WHY we possess a well-thumbed copy of Colin Turnbull’s 1961 classic, The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo, is anybody’s guess. Turnbull always makes me think of Evelyn Waugh’s fictional character John Boot, author of Waste of Time, ‘a studiously modest description of some harrowing months among the Patagonian Indians’.
Unlike Boot, however, Turnbull were international bestsellers and Turnbull himself was something of a celebrity. The Natufians, believed to be the first people to start farming, some 12,500 years ago—apparently in order to secure a regular supply of grain with which to brew beer —have a great deal to answer for. Without them, we might all still be like the Mbuti who, according to Turnbull, were: ‘A people who had found in the forest something that made their life more than just worth living, something that made it, with all its hardships, problems and tragedies, a wonderful thing full of joy and happiness and free of care.’
