Maps of Yaaku

Directions of Southern Nilotic Expansion ca. 400-1000 AD (Ehret)



Directions of Southern Nilotic Expansion ca. 400-1000 AD

Source:   Ehret, Christopher. Southern Nilotic History. 1971. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 49.
Date Digitized:   2009

Map Description:
During the first half of the first millenium A.D., the Southern Nilotes gradually replaced the Southern Cushites as the dominant group in the outlined area of Africa. Over the centuries, one tribe of Nilotes became those now known as the Kalenjin. Christopher Ehret states that their presence is evident in the Southern Nilotic loanwords which remain in Bantu and Eastern Nilotic languages, as well as Tepeth and Yaaku. These Kalenjin ancestors came to control much of what is now Kenya and the plains of central Uganda, and their contact with Cushites and other groups has resulted in their language being rich with loanwords, especially in areas such as agriculture.

Other LL-MAP resources related to this project:
The Countries of Dadog History (Ehret)
The Proto-Kalenjin and their Neighbors (Ehret)
The Kalenjin ca. 1000-1500 AD (Ehret)



Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process. View original image(s) to see the unaltered map(s).

Eastern and Southern Cushites Introduce Food-Producing Economies to the Interior Mosaic (Newman)



Eastern and Southern Cushites Introduce Food-Producing Economies to the Interior Mosaic

Map Creator:   James L. Newman
Source:   1995. The Peopling of Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press. 167.
Date Created:   1995

Map Description:
According to James L. Newman, the interior of East Africa is one of the most complex ethnolinguistic regions on the continent, due to the continuous movement of groups, including Khoisan, Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu peoples. This map shows the earliest migrations through the area. They began with the Southern Cushites approximately 5,000 years ago; around 1000 BC, the Eastern Cushites made their way south. One of the Eastern Cushite groups, the Baz, gave the Southern Nilotes livestock-raising techniques adapted to semi-arid conditions along with several cultural practices, such as a prohibition against eating fish (Newman).

Other resources related to this project:
Southern Nilotic Speakers Seeking the Kenyan Highlands(Newman)
Bantu Colonization of the Interior Mosiac of Africa (Newman)
Influential Eastern Nilotic Migrations (Newman)
Ngoni, Kamba, Arab-Swahili, and Yao Movements, Migrations, and Trade Routes Within the Interior Mosiac (Newman)


Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process. View original image(s) to see the unaltered map(s).

North Africa: Cushitic in Northern Africa



Cushitic in Northern Africa


Data Source:
Irvine, A. K. and David Appleyard. 2007. "The Middle East and North Africa". In R. E. Asher & Christopher Moseley (eds.). Atlas of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Routledge.

"Afro-Asiatic: Composite 2010". MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships

Date Digitized:   May 2011.

Map Description:
The areas pictured display locations of where Cushitic languages are spoken today. Although there are many languages within the group, only Somali has status as an official language of a country (Somalia). Most of the languages are relatively small, being spoken by anywhere between several hundred and several thousand people (Irvine and Appleyard 2007).

This original map was made by vectorizing data from the MultiTree language database and the Atlas of the World's Languages.


Other resources related to this project:
This folder (Northern African Languages) contains other maps showing linguistic subgroups. The maps may be overlaid on each other for a more complete picture.


Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process.

The Kalenjin from 1400-1500 AD (Ehret)



The Kalenjin ca. 1400-1500 AD

Source:   Ehret, Christopher. 1971. Southern Nilotic History. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 67.
Date Digitized:   2009

Map Description:
The division of the proto-Kalenjin community began early in the second millenium, and this separation resulted in the large dialectal variation seen among Kalenjin languages today (Ehret). Illustrated on this map are the areas which several specific proto-groups inhabited around 1400-1500. Ehret reconstructs this past by using information gained from the study of their modern descendants, including both cultural and linguistic details. An example of this investigation is his research into musical instruments; he points out that the drum, although rare among Southern Nilotic peoples, does not have a term in proto-Kalenjin that is known, and this indicates the possibility that drums were introduced to a descendant group.

Other LL-MAP resources related to this project:
Directions of Southern Nilotic Expansion ca. 400-1000 AD (Ehret)
The Countries of Dadog History (Ehret)
The Proto-Kalenjin and their Neighbors (Ehret)



Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process. View original image(s) to see the unaltered map(s).

The Proto-Kalenjin and Their Neighbors ca. 1000 AD (Ehret)



The Proto-Kalenjin and their Neighbors

Source:   Ehret, Christopher. 1971. Southern Nilotic History. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 65.
Date Digitized:   2009

Map Description:
This map illustrates the approximate locations of the proto-Kalenjin people and their neighbors. These descendants of the Southern Nilotes were closely related to the Kitoki (known also as Bukusu or Yumbu), and shared many cultural as well as linguistic aspects. The proto-Kalenjin (and now, modern Kalenjin) economy was centered around grain cultivation and the raising of livestock, and their societal structure has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries (Ehret).

Other LL-MAP resources related to this project:
Directions of Southern Nilotic Expansion ca. 400-1000 AD (Ehret)
The Countries of Dadog History (Ehret)
The Kalenjin ca. 1400-1500 AD (Ehret)



Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process. View original image(s) to see the unaltered map(s).

The UNESCO Database of Endangered Languages (UNESCO)

The UNESCO Database of Endangered Languages

Map Creator:   LINGUIST List (Anthony Aristar)
Data Source:   Mosely Christopher. 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. Paris, UNESCO Publishing, Online version. http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/ (29 November 2010)
Contact:   llmaplinguistlist.org
Usage Notes/Copyright Status:   Used by Permission
Date Created:   29 November 2010

Map Description:
UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger is a database intended to raise awareness about language endangerment and the need to safeguard the world’s linguistic diversity among policy-makers, speaker communities and the general public, and to be a tool to monitor the status of endangered languages and the trends in linguistic diversity at the global level.

Degrees of endangerment
The map designates the degrees of endangerment as based on UNESCO’s Language Vitality and Endangerment framework.

This establishes six degrees of vitality/endangerment based on nine factors. Of these factors, the most salient is that of intergenerational transmission.

Degree of endangerment Intergenerational Language Transmission
safe language is spoken by all generations; intergenerational transmission is uninterrupted
>> not included in the map
vulnerable most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)
definitely endangered children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home
severely endangered language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves
critically endangered the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently
extinct there are no speakers left
>> included in the Atlas if presumably extinct since the 1950s




Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process.