The *Baakaa and Other Puzzles: Foraging and Food-Producing Peoples in the Western Central African Rainforest

Abstract

While Baka and Yaka, two large, neighboring forager groups in the Central African Rainforest, underwent language shift involving distinct farming populations of the Mundu-Baka and Bantu family, respectively, they share many other traits and are assumed to descend from a common *Baakaa ancestor. We argue against the hypothesis that this group migrated to its wider Inter-Ubangi-Sangha location alongside food-producers. More plausibly, it had already settled there and adopted different languages of newly incoming groups. Certain similarities also reflect inter-forager contact without any food-producer involvement. Our historical reassessment has important repercussions for both rainforest prehistory and the Bantu expansion at large.

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