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Article: "The Pygmies Were Our Compass": Bantu and Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900 C.E.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"The Pygmies Were Our Compass": Bantu and Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900 C.E. By Kairn A. Klieman. (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003. Pp. xxxiv, 253. $26.00.)
Westerners commonly think of Pygmies only as placeholders on an ahistorical evolutionary continuum. Somewhat like people in the ancient and medieval world, who imagined semihuman creatures standing between animal life and civilization, modern observers often assume Pygmies are Stone Age relics who exist as social fossils in the deep recesses of the equatorial forests. Consequently, scholars use Pygmies as a static foil for the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions that ...