People of Serengeti - A diversity of cultures!

The Serengeti is home to a diversity of cultures. One way to see this diversity is to look at the different languages spoken today in the human ecosystem. There are four major language groups: Bantu, Nilotic, Cushitic and Khoisan. Within each language group there are a number of different people. Many of this peoples have articles that are particular to their ethnic group.Continue bellow...

Serengeti Cultural Mix and Change

Thousands of years ago the Serengeti was occupied by small groups of foragers much like some of the present day Hadzabe people who live on the southern edge of the ecosystem. Peoples speaking Nilotic and Cushitic languages gradually moved into the area from the north, bringing livestock and crops like millet. These early residents used stone bowls to grind seed and grains.

Bantu cultivators who lived around Lake Victoria basin, gradually spread into parts of the ecosystem with good rainfall and soil. In response to this pressure, the foragers moved south. In the last two hundred years, the pastoral Maasai moved in and occupied the grasslands, avoiding the wooded areas with biting tse tse flies.

Cooperation is the key
The future of the ecosystem lies in the hands of the present inhabitants. Cooperation between the Park's managers and its neighbours is essential if both are to survive and prosper.

A Changing Culture

"The Maasai's pastoral lifestyle has always been compatible with conservation, and rather than being treated as interlopers the Maasai should be seen as an integral and beneficial part of the ecosystem."
Matthew Ole Timan

Everyone knows the proud pastoralists who once dominated the entire Rift Valley all along. Not all people who identify themselves as Maasai or Maasai people are pastoralists, some are farmers and hunters. What it means to be Maasai has changed radically over the past several centuries and is still changing today. The early foreigners who first met Maasai called them Jews of Africa and identified them as a Nation not a tribe. They had maintained their strong and democratic government for many decades.

Until quite recently the pastoral Maasai's subsisted essentially off the milk, blood and meat of their livestock. Their zealous adherence to a pastoral diet was reinforced for cosmological beliefs and cultural restrictions against eating agricultural and other non-pastoral foods.

As pure pastoralists they strongly rejected alternative modes of subsistence such as agriculture, hunting and fishing. However the purely pastoral ideals are no longer realised in practice. They occasionally consume eland and buffalo secretly away from their homes. It is also known that trading and exchange of livestock against agricultural products have been taking place for a long time between the pastoral Maasai and neighbouring agricultural tribes. At present there is an increasing demand on agricultural foods. Particularly maize meal has become popular among the pastoral Maasai and many are even turning into agro-pastoralists out of economic necessity.