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.