Maps of Southern Nilotic

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).

North Africa: Nilo-Saharan in Northern Africa


Nilo-Saharan 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.

"Nilo-Saharan: Composite 2010". MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships

Date Digitized:   May 2011.

Map Description:
The areas pictured display locations of where Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken today. Ranging from Egypt and the White Nile to Uganda and Sudan, Irvine and Appleyard (2007) estimate that there are approximately 90 distinct living languages and dialect clusters. This number varies widely, however, and as further research is done and the complexity of the classification system of the family increases, more languages are being discovered (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.

Southern Nilotic Speakers Seeking the Kenyan Highlands (Newman)



Southern Nilotic Speakers Seeking the Kenyan Highlands

Source:   Newman, James L. 1995. The Peopling of Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press. 168.
Date Digitized:   2009

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 movement of the Southern Nilotes that occurred around 500 BC. They shared space with the Southern Cushites for quite some time, before the arrival of the Bantu, which drastically altered the interior of Africa (Newman).

Other LL-MAP resources related to this project:
Eastern and Southern Cushites Introduce Food-Producing Economies to the Interior Mosaic (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).

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).