ABSTRACT
This chapter presents how human population geneticists since the 1960s have shed new light on the unknown peopling history of central Africa. It shows that interdisciplinary research between biologists and cultural anthropologists, rooted in joint fieldwork, is a powerful tool to understand human biological diversity. The chapter introduces the main paradigms underlying population genetics studies of biological diversity and illustrates several findings concerning human origins and migrations. It highlights the lack of knowledge about the peopling history of central Africa and describes the complex cultural criteria underlying the "Pygmy and non-Pygmy" population categorization in a multiethnic context. The chapter shows how population genetics and ethno-graphic definitions of a population can be reconciled through interdisciplinary approaches and joint fieldwork. It establishes the framework for studying central African genetic diversity and use population genetics methods to reconstruct the peopling history of Pygmies and non-Pygmies.
