Pygmy populations are among the few hunter-gatherers currently living in sub-Saharan Africa and are mainly represented by two groups, Eastern and Western, according to their current geographical distribution. They are scattered across the Central African belt and surrounded by Bantu-speaking farmers, with whom they have complex social and economic interactions. To investigate the demographic hi...

Morphological parsers are typically developed for languages without contrastive tonal systems. Ha, a typical Bantu language of Western Tanzania, proposes a challenge to these parses with both lexical and grammatical pitch-accent that would, in order to describe the tonal phenomena, seem to require an approach with a separate level for the tones. However, since the Two-Level Morphology (Koskenni...

Cloning and sequencing of the gamma-globin gene of a sickle cell anemia patient homozygous for the Bantu haplotype has revealed a gene conversion that involves the replacement of an A gamma sequence by a G gamma sequence in the promoter area of the A gamma gene. This event is similar to another gene conversion believed to be responsible for the very high homology between gamma-globin genes, sug...

Examination of a set of non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages shows that most are aspect-prominent languages, that is, they either do not encode tense —the majority case— or, as the quotation indicates, there is reason to think that some have added tense to an original aspectual base. Comparative consideration of tense-aspect categories and morphology suggests that early and Proto-Niger-Congo were as...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup L2 originated in Western Africa but is nowadays spread across the entire continent. L2 movements were previously postulated to be related to the Bantu expansion, but L2 expansions eastwards probably occurred much earlier. By reconstructing the phylogeny of L2 (44 new complete sequences) we provide insights on the complex net of within-African migrations in t...

A case of xeroderma pigmentosum with associated band-shaped nodular dystrophy of the cornea is discussed. Band-shapped nodular dystrophy of the cornea usually occurs in elderly Bantu men. Band-shaped nodular dystrophy in a young Bantu man suffering from a genetically determined solar sensitive disease lends credence to the possibility that band-shaped nodular dystrophy is a solar sensitive dise...

In this paper, we carry out a combined analysis of autosomal (ten microsatellites and an Alu insertion), mitochondrial (HVR-1 sequence, 360 nucleotides) and Y-chromosomal (seven microsatellites) variation in the Mbenzele Pygmies from the Central African Republic. This study focuses on two important questions concerning the admixture and origin of African Pygmies. Ethnographic observations sugge...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate whether a secular trend in growth occurred during the last century in Pygmies from Cameroon (West Pygmies) and in Bantu rural farmers, the latter being studied to serve as controls. DESIGN The evolution in height of West Pygmies and Bantu farmers from 1911 to 2006 was evaluated using data from the literature as well as data gathered by our re...