The world's most primitive tribesmen, short in stature and incomparable in strength, have lived in seclusion in the African rainforest for thousands of years, calling themselves the children of the forest.
Today we are going to talk about the "little race" from Central Africa, Negliro.
They are the shortest human race in the world and one of the oldest peoples in Africa, living in dense forests and isolated for thousands of years. Records of them first appear in the inscriptions of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, who were also known as the Pygmies.
"Pygmies" originated from the Greek word "dwarf", often refers to the average height of men not more than 1.5 meters of ethnic groups, Negriro people as children of the forest, do not believe in gods and ghosts, do not worship ancestors, no chiefs, no village committees, and there will be no standardized system and law.
For them, the only faith is the forest, they take the family as a unit, six or seven families are a tribe, living together, migrating together, the members of the tribe are not fixed, they can be dissolved and recombined at any time, there is no private property, everything is collectively owned.
In order to adapt to the harsh rainforest living environment, Negriro was born short, matured early, and had strong strength and resistance. When they are seven or eight years old, their sexual function has matured, and they will get married and have children around the age of ten.
In terms of marriage, the Negliro people strictly practice monogamy, and when choosing a spouse, they also need to implement "exchange marriage", that is, the man has the obligation to find his own single female relatives to "exchange" with the single male of the bride's family.
Of course, it was also possible to choose a black man from a nearby village as a spouse, in which case the groom had to give his father-in-law an antelope as a dowry. The marriage of the Negriro people is unique and unfair, after all, for the "bridesmaids" and "groomsmen", it is still a bit of an arranged marriage.
But they still accept such marriages, husband and wife live in harmony, loyalty, neglio groups, in addition to having common norms, the social division of labor is also very clear, men go out hunting, women gather resources, men hunt tools only bows and arrows, spears and nets, sounds simple and backward, but they rely on skilled skills, but they can hunt such giants as elephants.
The people who hunt the elephants will be respected by the audience and will be called "Tuma", which means hero.
Hunting and gathering also determined the migratory life of the Negriros, generally, they migrated five or six times a year, so their houses were very simple, with branches and palm leaves in a conical shape, each room covered an area of about 3 square meters, the location of the house was usually determined by the men, the women were responsible for building the house, and it took just over two hours to build such a house.
The long-term breeding in the forest has made the civilization of the Negliro people extremely backward, and the so-called "backwardness will be beaten", and the children of the forest are forced to go out of the forest because of environmental changes.
However, from the beginning of the 20th century, under the crazy oppression of homosexuals and whites, the life of the Negliro people shifted in a worse direction.
Otabenga, born in 1883 in the Congo, this Negriro, like many people in Africa, had a difficult early life and endured the torment of war, and later, Belgium ruled the Congo, the king sent troops to attack benga's tribes, his wife and two children were killed in the war, and he survived because he went out hunting, and finally he was captured by the army and became a slave.
In 1904, he was bought by an American businessman with a pound of salt and a bundle of cloth and brought to the United States as a display of the St. Louis World's Fair, where he was welcomed by tourists.
In 1906, merchants placed him at the Bronx Zoo to help care for and feed elephants and other African animals, which he did, and was again very popular.
All this should have been a good thing, however, the zoo director took a fancy to him and made Benga "part of the exhibition", and soon Benja was inhabited as an animal and an orangutan. The exhibition was successful, but it also infuriated black-American groups, with the Black Press making remarks strongly condemning Benga's abuses, and MacArthur, a delegation of black churches, demanding that the mayor of New York release Benga.
Late in the year, the reverend Gordon placed Benja in a Black Howard Orphanage.
In 1910, Gordon took Benga to Lynchburg, where he bought clothes and took him to have his teeth restored, and after a series of English tutoring, Benja worked in a tobacco factory in Lynchburg. After everything had stabilized, a strong sense of homesickness took over Benga, who had tried to return to Africa, but the First World War interrupted his plans to return home.
Benja suffered from depression and eventually committed suicide in 1916.
In July 2020, the head of the Bronx Zoo apologized for the shameful acts of racism committed 114 years ago, and Benga's tragic experience has been recorded in various literatures in the past 30 years, including more than 15 related works, including drama, film, music, and even as part of the English listening test.
The story of Benga is only the tip of the iceberg encountered by the Negliros, although the Congolese government agreed to help the Neglios, but in fact, Congolese poachers and loggers are gradually depriving them of their homes, and more and more Neglios are leaving the forest, forced to survive on the side of the road, relying on humble jobs, and falling into the situation of alcohol and drug addiction.
As the Negriro people walked out of the forest, their humanistic beliefs, customs and habits also quickly entered the public's field of vision, and were constantly excavated and recorded by scholars.
It is recorded that the center of all activities of the Negliros revolves around their only faith, the forest.
It is like an invisible manipulative hand, outside the order and rules, affecting all The Negriros, so that even if the ethnic groups are scattered throughout Central Africa, but under the support of faith, they rarely leave the embrace of the forest, the Negliro ethnic groups are mainly small and medium-sized, widely distributed in the dense forests of Congo, Cameroon, Rwanda and other places.
The main language of each ethnic group is also different, in general, the Negriro people mainly use Bantu, Middle Sudanese and Ubon to communicate, and such multilingual phenomenon occurs, there is a common saying that the Negriro people are descendants of hunters from the Central African rainforest, the late Stone Age, and in the subsequent evolutionary development, they came into contact with people from outside the forest.
They then borrowed their language as their mother tongue, but such a view is not supported by archaeology, genetics, and linguistics.
However, for the race that has lived in the rainforest for a long time and is difficult to study history, any kind of hypothesis can be reasonable, the so-called place where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, where there are ethnic groups, there are rituals, this ancient way of expressing emotions and transmitting emotions has been deeply imprinted in the soul of people.
Sometimes, even more important than language and writing, the Neglio are no exception, when something bad happens within the Negliro tribe, they call their friend "Molimo", they believe that the reason for the bad thing is that the forest is sleeping, in order to awaken the sleeping forest, it is necessary to use a special object, that is, "Molimo".
However, the "Mollymo" of great ceremonial significance is often just an object made of bamboo or wood, and sometimes even a sewer pipe, because its sound is loud enough and not easy to break, and the Negliro people sing to it, allowing the "Mollymo" to share their happiness.
When the forest "wakes up" and everything is safe, they will sing to the forest again, thanking the forest with joy and joy for such a ceremony as "Mollymo", which also fully demonstrates the musical talent of the Negriro people.
In addition to awakening the forest, on every festival or good day, the tribal men will smear dirt on their faces, sing loudly, musicians beat "Rickenberge" and beat drums, and girls dance with music, these dance movements, mostly from life, hunting and animal forms, these low-cost and high-meaning folk entertainment, is very important to them.
In addition to this entertaining ritual, the neglio funeral was also very solemn, and after the death of a Negliro, the entire tribe fell into grief, and the body of the deceased was carefully washed, wrapped in a white cloth, and then tied with a mat and buried in a simple wooden coffin, which they had learned from other black villages.
After the burial of the deceased, the tribesmen would wash their bodies and hold a "Mollymo" to make the forest rejoice again, they believed that life was a gift from the forest, the forest naturally had the power and power to recycle the gift, "life and death are the gifts of the forest", they have accepted the fact.
The negliro culture is long and fragile, yet they still suffer from discrimination and war, because they are "short and primitive", they are denied identity cards and medical protection, and slavery, poverty, intermarriage, Westernization, and the disappearance of forests are also destroying their culture and way of life.
The Negliro people in the central African rainforest are rapidly decreasing, in the face of cruel systems and cold guns, they have no room for resistance, the children of the forest have guarded the forest for thousands of years, and now, who can guard them?