Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Yako
This site focuses on the country of Yako including their history, culture, location, and more.
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Zaramo
"Wazaramo" is the preferred name for the people who live in the coastal area of Tanzania, in the vicinity of the capital city, Dar es Salaam. "Wazaramo" refers to the ethnic group, "Mzaramo" to an individual, and "Kizaramo" to the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tropical Forest Foragers
The term "tropical-forest foragers," or "pygmies," refers to ethno-linguistically diverse peoples distributed across the forested regions of Central Africa who are particularly short in stature and who traditionally have lived by...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Xhosa
"Xhosa" is the generic name used for a number of related cultural groups in South Africa. Xhosa groups include the Mpondo, Bomvana, Bhaca, Thembu, Mpondomise, Xesibe, Mfengu, Hlubi, and the Xhosa proper. These Southern Nguni peoples, as...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Turks
Ethnically, the Turks are a cultural group united by a common language, but the term "Turk" has no clearly defined racial significance; it can be properly applied to those communities historically and linguistically connected to the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Turkana
"Turkana" is the name given to the pastoral and formerly pastoral people living in the arid and semiarid range lands of northwestern Kenya. The Turkana refer to themselves as "Ngiturkan" and their land as "Eturkan." The Turkana ethnic...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tswana
Batswana are divided into a number of subgroups or "tribes", There are approximately twenty-five totems, which crosscut "tribal" boundaries. Although Batswana received Christian missionaries in the early nineteenth century and most...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tsimihety
The term "Tsimihety" usually refers to one of the eighteen or twenty tribes or ethnic groups of the Republic of Madagascar; however, Tsimihety possess neither political unity nor an ideology of unity. They are best described as an...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Shona
The Shona-speaking peoples comprise about 80 percent of the population of Zimbabwe, with significant groups in Mozambique. Most of what follows applies to the Shona in Zimbabwe, who have been extensively studied. There are now around...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Somalis
The Muslim Somalis of the Horn of Africa speak the Somali language and live in the Somali Democratic Republic (Somalia). There are also substantial numbers of Somalis in neighboring countries: the southern half of Djibouti, the eastern...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Teda
The Teda inhabit the Tibesti Massif, in northern Chad. They are generally considered to be part of a larger grouping of people known as "Tebu," "Tebou," "Tibbu," or "Toubou." Patterns of growth, intraethnic differentiation, and migration...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tandroy
The Tandroy live in the far south of Madagascar and speak a Malagasy dialect. Their land is known as "the Androy," literally, "where the roy ( Mimosa delicatula ) is," but more commonly rendered as "land of the thorny bush" or "spiny...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Swazi
"Swazi" refers to the nation, tribe, or ethnic group, or an individual, "siSwati" to the language. SiSwati speakers are found in Swaziland, South Africa, and Mozambique. Within Swaziland, the population (the great majority of which is...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tigray
The Tigray are the largest ethnic group in the Ethiopian province of Tigray and in the Eritrean nation. The Tigray have not been as thoroughly studied as their culturally similar neighbors, the Amhara, with whom they share an "imperial"...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Temne
The Temne occupy some 29,000 square kilometers of Sierra Leone's Northern Province. The Temne language is included in Greenberg's West Atlantic category and in Dalby's MEL category, which is a subdivision of West Atlantic. Dalby found at...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Azerbaijani Turks
Learn about the culture of the Azerbaijani Turks. Explore topics such as their history, economy, past settlements, cultural values, religion, and sociopolitical organization.
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Armenians
Learn about the culture of the Armenians. Explore topics such as their history, economy, past settlements, cultural values, religion, and sociopolitical organization.
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Sara
"Sara" is the term employed by outsiders to refer to a group of non-Muslim tribes in southern Chad, all of whom speak mutually intelligible dialects. Each tribe is a distinct geographic, political, and endogamous entity. Major tribes are...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: San Speaking Peoples
San-speaking peoples do not constitute an ethnic group in the usual sense. The most widely known are those who call themselves "Zhu I oasi" (!Kung or Juwasi in most ethnographies), although the other peoples mentioned above have also...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Samaritans
The Samaritans are a sect numbering about 500 who currently reside in Nablus, on the west bank of the Jordan River in Israeli-occupied Jordan, and in Holon, south of Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. The Samaritans call...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Sakalava
The Sakalava inhabit an expansive region of Madagascar; their territory today encompasses nearly all of the west coast of this large Indian Ocean island. "Sakalava" is a compound term meaning "the long valleys" or "rivers." A noun as...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Pokot
During the colonial period, the Pokot were called "Suk" by Europeans. To some Pokot, the older designation is a reminder of an era in which Africans lacked the power to name themselves; to others, it represents the clever ruse of a...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Persians
Persians are an ethnic group defined primarily by language and location. The Persian language, also known as Farsi, which linguists classify in the Indo-Iranian Branch of the Indo-European Language Family, had about 23 million speakers...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Rukuba
The Rukuba live in central Nigeria, on the High Plateau at some 30 kilometers west of the town of Jos, capital of Plateau State. They are one among the numerous small groups inhabiting the region. These groups are, by African standards,...