Hunting and Foraging, Central Africa

The prehistoric record of foragers in Central Africa is very limited. It is generally agreed that ancestors of ethnographically known forest foragers (formerly called pygmies) were present in forested areas of Central Africa by 70,000 years ago, if not earlier. Limited data from a handful of well‐dated archaeological sites show that these were likely mobile populations that exploited resources from forest and savanna woodlands. Historic and ethnohistoric records provide the most detailed records of forest foragers. These observations and later ethnographic studies show that forest foragers were nomadic populations that specialized in exploiting forest resources. Many of these populations had well‐established and multidimensional interrelationships with settled Bantu‐speaking food producers. The most visible aspect of these interrelationships was the economic exchange of forest products for domesticated foods. But the interrelationships also had important ritual, political, and social dimensions.