THIS IS NOT HOW THE INVITATION TO AFRICA ORIGINATED FROM THE LOWER LEVEL OF THE SHORT-STATURED BENEFICIARIES IN THE CONGO

I should begin with the observation that the pygmies in what was then Zaire in the Ituri Forest did not request me to come to them to assist in making them giants among men! In fact, there are interesting data about pygmies that show that they have relatively low rates of goiter or cretinism. Why that should be is a puzzle still to be definitively explained, but it means that there are other reasons for the pygmies to have short stature. If you are curious, there are competing explanations for this observed phenomenon and the adaptive advantages of short stature in the Ituri Forest dwellers in a thesis put together at the time of my anthropology graduate degree in HREF "Personal Perspective" HREF.