Africa
Category archives for Africa
When Are Nomads Not Really Nomads? (Efe Pygmy Ethnoarchaeology)
Posted by Greg Laden on May 16, 2013 “First, we’re going to collect our data,” Jack, the archaeologist, was telling me as we slogged down the narrow overgrown path. He seemed annoyed. “Then, we’ll leave. Until we leave, they won’t leave. They think it would be rude. After they leave, we’ll go back and map in the abandoned camp.” I had just arrived…
Meat Eating in Human Prehistory
Posted by Greg Laden on April 20, 2013 
All human hunter-gatherer groups that have been studied incorporate meat in their diets. Studies have shown that the total dietary contribution of meat varies a great deal, and seems to increase with latitude so that foragers in subarctic and arctic regions eat a lot of meat while those living near the equator eat less. It…
What a Difference a Century Can Make
Posted by Greg Laden on March 1, 2013 At the beginning of the 20th century, a traveler in Central Africa made mention of some strange people that he had come across. He was traveling among regular, run-of-the-mill natives…probably Bantu-speaking people living in scattered villages and farming for their food. But along the way, strange people came out of the forest. These strange people…
More on river blindness and related diseases
Posted by Greg Laden on February 28, 2013 We were talking about River Blindness. Trigger Warning: The video below is not for general consumption. Having said that you may want to watch it. The first part depicts the reactions of a handful of celebrities watching a series of shots depicting seven different related tropical diseases, and I must say, having seen all of…
King Leopold’s Soliloquy
Posted by Greg Laden on February 28, 2013 This is the book: King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule. If you prefer, this is the on line version. I first became aware of, and read, King Leopold’s Soliloquy, which is not his soliloquy but a parody of what he might say according to Samuel Clemens, while doing fieldwork in the ex-Belgian…
A Test For River Blindness
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2013 
River blindness, also called Onchocerciasis, is the result of the infection of several different eye tissues by the nematode Onchocerca volvulus. The bacterium Wolbachia pipientis lives symbiotically in the gut of the nematode, and escapes the small roundworm to cause an inflammatory response in human tissues, which results in damage to the tissue. These infections…
“Excuse me, there’s some food in my bugs!”
Posted by Greg Laden on January 24, 2013 
We were talking about insects, and eating insects, and this reminded me of something funny. I was traveling in the most remote part of Central Africa, several days walk from any place you could possibly drive a car, visiting uncharted villages mainly occupied by people who had moved into the deep forest because they were…
“We Live In Little Houses Made of Beans”
Posted by Greg Laden on January 15, 2013 
We were discussing insects. What about eating insects? When it comes up that I’ve lived in the Central African Rain Forest, certain questions often come up, and one of them is: “Did you eat bugs?” Every one has seen those National Geographic specials where some natives somewhere are eating insects, and of course, Westerners who…
No place to sit down (or, why do the Efe let some insects live?)
Posted by Greg Laden on January 13, 2013 
I knew a couple who had spent a lot of time in the Congo in the 1950s. He was doing primatology, and she was the wife of the primatologist. And when she spoke of the Congo or Uganda, where they spent most of the time, she always said “The thing about Africa is that there’s…
Why are some animals rare, and why is this very important?
Posted by Greg Laden on December 12, 2012 
A friend of mine told me this story: As a special forces soldier, a Green Beret, he was alone and traveling through a dense area of jungle in or near Viet Nam during the 1960s. Enemy soldiers were nearby and he intended to pass through their patrol area to arrive at some safe destination, but…
Manspace
Posted by Greg Laden on November 28, 2012 In an old colonial-looking restaurant that served ten kinds of steaks, I met up with an experienced explorer and a local farmer, to have dinner and discuss plans for an upcoming research project that would be managed by The Explorer and that would partly be on The Farmer’s land, which adjoined a rather extensive and…
Sungudogo is on Smashwords
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2012 Sungudogo, the highly entertaining and exciting adventure novella set in the Central African rain forest, which provides the Skeptics Movement with its own Origin Myth, has been available on the Kindle for a while now, but it is now also available on Smashwords, HERE. … Sungudogo is a little known zoological mystery, an “undiscovered” primate…
Somebody said something nice!
Posted by Greg Laden on October 30, 2012 Check it out: Thank you Sarah! Here’s the Sungudogo Page in case you want to experience the pain of reading it too! (I mean the good kind of pain, of course.)
In search of the elusive Sungudogo …
Posted by Greg Laden on October 16, 2012 
…Sungudogo is a little known zoological mystery, an “undiscovered” primate living in the remote and rugged region of the eastern Congo, where the Central African Rain Forest fringes the high walls of the western edge of the Great Rift Valley. Sometimes called the “fourth African ape,” Sungudogo is not a Gorilla, not a Chimpanzee, not…
From Ladysmith to London: A Harrowing Escape
Posted by Greg Laden on August 11, 2012 
In late November, 1899, a British military unit which included an embedded reporter was ambushed by an Afrikaner unit in what is now Natal Province, South Africa. This was during the Anglo-Boer war, which was to be the largest military adventure to date in the history of the United Kingdom. The British had been traveling…
Is it appropriate to use the term “Pygmy” when speaking of…Pygmies?
Posted by Greg Laden on August 5, 2012 Some of the people who live in the rain forest of Central Africa are known widely as “Pgymies.” That word…Pygmy…is considered problematic for a few different reasons. It refers to a person’s physical appearance, because it means “small.” The word is sometimes used in biology to refer to the smaller species among a group of…
Seven Thousand Year Old African Dairy
Posted by Greg Laden on June 21, 2012 
Pastoralism is the practice of keeping and herding animals such as cattle, goats and sheep, and using the products they produce, including meat, hide, bone, horn and of course, dairy. In the old days, armchair archaeologists thought that pastoralism would have been a phase of cultural adaptation following hunting and gathering and preceding horticulture (the…
Sungudogo: A novel about an African adventure and more
Posted by Greg Laden on June 13, 2012 
As part of a fundraiser for the Secular Student alliance, I’m writing a novel as we speak. I’ll post one chapter per hour (approximately) until it is done. I started several hours ago, so there are as of this writing seven chapters (plus front matter) up for you to read. Please visit “Sungudogo: A Novel”…
Selected Posts about the Efe and the Congo
Posted by Greg Laden on February 23, 2012 A compendium of selected posts written about the Ituri Forest, the Efe Pygmies, and other folks and other things in the region:
Which works better, Acupuncture or Changa?
Posted by Greg Laden on December 13, 2011 Acupuncture is the ancient East Asian practice of poking people with needles in specific places and in specific ways in order to produce any one of a very wide range of results that could generally be classified as medicinal or health related. I don’t know much about it, but Wikipedia tells us:
Wildlife of Southern Africa
Posted by Greg Laden on December 12, 2011 Wildlife of Southern Africa , by Martin Withers and David Hosking, is new (August 2011) and good. If you are planning a trip to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana or anywhere nearby, or if you live there and like to go to the bush sometimes, consider it. This is a pocket guide, it is small, has…
The Best Eclipse Ever (of the moon and of the sun)
Posted by Greg Laden on November 24, 2011 I remember my first solar eclipse. I was a kid, and it was the one Carlie Simon sang about, in March 1970. (The eclipse reference is just past three minutes. Some other time we can argue over whether or not Carlie, singing in this video on Martha’s Vineyard, was referring to the March 1970 eclipse…
Floods: Don’t go in them.
Posted by Greg Laden on October 22, 2011 As an archaeologist, my expertise in the cognate field of geology includes fluvial processes, so I know something about floods. And I’ve experienced plenty of floods working in the Hudson and Mohawk river valleys … now that I think of it, I’ve got quite a few good flood stories. But the most significant experience I’ve…
Day of the locust. Yum!
Posted by Greg Laden on August 28, 2011 Continuing with the theme of eating insects …
“Excuse me, there’s some food in my bugs!”
Posted by Greg Laden on August 22, 2011 Speaking of people eating insects … as we were … I do have this fun story from the Ituri Forest.
“We Live In Little Houses Made of Beans”
Posted by Greg Laden on August 19, 2011 I have written before of insects in the Ituri Forest. (Oh, and here too.) When it comes up that I’ve spent time there, certain questions often come up, and one of them is: “Did you eat bugs.”
The reason the Efe won’t normally kill an insect …
Posted by Greg Laden on August 18, 2011 that has wandered into their camp if they don’t know anything about it a priori is … according to what they told me when that happened once … is …
No place to sit down
Posted by Greg Laden on August 18, 2011 I knew a couple who had spent a lot of time in the Congo in the 1950s. He was doing primatology, and she was the wife of a primatologist. And when she spoke of the Congo or Uganda, where they spent most of the time, she always said two things that always put me off…
Why shrews are interesting
Posted by Greg Laden on July 27, 2011 It has been said that our most distant primate ancestors, the mammal that gave rise to early primates but itself wasn’t quite a primate, was most like the Asian tree shrew, which is neither a shrew nor does it live in trees. This is, of course, untrue. When the average American sees a shrew native…
Camps
Posted by Greg Laden on July 21, 2011 An Efe forest camp is usually dark and depending on the time of day, dripping from current or recent rain. The Efe live in dome shaped huts which may be more or less complete. A half dome might be a hut that was built quickly, or it might be a hut that was built more…
, which is now available for the 
