The indigenous peoples of Africa south of the Sahara and their descendants in other parts of the world. Bantu-speaking Negroid pastoralists and crop-growers are traditionally believed to have spread from western to eastern and southern Africa during the past few thousand years but recent evidence suggests that Negroids speaking other languages were in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa much earlier. They may indeed have originated in southern, not western Africa, but this is controversial. Unquestionably, though, they gained knowledge of agricultural techniques and domesticated animals from northern parts of the continent. Negroids are extremely variable in appearance but they can be seen in their most typical form in West Africa; in the east, there has been much intermixing with Hamitic-speaking Caucasoids (for example, Ethiopians and Egyptians); and in the south with the related hunting and gathering San (Bushmen) and the cattle-raising Khoikhoi (Hottentots). The pygmies of Central Africa are of Negroid stock.