Pygmy tribe 4 letters crossword puzzle. Forest hunters
The Efe are a dwarf people “the size of a fist” living in tropical Africa. Like all Bambuti pygmies, they have a rather archaic culture. Efe do not know how to make stone tools or make fire. These dwarfs believe that the soul of every person after death is incarnated into a totemic animal. Some anthropologists considered the Bambuti to be descendants of Neanderthals. But gene studies have shown that they are ordinary people who received a special gene 50 - 90 thousand years ago.
The first mention of strange little people is in ancient Egyptian inscriptions of the 3rd millennium BC. e.. Later, Homer wrote about fabulous dwarfs, who were similar in size to frogs and often became victims of cranes that flew over the stormy ocean and “bringing death and murder to the pygmy family.”In the 7th century AD, Chinese historian Li Tai described in detail dwarfs, only 3 chi (90 cm) tall, living south of the Roman Empire. The first Europeans encountered the Matimba, a short people, in the 16th-17th centuries in West Africa. In the 19th century, the existence of pygmies was confirmed by German and Russian travelers exploring the Ituri River basin. In 1934, the Efe tribe was discovered by the expedition of M. Guzinde. After this, no one doubted the reality of the existence of dwarfs. The height of male pygmies does not exceed 142-145 cm. Characteristic features are: a large body on short legs, light brown skin, curly dark hair, thin lips, a narrow and low nose bridge. Outwardly, they look a little like Negroids, but are considered a separate race.
Before the Bantu settlement, the pygmies occupied all of central Africa, but were then pushed into the forests. Now they are so accustomed to living in the thicket that they cannot stand the direct rays of the sun and, once in the open, try to return to their native wilds as quickly as possible. Africans of normal height despise their small neighbors. Because of this, the Efe tribes living in the Ituri basin were least exposed to mixing with their neighbors. But cases of tall men marrying tiny Efe women still happen.
So it was with Abamu. Several years ago, this Bantu man married a girl from his tribe, but their first child died and the wife could no longer become pregnant. Abama took a pretty girl from the Efe tribe as his second wife. Men of the Efe tribe are not happy with such marriages, because for them finding a life partner is a problem. But despite this, they give their girls as Bantu wives completely free of charge, since they are happy to become related to high patrons. If a child is born from the relationship of a pygmy man and a black woman, then he is expelled from the tall tribe. His only way is into the thicket of the forest, to his relatives - the pygmies, who even in the 21st century have not reached the Stone Age in terms of development.
Efe, like all pygmies, still do not know how to make fire and carefully carry the flame with them, making sure that it does not go out. Their day is 99 percent occupied by hunting and gathering plants. Stone tools are also unknown to these children of the rainforest. For hunting they use bows and arrows with poisoned tips. The pygmies exchange some things with other tribes for game obtained by hunting, of which they always have a lot, because they are excellent hunters. Favorite meat is elephant, but this delicacy is rare, once every few years. The usual prey is antelopes and monkeys. They do not disdain fish either. Pygmies use a special method of fishing - poisoning with plant poisons. The fish falls asleep, floats to the surface, and can be collected by hand. The Efe collect as much fish as needed and leave the rest (it wakes up after half an hour).
Men also collect a delicacy - honey. This work is considered difficult and dangerous. If the precious prey is obtained, then the miners gorge themselves on honey so much that their bellies become like drums. According to Robert Bayley's observations, approximately a tenth of the Efe's time is spent searching for honey. Honey makes up about 14 percent of the calories in efe's total diet. Every day, women, accompanied by children, collect wild roots, leaves of edible plants and fruits around their camp, and catch worms, snails, frogs, snakes and fish. After all the snails are eaten and all the roots are dug up, the Efe change their habitat.
Despite their nomadic lifestyle, each tribe has its own territory, moving to another area of the forest, but wandering within established boundaries. Hunting on foreign lands can lead to hostile conflicts. Such clashes are rare, because at their core, Efe pygmies are non-aggressive. All researchers note that they are happy for any reason. A special reason for delight is a successful hunt. To make it successful, the Efe strictly observe superstitious hunting rules and prohibitions and perform magical rituals. They turn to the forest spirit - Torah, asking him to help in fishing.
Since each genus has its own animal totem (most often a leopard, chimpanzee, as well as snakes, various monkeys, antelopes, ants, etc.), it is treated as a close relative, called “grandfather”, “father”. Savages believe in the origin of clans from their totems. During the feast, the consumption of meat from the totem animal is excluded. After the feast they sing and dance, often for 4-5 hours at a time. On a full moon, the dancing lasts all night. Little people dance selflessly, to the sound of drums. The “elephant hunt” dance is the most famous and popular among the pygmies.
The birth of a child is not a cause for celebration. A child could die from a snake bite, a fever, or be dragged away by a cheetah. The holiday comes when a person enters the age of maturity and a pair of working hands appears in the tribe. Usually then the savages feast for 3-4 days, dance and drink palm wine. The initiation rite is one of the most important among the pygmies, and only after its successful completion does the young man become a full-fledged member of the tribe. The rituals are performed collectively over a whole group of boys from 9 to 16 years old. They are subjected to circumcision and other severe ordeals: they are beaten, smeared with various unclean things, intimidated by dancing in scary masks, and forced to lie motionless on their stomachs. The entire initiation ritual is associated with the image of the forest spirit Tore. Initiations are considered as a kind of initiation into the magical power necessary for the hunter.
Initiation for girls is called “ima”. Ima is an expensive and rare holiday with a huge feast and dancing until you drop. Most often, two or three families celebrate Ima for their daughters at the same time. The heroes of the occasion are locked up in a ceremonial hut for 2 months the day before. Only old women come to them, teaching them wisdom. For the holiday they prepare “mbuga” - a festive cape made of bast material. Making it is a real art. You need to find a special kind of vine. The finished fabric is then dyed and painted with patterns that are a real work of art. First, the fabric is treated with the juice of the tato fruit (it gives a black color when mixed with eels from the fire). The craftswoman covers the fabric with an intricate pattern of intersecting lines. Then red paint from the heartwood of the Ndo tree is used. Then another color is added, yellow, from the roots of the binjali plant. The cape is ready! The outfit is completed with intricate headbands made of parrot feathers. The heroes of the occasion will now be the center of male attention.
The trends of new times are also present. Beauties should have banknotes clutched between their lips - a symbol of wealth. Without them, an Efe girl will not look prosperous. Unfortunately, the small people have fewer and fewer holidays. They were faced with a big problem - the death of the rainforest. Their patrimony is being destroyed for the sake of new agricultural land, animals and birds are disappearing. The Efe are forced to go further and further into the forest, breaking their usual ties with the Bantu. Their lives are at risk.
In the tropical forests of the Ituri province of the Republic of Congo live the shortest people on the planet - the pygmies of the Mbuti tribe. Their average height is 135 cm. Their light skin color helps them live easily and unnoticed in the forest shade at the Stone Age level.
They do not raise livestock or cultivate plants. They live in close connection with the forest, but no longer than a month in one place. Their diet is based on collected berries, nuts, honey, mushrooms, fruits and roots, and the form of their social organization is determined by hunting.
Among those Mbuti who hunt mainly with bows and arrows, a group may consist of only three families, although during the honey-gathering season the hunters unite in large groups required during round-ups. But in the West, net hunters must have a group of at least seven families, preferably twice as many. In cases where the group already unites 30 families, it is divided.
There is enough space for 35 thousand Mbuti in the Ituri forests. Each group occupies its own territory, always leaving a decent-sized common area of land in the center of the thicket.
The group as a whole considers itself a single family. And this is the main social unit, although the group does not always consist of relatives. Its composition can also change with each monthly nomadic journey. Therefore, there are no leaders or permanent leaders. In any case, all members of the group are in solidarity with each other.
When hunting, the family is divided into age groups. The older men set traps and ambush them with darts and clubs. Young men stay at a distance with arrows in their hands, so that if the game escapes, they can kill it. And women and children are behind the young hunters, facing them and waiting for the caught game to be put into baskets. They carry baskets behind their backs and are held in place by straps placed on their foreheads. When the group has caught game for the day, it returns to the camp site, collecting everything edible along the way. Then the food is cooked over a fire.
The most heinous crime among the pygmies is considered to be when some cunning hunter sets up nets at the time of driving in game. The main catch ends up in his hands, and he doesn’t share it with anyone. But justice is restored simply and impressively. All the spoils are taken from the sly man, and his family remains hungry.”
A curious Englishman, Colin Turnbull, decided to conduct an experiment. He really wanted to check how the pygmy would behave outside his forest. Here's what he writes: “I persuaded an experienced hunter, Kenge, to go with me to the Ishango National Reserve, a savanna teeming with game. We loaded up with all sorts of provisions, got into the car and drove off. Since it was pouring rain, Kenge did not even notice that the forest was left behind. When we drove out onto a grassy plain, my companion began to grumble: “Not a single tree, what a bad country.”
The only thing that calmed him down was the promise of plenty of game. But then he was upset again when he learned that it was impossible to hunt this game. When we climbed the slope and looked out over the plain, Kenge was dumbfounded. In front of him, a green plain stretched to the horizon, merging with Lake Edward. Without end and without edge. And elephants, antelopes, buffaloes, etc. graze everywhere. Kenge had never seen anything like this before.
“This meat would last for many months,” he said dreamily. I got into the car and kept getting out of it until we left the reserve. The next day, Kenge felt more confident and said:
- I was wrong, this is a good place, although I don’t like it. Here the sky is clear and the earth is clean. If only there were more trees... On the way back, the deeper we drove into the forest, the louder Kenge sang. At the camp he was greeted as a hero
The Mbuti tribe are pygmies living in eastern Zaire, numbering approximately 100 thousand people and speaking the Efe language. Their dark glory as merciless hunters is distinguished by a rather peaceful way of life, compared to the warlike North Kenyan tribes. All tribes have already been discovered, because European missionaries do not leave any ethnic group without their attention.
Mbuti pygmies change their sites once every five years in order to migrate closer and closer to civilization - near roads and rivers they can exchange their prey in the form of skins, meat, wild fruits and berries for the achievements of cultural life they need - salt, matches, metal objects.
Mbuti tribe
They also became interested in clothing, so it is almost impossible to see their famous skirts made of leaves and tree bark. The Mbuti come into contact for such natural exchanges with the sedentary and civilized Bantus (translated from Swahili - “people”).
Bantu is a linguistic group of most of the Zairian tribes and many other African peoples, the literal linguistic name of which denotes a sedentary people, tall in stature.
Some argue that by this act the hunters atone for their guilt for depriving the forest of game and vegetation, since the pygmies have an ambivalent attitude towards hunting. It brings them joy, pleasure, and they love to eat meat, but still they believe that it is not good to take the life of living beings, for God created not only the people of the forest, but also the animals of the forest.
Children at a very early age are instilled with the idea of dependence on the forest, faith in it, they are made to feel like they are part of the forest, and therefore they are entrusted with the responsibility of kindling a redemptive fire, without which there will be no successful hunt.
The high mobility of pygmies also leads to the unstable nature of social organization. Since the composition and size of groups changes all the time, they cannot have leaders or individual leaders, since they, like other people, can leave and leave the group without a leader. And since the Mbuti do not have a lineage system, it would be difficult to share leadership when the group splits into smaller units once a year. Here, too, age plays an important role in the system of government, and everyone except children has their own responsibilities. But even children play a certain role: bad behavior (laziness, grumpiness, selfishness) is corrected not with the help of a punishment system - it does not exist among the pygmies - but simply by ridiculing the offender. Children can do this very well. For them, this is a game, but through it they comprehend the moral values of adult life and quickly correct the behavior of the offender, making him laugh. Young people are more likely to influence the lives of adults, in particular they may express their dissatisfaction with a group or their approval of the group as a whole rather than individuals during the religious holiday of molimo. Adult hunters have the final say in economic matters, but that’s all. The elders act as arbiters and make decisions on the most important issues of the group, and the elders are respected by everyone.
The closeness that exists between the Mbuti pygmies and their forest world is manifested in the fact that they humanize the forest, calling it father and mother, since it gives them everything they need, even life. They do not try to control the world around them, but adapt to it, and this is the fundamental difference between their attitude towards the forest and the attitude towards the forest of its other inhabitants - fishermen and farmers. The Mbuti's technique is very simple, and other tribes who own a certain amount of material wealth consider hunters to be poor. But such material wealth would only hinder the Mbuti nomads, and the technology they have sufficiently satisfies their needs. They do not burden themselves with any excess. They make clothes from bark broken by a piece of elephant tusk, from skins and vines they make bags in which they carry children on their backs, quivers for arrows, bags, jewelry and ropes for weaving hunting nets. The Mbuti build shelters in a few minutes from young shoots and leaves, cutting them with metal machetes and knives that they receive from farmers living nearby. They say that if they did not have metal, they would have used stone tools, but this is doubtful - the pygmies are gradually entering the Iron Age.
The abundant gifts of the forest can be judged at least from the kasuku tree - the resin from its top is needed for cooking, and the resin taken from the roots of the tree is used to illuminate homes. The Mbuti also use this resin to seal the seams of the bark boxes in which they collect honey. From an early age, a child learns to use the world around him so as not to destroy it, but only to take everything that is needed at the moment. His education comes down to imitation of adults. His toys are replicas of objects that adults use: a boy learns to shoot slow-moving animals with a bow, and a girl goes into the forest and picks mushrooms and nuts in her tiny basket. Thus, children provide economic assistance by obtaining a certain amount of food, although for them it is just a game.
Thanks to a sense of interdependence and community, cultivated from birth, the pygmies stand together as a united group against neighboring tribes of forest farmers, who have a completely different attitude towards the forest and consider it a dangerous place that must be cleared in order to survive. The pygmies trade with these farmers, but not for economic reasons, but simply to prevent farmers from entering their forest in search of meat and other forest products that the peasants always need. Villagers are afraid of both the people of the forest and the forest itself, protecting themselves from them with rituals and magic.
The only magical means of hunters is of a “sympathetic” nature - a talisman made from forest vines, decorated with tiny pieces of wood, or mastic from the ashes of forest fires, mixed with the fat of some animal and placed in the horn of an antelope; it is then smeared on the body to ensure a successful hunt. The idea of such a talisman is simple: if the Mbuti comes into even closer physical contact with the forest, then his needs will certainly be satisfied. These acts are more religious than "magical" in nature, as can be seen in the example of the mother who swaddles her newborn child in a special robe made from a piece of bark (although now the mother could get soft cloth) and decorates the baby with amulets made from vines, leaves and pieces of wood, and then bathes him in the forest water that accumulates in some thick vines. With the help of this physical contact, the mother, as it were, devotes the child to the forest and asks for his protection. When trouble comes, as the Mbuti say, all they have to do is sing the sacred songs of the Molimo ceremony, “wake up the forest with them” and draw its attention to their children - then everything will be all right. It is a rich but simple faith, presenting a striking contrast to the beliefs and practices of neighboring tribes.
But otherwise, the life of the Mbuti has not changed in any way; they, as in past centuries, remain the same gatherers and nomadic hunters, preserving their traditional culture.
Video: Ritual dances of African pygmies.
The shortest people on earth, whose average height does not exceed 141 cm, live in the Congo River Basin in Central Africa. “The size of a fist” - this is translated from the Greek pygmalios - the name of the pygmy tribe. There is an assumption that they once occupied all of Central Africa, but were then forced out into the tropical forests.
The daily life of these wild people is devoid of romance and is associated with a daily struggle for survival, when the main task of the men is to obtain food for the entire village. Pygmies are considered the least bloodthirsty hunters. And indeed it is. They never hunt for the sake of hunting, they never kill animals for the sake of the desire to kill, they never store meat for future use. They do not even bring a killed animal to the village, but cut it up, cook it and eat it right on the spot, calling all the village residents for a meal. Hunting and everything connected with it is the main ritual in the life of the tribe, clearly expressed in folklore: songs about heroic hunters, dances depicting scenes of animal behavior, myths and legends. Before the hunt, men cover themselves and their weapons with mud and dung from the animal they are going to hunt, turn to the spear with a request to be accurate, and set off.
The daily food of the pygmies is plant-based: nuts, edible herbs and roots, palm pith. Seasonal activity is fishing. For fishing, pygmies use a special grass that makes the fish fall asleep, but does not die. The grass leaves are dissolved in the river, and the catch is collected downstream. Particularly dangerous for pygmies is the jungle, full of a variety of wild animals. But the most dangerous is the python. If a pygmy accidentally steps on a python more than 4 meters away, it is doomed. The snake instantly attacks, wraps itself around the body and strangles.
The origin of the pygmies is still not entirely clear. What is known is that the first Europeans only recently entered their world and were greeted rather belligerently. The exact number of members of the tribe is not known. According to various sources, there are about 280 thousand of them. The average life expectancy is no more than 45 years for men, women live a little longer. The first child is born at the age of 14-15, but there are no more than two children in a family. Pygmies roam in groups of 2-4 families. They live in low huts covered with grass, which can be made in a few hours. Boys aged 9-16 are circumcised and subjected to other rather cruel tests, accompanied by moral instructions. Only men take part in such rituals.
The tribe has lost its native language, so the dialects of neighboring tribes are most often used. The clothing consists only of a hip belt with an apron. But sedentary pygmies are increasingly wearing European clothes. The main deity is the forest spirit Tore, the owner of forest game, to whom hunters turn with prayer before hunting.
The culture and traditions of the Pygmies are gradually disappearing. New life slowly penetrates into their everyday life, dissolving the way of life of the smallest people on the planet.
Watch interesting videos.
Unknown planet. Pygmies and Karamojongs. Part 1.
Ritual dances of the Baka pygmies.
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