Deep history of cultural and linguistic evolution among Central African hunter-gatherers

Abstract Human evolutionary history in Central Africa reflects a deep history of population connectivity. However, Central African hunter-gatherers (CAHGs) currently speak languages acquired from their neighbouring farmers. Hence it remains unclear which aspects of CAHG cultural diversity results from long-term evolution preceding agriculture, and which reflect borrowing from farmers. Based on musical instruments, foraging tools, specialised vocabulary, and genome-wide data from 10 CAHG populations, we revealed evidence of large-scale cultural interconnectivity among CAHGs before and after the Bantu expansion. We also show that the distribution of hunter-gatherer musical instruments correlates with the oldest genomic segments in our sample predating farming. Music-related words are widely shared between Western and Eastern groups and likely precede the borrowing of Bantu languages. By contrast, subsistence tools are less frequently exchanged and may result from adaptation to local ecologies. We conclude that CAHG material culture and specialised lexicon reflect a long evolutionary history in Central Africa.