South Sudan
Capital: Juba · East Africa & Horn
The world's youngest nation, home to Nilotic civilizations — Dinka and Nuer cattle cultures, the Shilluk kingdom and the Azande of the southwest forests.
Ethnic communities
- Dinka (Jieng)Cattle-centered culture; songs and ox-names for every person
- Nuer (Naath)Pastoral prophets and age-set society
- Shilluk (Chollo)Divine kingship of the Reth on the White Nile
- AzandeHistoric kingdoms; famed oracle and court traditions
More communities of South Sudan
- Dinka — Cattle-camp nation of the great herds
- Nuer — Prophet-led pastoralists of the Sobat
- Shilluk — Divine Reth kingship on the White Nile
- Bari — Equatoria's river farmers around Juba
- Lotuko — Mountain rain-king villages of the east
- Toposa — Kapoeta's cattle and gold-pan herders
- Murle — Pibor's age-set cattle culture
- Anyuak — River kingdom of demoted kings and beads
- Acholi & Madi — Southern border farming cultures
- Kuku, Kakwa & Pojulu — Equatorian highland cultivators
- Mundari — Ash-cattle herders of photographic fame
- Didinga & Boya — Hill terraces of the southeast
- Moru & Balanda — Western farming communities
- Jur (Luo) — Bahr el Ghazal's ironworking Luo kin
Languages
Major languages: Dinka, Nuer, Zande, Shilluk, Bari, English, Juba Arabic
Language families: Nilo-Saharan (Nilotic); Niger-Congo (Ubangian)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Shilluk Kingdom
- • Azande kingdoms (Avongara)
Heritage sites
- • Sudd wetlands
- • Kidepo landscapes
Cultural highlights
Deep-dive community profiles
Acholi
The Luo chiefdoms of the Uganda–South Sudan borderland — poets of the royal drum and the larakaraka courtship dance, whose mato oput reconciliation rite taught the world a justice that mends rather than merely punishes.
Open deep profile →Azande
The 'great eaters of the forest edge' — a conquering Avongara-led nation spanning three borders, whose oracle-governed courts, throwing knives and Ture trickster cycles made them the classic study of an African philosophy of causation.
Open deep profile →Dinka (Jieng)
The cattle-keeping people of the White Nile floodplain — South Sudan's largest nation, whose color-poems for oxen, towering height, cattle-camp youth culture and priest-chiefs of the fishing-spear built a civilization around the herd.
Open deep profile →Nuer (Naath)
The pastoral prophets of the Sudd — a fiercely egalitarian Nilotic nation of cattle-keepers whose age-sets, leopard-skin peacemakers and earth-prophets like Ngundeng made them the classic study of order without rulers.
Open deep profile →Shilluk (Chollo)
The kingdom of Nyikang on the White Nile — the Chollo nation whose divine Reth embodies the immortal founder-hero, whose reed-fleet processions and royal installation dramas are the Nile's oldest living monarchy theatre.
Open deep profile →Suri (Surma)
Body-painters of the southwestern highlands — cattle-herders whose chalk, ochre and flower body-art has fascinated the world's photographers, whose saginye stick-duels decide reputation, and whose gold-rich land is now heavily contested.
Open deep profile →