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| 2232 Maasai dancers |
Posted on 22.01.2016, 03.07.2016
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic people, pastoralists, inhabiting southern Kenya (840,000) and northern Tanzania (800,000), i.e. the African Great Lakes region, and are famous for their fearsome reputations as warriors and cattle-rustlers. As with the Bantu, and the Nilotes in Eastern Africa, the Maasai have adopted many customs and practices from the neighboring Cushitic groups, including the age set system of social organization, circumcision, and vocabulary terms.
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| 2647 Maasai men |
It seems that the Maasai originated from the lower Nile valley and began migrating south around the 15th century. Their territory reached its largest size in the mid-19th century, and covered almost all of the Great Rift Valley and adjacent lands. Followed a period of epidemics and drought (1883-1902), and another one when the British evicted them to make room for ranches. In the 1940's they were displaced from the fertile lands between Meru and Kilimanjaro, and most of the fertile highlands near Ngorongoro.