What is Pygmonia:
in search of the secret land of the Pygmies?
Archaeologist Peter McAllister had never given much thought to Pygmies. When he chanced upon an early 20th century photograph of Pygmy-sized Aboriginal peoples in far north Queensland, he thought his eyes were deceiving him. A visit to the area, however, quickly revealed that several tribes of proud Pygmy Aboriginal peoples really did, and do, live in Australia’s rainforest north.
McAllister’s attempts to unravel the origins of Australia’s Pygmy peoples led him down a winding path. Obscured from the view of mainstream history, Pygmy peoples still live in isolated pockets around the world, from South America to South-East Asia. But are these distinct populations related? Could the ancient Pygmy myths of the Greeks and Romans really be true? Is the short stature of modern Pygmy peoples due to genetic codes or environmental conditions? And are today’s Pygmy peoples really remnants of the ancient Pygmonia, or ‘land of the Pygmies’, that anthropologists once believed had spanned the entire globe?
Quirky and insightful, Pygmonia takes you on an remarkable journey to answer these questions and more.
