Classification of Pygmy languages

The term Congo Pygmies (African Pygmies) refers to "forest people" who have, or recently had, a hunter-gatherer economy and a simple, non-hierarchical societal structure based on bands, are of short stature,[note 1] have a deep cultural and religious affinity with the Congo forest[note 2] and live in a generally subservient relationship with agricultural "patrons", with which they trade forest products such as meat and honey for agricultural and iron products.

Different Pygmy peoples may have distinct genetic mechanisms for their short stature, demonstrating diverse origins.

[2] It has been postulated that ancestral speakers may have been part of a complex of non-Pygmoid languages of hunter-gatherer populations in Africa whose only surviving descendants today mostly ring the rainforest.

[3] A common hypothesis is that African Pygmies are the direct descendants of the Late Stone Age hunter-gatherer peoples of the central African rainforest who were partially absorbed or displaced by later immigration of agricultural peoples and adopted their Central Sudanic, Ubangian and Bantu languages.

[10] The most complete account of Pygmy languages is found in Serge Bahuchet (1993) Histoire d'une civilisation forestière, volume 2.