Central Africa is home to the greatest number of hunter-gatherers remaining in the world, but the origins of their culture remain unclear. We compiled a dataset of Central African hunter-gatherer musical instruments, subsistence tools, specialized vocabulary and genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism data, which revealed ancient networks of cultural and linguistic exchange that spanned thousands of kilometres.
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References
Padilla-Iglesias, C. et al. Population interconnectivity over the past 120,000 years explains distribution and diversity of Central African hunter-gatherers. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2113936119 (2022). An article showing the time depth of hunter-gatherer occupation of Central African environments.
Bahuchet, S. Changing language, remaining pygmy. Hum. Biol. 84, 11–43 (2012). A seminal paper describing the linguistic and cultural history of CAHGs.
Scerri, E. M. L. et al. Did our species evolve in subdivided populations across Africa, and why does it matter? Trends Ecol Evol. 33, 582–594 (2018). A review presenting the view that multiple, interconnected African populations contributed to the origins of Homo sapiens.
Migliano, A. B. & Vinicius, L. The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 377, 20200317 (2022). An article proposing the foraging niche hypothesis to account for faster rates of cumulative cultural evolution in hominins.
Migliano, A. B. et al. Hunter-gatherer multilevel sociality accelerates cumulative cultural evolution. Sci. Adv. 6, eaax5913 (2020). A study showing that hunter-gatherer social networks increase cultural recombination.
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This is a summary of: Padilla-Iglesias, C. et al. Deep history of cultural and linguistic evolution among Central African hunter-gatherers. Nat. Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01891-y (2024).
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Musical instruments, tools, language and genetic data reveal ancient hunter-gatherer networks. Nat Hum Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01893-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01893-w
