>>100059i have only looked into denisovan/neanderthal admixture in modern populations so idk
if i had to guess i'd say they're leftovers from erectus or something, fuck it ill look it up
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-08-03/pygmy-people-flores-not-ancestors-hobbit-homo-floresiensis/10065214indo pygmies evolved short stature a second time, and are unrelated to floriensis (they're neanderthal + denisovan)
https://xzlab.org/papers/2014_Perryetal_PNAS.pdfthis was by far the most resonable analysis i could find on african pygmies
context: there are two theories 1) pygmies are modern humans who developed short stature 2) pygmies are genetically distinct and inherited the short stature
"We can draw four primary conclusions from our analyses. (i) The
African pygmy phenotype has a genetic basis, rather than a solely
environmental one, based on the positive correlation between
stature and Bakiga admixture for Batwa individuals raised in
Batwa communities (Fig. 2 C–E). These results confirm those
obtained from other African rainforest hunter-gatherer pop-
ulations by Becker et al. (12) and Jarvis et al. (6) and are con-
sistent with individual case observations from Cavalli-Sforza (4).
(ii) The Batwa pygmy phenotype is likely polygenic in nature, as
multiple genomic regions were highlighted by our admixture
mapping analysis (Fig. 3A). (iii) The Batwa pygmy phenotype
was likely adaptive in origin, based on the elevated levels of
population differentiation (FST ) and haplotype-based signatures
of selection (iHS) for SNPs within the regions identified by our
admixture mapping analysis (Fig. 4). Finally, the disparate FST
and iHS patterns between the Batwa and the Baka in these
regions, along with generally converse observations for the
regions reportedly associated with stature in west central African
rainforest hunter-gatherers (Fig. 4), suggest that (iv) the pygmy
phenotype evolved convergently within Africa, at least in part.
The possibility of an additional, ancestral component cannot be
excluded, as we have certainly not yet identified the full genetic
basis of the Batwa pygmy phenotype, and one of the genomic
regions we did identify does have a potential ancestral adapta-
tion signature (Fig. S7)."