the French mined ivory here during colonization. Most of the languages translate this toponym: Elevandiluurannik, Boli Kosta, Marphil Chala and so on.
Lesotho was named in honor of the dominant tribe "Sotho", which means "blacks". The article "le" appeared due to European colonization.
Liberia is a strange country. Because the descendants of fugitive and freed American slaves who returned to their historical homeland live in it. And the name Liberia is from the Latin liber, "free". The word itself was coined in 1822, when the American colonies in Africa united (and in 1847 they finally freed themselves from US domination).
Libya- this is very ancient name. This was the name of the Berber tribes in ancient times, and this word is found in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is not possible to trace its etymology.
Mauritius(Mauritius) was named in honor of the Duke of Orange, Maurice of Nassau (Maurice of Nassau, 1567-1625). The bottom line is that in 1598, after storms and storms, a Dutch expedition landed on the island - out of eight ships, 5 died, and three sailed to the island. And they named the saving land in honor of their ruler.
Mauritania- it is not difficult to guess that this means "land of the Moors." That is, the tribes of Arabs and Berbers who inhabited that territory in antiquity. Nothing special, in general.
Madagascar in the recent past was called the Malagasy Republic. As a philatelist, I have always paid attention to this when looking at stamps. Let's explore both names. Actually, in the Malagasy language, the island is called: Madagasikara. The word has its roots in Proto-Malay, where it meant "end of the world." It’s just that the locals believed that there was nothing outside their island. The trick is that Madagascar was originally settled not by Africans, but by people from the territories where, for example, Malaysia is located today. And their language belongs to the Malay group. Malagasy is the self-name of the people. Where it came from - history is silent about this.
Malawi translated from the local language means "burning water". Because the Sun at sunset descended into the waters of the lake, which now also bears the name of Malawi. This is how the locals named their territory. Prior to gaining independence in 1964, the colony was called Nyasaland (Nyasaland), where Nyasa means "lake" in the local language.
Mali got its name in honor of the ancient African kingdom of Mali, which existed from the 8th to the 16th centuries. By the way, rich and powerful (and how they live now, it's tough). The word Mali in the local dialect means "behemoth" or "hippo", it symbolized the power of the kingdom.
Morocco. The self-name of the country is المغرب, al-Maġrib. However, in all languages the country is called one way or another “Morocco” in different variations, and only local residents call it the Maghreb. Al-Maġrib means "west" in Arabic. So this is the western kingdom. The word “Morocco”, which has taken root in the world, goes back to the name of the city of Marrakesh (Marrakech), and it, in turn, to the Berber Mur-Akush, which means “Land of God”.
Mozambique. The country was so named by the ubiquitous Portuguese in honor of the island of Mozambique - they landed on it a little earlier than in the country itself. But the island already had the name Moçambique! Where? Everything is simple. Even before the Portuguese, who landed there only in 1498, Arab merchants were already trading and settling there with might and main. The largest merchant and the first “outside” visitor to the island was the Arab merchant Musa al Big (Musa Al Big), who called the island by his own name, it was adopted by the locals (distorting), and then the Portuguese, dragging this name to a much larger territory.
Namibia got its name from the Namib Desert. The word "Namib" in the Nama language means " empty place"," a place where there is nothing.
Niger takes its name from the Niger River. The etymology of this word is as follows: the expression gher n gheren translated from the Tuareg language means "river of all rivers." Over time, the first gher disappeared, leaving "ngher". In fact, the river is rather big, and all the surrounding peoples call it whatever it is.
Nigeria. Do not believe it, but the etymology of the word "Nigeria" is exactly the same as the words "Niger". Without a single deviation. The female ending to the word is artificially attached in order to differ from the neighboring territory.
Rwanda got its name from the people who originally lived on its territory - Vanyaruanda. The etymology of the name of the people is shrouded in darkness.
Sao Tome and Principe(São Tomé e Príncipe) are, in fact, two islands. The first Portuguese named in honor of St. Thomas, it's easy to guess. According to legend, they arrived on the island on the day of St. Thomas, December 21, 1471 - so the name came to the word. Tellingly, they reached Principe on St. Anthony's Day, January 17, 1472, and named it St. Anthony's Island. But in 1502, they also changed the name of the island in honor of the birthday (June 7, 1502) of the Portuguese Prince John III, son of King Manuel I. So the Portuguese names remained behind the islands.
Swaziland- the land of the Swazi people, this is immediately clear. The word "Swazi" comes from the distorted name of King Mswati I, who once ruled this territory. That is, the people of King Mswati - the people of the Swazi - the land of the Swazi - Swaziland.
Seychelles were taken under French control in 1756. The finance minister of King Louis XV was Jean Moreau de Séchelles (1690-1761), a smart and strong man, by the way, president of the French Academy of Sciences. The French named the islands after him. Before that, they were called Admiral's, because in 1502 the Portuguese admiral Vasco da Gama landed on them and, without hesitation, named the newly discovered land in his honor.
Senegal. A significant part of the territory of modern Senegal was inhabited by the Berber tribe Zenaga (or Senhaja, if we take the Arabic pronunciation undistorted by the Portuguese). The Portuguese so named both the large river and the entire territory in the process of colonization. Where the name Senhaja came from, science does not know.
Somalia, where there is always war, got its name from the main population group - Somalis. There are several options for the origin of this name. The word may come from the Cushitic "black", from the local expression "soo maal", "come in and drink milk" (a kind of greeting), or from the name of the ancient local mythical patriarch Samaale. Nobody knows for sure.
Sudan. Everything is simple here. In Arabic, "Bilad as-Sudan" means "land of the blacks." Self-name: السودان As Sūdān.
Sierra Leone. The Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra became the first European to reach this coast, and he did so in 1462. The mountains that he saw on the horizon seemed to him like lion heads (or teeth or manes, you don’t know here), and he named the area Serra Leoa, “lion mountains”. Subsequently, the Spaniards intercepted this area from the Portuguese, changing the name to Sierra Leona. It is extremely rare that this toponym is translated into some languages: Mons Leoninus (Latin used in the Vatican), Liyun Urqu (Quechua), or even Náshdóítsoh Bitsiijįe Daditł'ooígíí Bidził (Navajo).
Tanzania. From 1961 to 1964, the independent state of Tanganyika existed in Africa (from 1919 to 1961 it was a British colony). But he was not lucky, and it could not maintain its independence. In order to somehow survive, the state of Tanganyika united with the nearby large island of Zanzibar. And the name of the resulting state was merged from two: Tanganyika + Zanzibar = Tanzania. The famous Lake Tanganyika, which gave the name to the first country, was discovered by the great traveler Sir Richard Burton in 1858, he also explained that in the local dialect the word tanganyka means "meeting", that is, the lake is the meeting place of the waters. "Zanzibar" derives its name from the words Zengi (this is the name of the local people, in their language it means "black") and the Arabic barr ("shore"). That is, "the coast of blacks."
Togo got its name in honor of the settlement of the same name. In the Ewe language, the word "to" means "water", and "go" means "shore". That is literally - "seashore". They say not “Tog”, but “Togolese” because the French called this territory in the German manner, Togoland, from which the adjective was formed.
Tunisia received a name in honor of the city of Tunis, and that goes back to the name of the Phoenician goddess Tanit (Tanith). Or somewhere else, I found seven different interpretations.
Uganda. The birthplace of a great friend of the USSR, Idi Amin, was named after the ancient African kingdom of Buganda, which means the land of the Baganda people. In the Baganda language, this word means "brothers and sisters", or rather, in an expanded version - Baganda Ba Katonda, "brothers and sisters of God." There is a rather complicated local legend connected with this, I will not tell it in full here. In general, the legend of the creation of the world with the Ugandans in the very center, as one would expect.
Central African Republic so named because it is located in the center of Africa. The toponym of the translation, in the local language sounds like Ködörösêse tî Bêafrîka. Well, in each language - in its own way. The name was given by the French - frankly, they did not think long. French: Republique centrafricaine.
Chad. In the local language of Bornu, the word "tsade" means "lake". It was used by the French, calling both Lake Chad and the entire surrounding area.
Equatorial Guinea. We have already talked about Guinea and the origin of this word in the sections on Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. I repeat: “guinea” in translation from the Susu language means “woman”. The name was given by the Portuguese (Guiné) after one of the first words they heard in the local language. But why "equatorial"? After all, the equator does not pass through the country! An no. The bottom line is that the main territory of the country lies to the north of the equator, and the island of Annobon, which belongs to it, is to the south. Therefore, in order to distinguish itself from the other two Guineas, this one received the adjective "equatorial". It's funny that "equator" is not called that in all languages, and sometimes it turns out something like Gíní Nahasdzáán Ałníi'gi Si'ánígíí (Navajo language), for example.
Eritrea. The name goes back to the Italian colonizers of the territory. In Latin, the Red Sea was called Mare Erythraeum, which comes from the ancient Greek Ἐρυθρά Θάλασσα (Eruthra Thalassa), where Ἐρυθρά means "red". The root, by the way, is recognizable: in English, “red” is red, ruth, E rit rea.
Ethiopia. The word came from the Greek Αἰθιοπία, distorted Αἰθίοψ (Aithíops), "αἰθ" means "burn", "ὤψ" - face, that is, "burnt faces", "blacks". Ethiopian sources say otherwise: the name came from "Ityopp" is, Ithioppis was the son of Kash, the grandson of Ham, the founder of the city of Aksum. In some languages, Ethiopia is still called the old name Abeşistan, "Abyssinia", which goes back to the Arabic name Habesha, which the local tribes were called, this word goes back to the hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, and its exact origin cannot be figured out. Ethiopia in Volapük has an absolutely enchanting name - Lätiopän. I cannot explain this.
Republic of South Africa located in southern Africa, and that says it all. The name was given by the British colonizers.
EXPLANATION. This is not a scientific study. These are just fun facts and speculations. If you can add or correct - supplement and correct. Thank God, the borders of Africa are quite clear, and there are no questions why this or that country ended up "in the wrong part of the world." Yes, Western Sahara is not a country.
Pygmies differ from other African tribes in their height, which ranges from 143 to 150 centimeters. The reason for such a small growth of pygmies is still a mystery to scientists, although some researchers believe that their growth is due to their adaptation to difficult living conditions in the rainforest.
Pygmies were sold to zoos!
The origin of the pygmies is still a mystery to scientists. No one knows who their distant ancestors were and how these little people ended up in the equatorial forests of Africa. There are no legends or myths to help answer these questions. There is an assumption that in ancient times the pygmies occupied the entire central part of the Black Continent, and were later driven out by other tribes into the rainforests. From Greek, the pygmies are translated as "people the size of a fist", the scientific definition interprets the pygmies as a group of undersized Negroid peoples living in the forests of Africa.
Pygmies are mentioned in ancient Egyptian sources of the III millennium BC. e., later Herodotus and Strabo wrote about them, Homer in his Iliad. Aristotle considered the pygmies to be a very real people, although a lot of fantastic things were written about them in ancient sources: for example, Strabo listed them along with big-headed, noseless, cyclops, pso-heads and other mythical creatures of the ancient period.
It is worth noting that because of their growth, the pygmies have long suffered many disasters and humiliations. The taller Africans drove them from the most favorable places and drove them into the green hell of the equatorial forests. Civilization also brought them some joy, especially at the beginning of contact with white people. Some travelers and colonial officials captured the pygmies and took them with them to Europe and the USA as a curiosity. It got to the point that pygmies, especially their children, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were sold as living exhibits to zoos in the West ...
It would seem that now this people can live much calmer and more confident in their future, but, alas, this is not so. It's hard to believe, but in the period 1998-2003 during civil war in the Congo it happened quite often that pygmies were caught and eaten like wild animals. A sect of “erasers” is still operating in the same parts, whose members are hired to clean up the territory from pygmies if mining is supposed to take place on it. Cultists kill pygmies and feed on their flesh. Enlightenment has not yet penetrated into the deep layers of the African population, so many inhabitants of the Black Continent believe that by eating a pygmy, they acquire some kind of magical power that protects them from witchcraft.
The presence of a considerable number of peculiar pygmy slaves will also seem incredible, although slavery is legally prohibited in all countries. Pygmies become slaves in the same Republic of the Congo, and they are even inherited; according to the tradition existing here, their owners are representatives of the Bantu people. No, pygmies do not walk in shackles, but their master can simply take away from the slaves the fruits and meat obtained in the forest, sometimes he still gives them some kind of provisions, tools and metal for arrowheads. Surprisingly, the pygmies do not arrange any uprisings against the slave owners: as some researchers say, without maintaining relations with the Bantu, they can only get worse,
Why are they so small?
The growth of pygmies ranges from 140 to 150 cm. The smallest people in the world are the pygmies of the Efe tribe, in which the average height of men does not exceed 143 cm, and for women - 130-132 cm. Of course, as soon as scientists learned about the existence of pygmies, they the question immediately arose - what is the reason for their such insignificant growth? If the pygmies of small stature were in their tribe only not most, their diminutiveness could be explained by a genetic failure. However, due to the general low growth, such an explanation had to be immediately discarded.
Another explanation, it would seem, lies right on the surface - the pygmies do not have good nutrition, and they are often malnourished, which is reflected in their growth. The study showed that the diet of African pygmies is almost the same as that of neighboring farmers (the same Bantu), but their daily food intake is very small. It is possible that this is why their bodies, and, accordingly, their height, decreased from generation to generation. It is clear that a smaller amount of food is enough for a small person to survive. Even a very interesting experiment was carried out: long time a small group of pygmies were fed to satiety, but, alas, neither the pygmies themselves nor their offspring grew up because of this.
There is also a version about the effect of lack of sunlight on the growth of pygmies. Spending their whole lives under the canopy of a dense forest, the pygmies do not receive enough sunlight, which leads to a slight production of vitamin D by the body. The lack of this vitamin causes inhibition of bone growth, which results in a very miniature skeleton in the pygmies.
Some researchers believe that the diminutiveness of pygmies is caused by an evolutionary process that adapts them to life in dense thickets. It is clear that it is much easier for a small and nimble pygmy to make his way through a palisade of trees, fallen trunks, entangled in vines than a tall European. It is also known about the predilection of pygmies for collecting honey. Looking for honey, male pygmies spend about 9% of their lives in trees in search of habitats for wild bees. Of course, climbing trees is easier for a person with small stature and weighing up to 45 kilograms.
Of course, the pygmies were carefully studied by doctors and geneticists, they found that the concentration of growth hormone in their blood does not differ much from the average ordinary person. However, the level of insulin-like growth factor was below the norm by 3 times. According to the researchers, this explains the small growth of newborn pygmies. In addition, the low concentration of this hormone in the blood plasma prevents the onset of a period of active growth in pygmy adolescents, who completely stop growing at the age of 12-15 years. By the way, genetic studies made it possible to call the pygmies the descendants of the most ancient people that appeared on Earth about 70 thousand years ago. But scientists have not identified genetic mutations in them.
The small stature of the pygmies is also explained by their short life span. Alas, these little people live an average of only 16 to 24 years, those who have reached the age of 35-40 are already long-livers among them. Due to the short life cycle, pygmies experience early puberty, causing inhibition of body growth. Puberty in pygmies occurs as early as 12 years old, and the highest birth rate in women is noted at 15.
As you can see, there are many factors contributing to the small growth of pygmies. Perhaps one of them is the main one, or maybe they all work together. Yes, due to their short stature, some scientists are even ready to single out the pygmies as a separate race. It is curious that in addition to growth, pygmies have other differences from negroid race- This is a light skin of a brown shade and very thin lips.
"Lilliputians" from the rainforest
Now pygmy tribes can be found in the forests of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic. The life of these little people is constantly connected with the forest, they spend the main part of their lives in it, get their own food, give birth to children and die. They are not engaged in agriculture, their main occupations are gathering and hunting. Pygmies lead a nomadic life, they leave their camp as soon as there is no game, no fruits, no edible plants, no honey around the camp. Resettlement takes place within the boundaries established with other groups, hunting on foreign land can become a reason for conflict.
There is another reason for moving. It happens when someone dies in a small pygmy village. Pygmies are very superstitious, they believe that since death has visited them, it means that the forest does not want them to continue to live in this place. The deceased is buried right in his hut, funeral dances take place at night, and in the morning, leaving their simple buildings, the pygmies move to another place.
The main occupation of male pygmies is hunting. Unlike "civilized" hunters who come to Africa to amuse their pride and get hunting trophies, pygmies never kill a living creature if there is no need for it. They hunt with bows with arrows poisoned with vegetable poison and spears with metal tips. Birds, monkeys, small antelopes and deer become their prey. Pygmies do not store meat for future use, they always share the prey fairly. Despite the usual luck of undersized hunters, mined meat makes up only 9% of their diet. By the way, pygmies often hunt with dogs, they are very hardy and, if necessary, are ready at the cost of their lives to protect the owner from the most ferocious beast.
A significant share in the diet of the pygmies is made up of honey and other gifts of the forest. Honey is mined by men who are ready to climb the highest trees for it, but the gifts of the forest are collected by women. Around the camp they look for fruits, wild roots, edible plants, they do not disdain worms, larvae, snails, frogs and snakes. All this goes to food. However, at least 50% of the diet of the pygmies is vegetables and fruits, which they exchange with farmers for honey and other gifts of the forest. In addition to food, through the exchange, the pygmies get the fabrics they need, pottery, iron and tobacco.
Every day, a part of the women remains in the village, making a kind of matter from the tree bark called “tana”, it is from it that the famous aprons of the pygmies are made. For men, such an apron is attached to a leather or fur belt, and they wear a bunch of leaves at the back. But women wear only aprons. However, settled pygmies that have already appeared often wear European clothes. Civilization is slowly but persistently penetrating into the life and life of the pygmies, their culture and traditions, perhaps in a few decades, will become a thing of the past.
Voted Thanks!
You may be interested in:
05/11/2017 Read the draft as a regular Article. Artyom Krivich ordered the program for our work, but to shorten our stay in Comte. What if ... we write something bad? We are children and we do not know how to think?
Pygmies. fist-sized people
©Fotodom.ru/Rex Features
Perhaps, few of us are versed in who the Negrills are.
But everyone has heard about the pygmies.
In fact, they are one and the same people.
Translated from Greek, pygmies - "people the size of a fist."
Although the height is from 124 to 150 cm for adult men
(for comparison, we have this growth of schoolchildren)
hardly associated with such a size as a fist, after all, they are really small!
2. Pygmies are not a single people, but various tribes: Akka, Tikitiki, Obongo, Bambuti, Batwa and others. The approximate number of pygmies ranges from 40 to 280 thousand people. The pygmies do not have their own language, they borrowed the language from their neighbors, in particular, from the Bantu. According to the language and methods of hunting, they are divided into three groups: efe, sua, and aka. Efe hunt with bows; sua, and aka - with networks.
3. Pygmies hunt deer, antelopes and monkeys. Gather fruits and honey. They mainly exchange their prey for vegetables, metal, textiles or tobacco. The main hunting tool is a bow with metal-tipped arrows, which are often poisoned. Fish are caught by poisoning reservoirs for a short time with plant poisons.
4. Life expectancy of pygmies is from 16 to 24 years. 40-year-old men and women are real centenarians. They reach puberty at the age of 12, and they begin to produce their own kind from the age of fifteen. If there are several wives, they live in separate huts. Pygmy Bantu neighbors willingly marry pygmies and do not even pay a ransom. The pygmies are unhappy with this, since the Bantu do not pass off their girls as pygmies.
5. Some anthropologists classify dwarf peoples as pygmies, where the height of an adult male does not exceed 155 centimeters. In their opinion, pygmies live not only in Africa, but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bolivia and Brazil. Regarding the Black Continent, not all pygmies have forests as habitats. For example, the Twa pygmies live in deserts and swamps.
6. The smallest in the world are the pygmies of Efe and Zaire. The height of women does not exceed 132 cm, and men - 143 cm.
7. Pygmies often become victims of rebels hiding in the forests, who rape women, and men are forced to go hunting and bring prey. When there is not enough meat, they eat pygmies.
8. The Aka tribe in Central Africa is not known for the division into "female" or "male" work. Women hunt alone or in groups when they want. Married and married - hunt with the whole family. The men are babysitting.
Read more at
https://www.pravda.ru/photo/album/26215/7/
In Africa, according to various sources, there are from five hundred to 8,000 peoples., including small nations and ethnic groups, which cannot be explicitly assigned to one of them. Some of these peoples number only a few hundred people, there are really not so many large ones: more than a million there are 107 peoples, and only 24 - more than five million. The largest nations in Africa: Egyptian Arabs(76 million) hausa(35 million) Moroccan Arabs(35 million) Algerian Arabs(32 million) yoruba(30 million) igbo(26 million) fulbe(25 million) Oromo(25 million) amhara(20 million) Malagasy(20 million) Sudanese Arabs(18 million). In total, 1.2 billion people live in Africa on a territory of just over 30 million square kilometers, that is, approximately one sixth of the population of our planet. In this article, we will briefly talk about the main peoples into which the population of Africa is divided.
North Africa
As you may have noticed, among the largest nations there are many those in whose name the word Arabs appears. Of course, genetically these are all different peoples, united primarily by faith, and also by the fact that more than a thousand years ago these lands were conquered from the Arabian Peninsula, included in the Caliphate, and mixed with the local population. The Arabs themselves, however, were relatively few in number.
The Caliphate conquered the entire North African coast, as well as part of the west coast as far as Mauritania. These places were known as the Maghreb, and although the countries of the Maghreb are now independent, their inhabitants still speak Arabic and practice Islam, and they are collectively called Arabs. They belong to the Caucasoid race, its Mediterranean branch, and the places inhabited by Arabs are distinguished by a fairly high level of development.
Egyptian Arabs form the basis of the population of Egypt and the most numerous of the African peoples. Ethnically, the Arab conquest had little effect on the population of Egypt, in the countryside it had little effect at all, and thus for the most part they are descendants of the ancient Egyptians. However, the cultural image of this people has changed beyond recognition, in addition, most of the Egyptians converted to Islam (although a considerable number of them remained Christians, now they are called Copts). If we count together with the Copts, then the total number of Egyptians can be brought up to 90-95 million people.
The second largest Arab people Moroccan Arabs, which are the result of the conquest by the Arabs of various local tribes that did not constitute a single people at that time - Libyans, Getuls, Mavrusians and others. Algerian Arabs formed from a diverse range of Berber peoples and Kabyles. But in the blood of Tunisian Arabs (10 million) there is some negroid element that distinguishes them from their neighbors. Sudanese Arabs make up the majority of the population of northern Sudan. Also, from the largest Arab peoples of Africa, Libyans(4.2 million) and Mauritanians(3 million).
A little to the south, in the hot Sahara, the Bedouins roam - this is the name of all nomads, regardless of their nationality. In total, there are about 5 million of them in Africa, they include various small peoples.
West and Central Africa
To the south of the Sahara, the swarthy, but white-skinned Africans belonging to the Mediterranean sub-race of the Caucasoid race are being replaced by people of the Negroid race, which is divided into three main sub-races: negro, negrillian And Bushman.
The Negro is the most numerous. In addition to West Africa, the peoples of this sub-race also live in Sudan, Central and South Africa. Its East African type is distinguished primarily by its tall stature - often the average height here is 180 cm, and is also characterized by the darkest skin, almost black.
In West and Equatorial Africa, the peoples of this sub-race dominate. Let's highlight the largest of them. First of all, this yoruba living in Nigeria, Togo, Benin and Ghana. These are representatives ancient civilization, which left a legacy of many original ancient cities and developed mythology. Hausa live in the north of Nigeria, as well as in Cameroon, Niger, Chad, the Central African Republic, they also had a developed culture of city-states in antiquity, and now they profess Islam, are engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry.
Igbo live in the southeast of Nigeria, having a small area of \u200b\u200bsettlement, but a high density. Unlike previous peoples, the Igbos do not have an ancient history, since they were formed from many different peoples relatively recently, already in the era of European colonization of Africa. Finally, the people fulbe settled over a vast territory from Mauritania to Guinea and even in Sudan. According to anthropologists, they originated from Central Asia, and already in modern times, this people was noted for its militancy, participating with great enthusiasm in Islamic jihads in Africa in the 19th century.
South and Equatorial Africa.
In contrast to the representatives of the Negro sub-race, people from the Negrill sub-race are short, their average height barely exceeds 140 cm, which is why they are called so - pygmies. Pygmies live in the forests of Equatorial Africa. But there are very few of them, but other peoples dominate in this territory, primarily from the Bantu group: these are duala, fang, bubi, mboshi, Congo and others for equatorial Africa and Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Ndebele for South. The basis of the population of Zimbabwe is the people Shona(13 million), also belonging to the Bantu group. In total, there are 200 million Bantu settled in half of the continent.
Also in Equatorial Africa live representatives of the third subrace, Bushman or capoid. They are characterized by short stature, a narrow nose and a flat nose bridge, as well as skin that is much lighter than that of their neighbors, which has a yellowish-brown tint. The Bushmen themselves are distinguished here, as well as the Hottentots, who live mainly in Namibia and Angola. However, representatives of the capoid subrace are not numerous.
In the very south, the minimal competition to the Bantu is made up of groups of Afrikaners, that is, the descendants of European colonists, primarily the Boers. In total, there are 3.6 million Afrikaners. South Africa can generally be called a melting pot - if you count with Madagascar, where the Malagasy settled from Mongoloid race, then people from almost all parts of the world live here, because in addition to the Malgash Mongoloids, Hindustanis, Biharis, Gujaratis, who speak Indo-Aryan languages, as well as Tamils, who speak Dravidian languages, also settled in southern Africa. They came to Africa from Asia, while the Malagasy sailed from distant Indonesia.
East Africa
First of all, it is worth highlighting the Ethiopian subrace. As the name implies, it includes the population of Ethiopia, which genetically cannot be attributed either to the swarthy, but white-skinned northerners, or to the representatives of the Negroid race living in the south. This subrace is considered the result of a mixture of Caucasoid and Negroid, combining the features of both. It should be noted that “Ethiopians” is a collective concept, the following peoples live in this country: Oromo, amharas, tigers, gurage, sidama and others. All these peoples speak Ethio-Semitic languages.
The two largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia are the Oromo, also living in northern Kenya, and the Amhara. Historically, the former were nomadic and lived on the east coast, while the latter gravitated towards agriculture. Muslims predominate among the Oromos, while Christians predominate among the Amharas. The Ethiopian race also includes the Nubians living in southern Egypt, numbering up to two million.
Also, a significant part of the population of Ethiopia is the Somali people, who gave the name to the neighboring state. They belong to the Cushitic language family along with Oromo and Agau. There are about 16 million Somalis in total.
In eastern Africa, peoples are also common Bantu. Here it is Kikuyo, Akamba, Meru, Luhya, Jaggga, Bemba living in Kenya and Tanzania. At one time, these peoples ousted the Cushitic-speaking people from here, from which something still remains: iraco, gorowa, burungi, sandawa, hadza- but these peoples are far from being so numerous.
Among the great African lakes live Rwanda, Rundi, Ganda, Sogo, Hutu, Tutsi, and also Pygmies. Rwanda is the largest people in this area, numbering 13.5 million. The lakeside region is inhabited by Swahili, Comorians, mijikenda.
Fotodom.ru/Rex Features
Perhaps, few of us are versed in who the Negrills are. But everyone has heard about the pygmies. In fact, they are one and the same people. Translated from Greek, pygmies - "people the size of a fist." Although a height of 124 to 150 cm for adult men (for comparison, we have the height of schoolchildren) is hardly associated with such a size as a fist, they are still really small!
Fotodom.ru/Rex Features
Pygmies are not a single people, but various tribes: Akka, Tikitiki, Obongo, Bambuti, Batwa and others. The approximate number of pygmies ranges from 40 to 280 thousand people. The pygmies do not have their own language, they borrowed the language from their neighbors, in particular, from the Bantu. According to the language and methods of hunting, they are divided into three groups: efe, sua, and aka. Efe hunt with bows; sua, and aka - with networks.
Fotodom.ru/Rex Features
Pygmies hunt deer, antelopes and monkeys. Gather fruits and honey. They mainly exchange their prey for vegetables, metal, textiles or tobacco. The main hunting tool is a bow with metal-tipped arrows, which are often poisoned. Fish are caught by poisoning reservoirs for a short time with plant poisons.
Fotodom.ru/Rex Features
The life expectancy of pygmies is from 16 to 24 years. 40-year-old men and women are real centenarians. They reach puberty at the age of 12, and they begin to produce their own kind from the age of fifteen. If there are several wives, they live in separate huts. Pygmy Bantu neighbors willingly marry pygmies and do not even pay a ransom. The pygmies are unhappy with this, since the Bantu do not pass off their girls as pygmies.
Fotodom.ru/Rex Features
Some anthropologists classify dwarf peoples as pygmies, where the height of an adult male does not exceed 155 centimeters. In their opinion, pygmies live not only in Africa, but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bolivia and Brazil. Regarding the Black Continent, not all pygmies have forests as habitats. For example, the Twa pygmies live in deserts and swamps.
The smallest in the world are the pygmies of Efe and Zaire. The height of women does not exceed 132 cm, and men - 143 cm.
