UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

East Africa before the seventh century
expansion and assimilation often of a seemingly haphazard sort -
assimilation of other Nilotic divisions and subdivisions as well as of non-
Nilotes, and processes of expansion frequently demanding both ecological
and cultural adaptations. In the southern Sudan and in northern and eastern
Uganda the interactions which have taken place during the present
millennium, and probably the preceding one too, between certain branches
of the Plains and River-Lake Nilotes have been quite as complex as those
just noted between Nilotes and Kushites and between older Nilotes and
newer Nilotes in the Kenya and northern Tanzania highlands. Better
covered in the historical literature are the pressures of the Lwoo, a branch
of the River-Lake Nilotes, upon the northerly Bantu in Uganda and by
the Kenya lake-shore during the last six or seven centuries. Less attention
has been paid to two other non-Nilotic groupings, the one in north-eastern
Uganda, the other in north-western Uganda and adjacent countries, which
are now confined but were clearly much more extensive and important
a thousand years ago and more.
The first of these consists of the Nyangiya-speakers (who include the
present Tepeth and Teuso or Ik), some of whom hunt, others of whom
cultivate quite intensively on isolated mountains close to the north-eastern
border of Uganda. This has certainly been a region of cultural diversity,
where it is believed, moreover, that some of the late stone age tool-making
techniques survived among hill communities into the present millennium.
The surrounding country, mostly rather dry, is herded by the Plains Nilotic
Itunga peoples, who, together perhaps with other Nilotic groupings before
them, have been responsible for confining and largely assimilating these
Nyangiya. The latter's language may be distantly related to Nilotic (in
the eastern Sudanic branch of the Chari-Nile family). 15 Maybe, before
the Nilotic movements, the Nyangiya constituted an important agricultural
and pastoral population filling some of the territory between the Kushitic
zone to the east and that of the later aquatic peoples of the upper
Nile.
These late representatives of the old and rather decayed aquatic tradition
may, it was hinted above, have belonged to the Central Sudanic language
group (which constitutes a separate division of the Chari-Nile family).
Nowadays this is a fragmented sub-family, consisting of separate clusters
spaced around the north-eastern edge of the equatorial forest. One of these
clusters (the so-called 'Moru-Madi') cuts across the borders of northwestern
Uganda. It is likely that, before the expansion of the Bantu into
central Uganda nearly two thousand years ago and the Nilotic movements
from the north and north-east, such Central Sudanic-speakers were much
more extensive in the upper Nile basin and by Lake Victoria. Some of
15. This classification has been disputed, one suggestion being that the affinities of
Nyangiya lie rather with the Afro-Asiatic super-family (to which Kushitic, among other
families, belongs).
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