Nilotic

Nilotic is an Eastern Sudanic branch of Nilo-Saharan, spoken from the White Nile basin south into Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It divides into Western, Eastern and Southern groups. Proto-Nilotic had taken shape east of the Nile by the third millennium BCE, among pastoral societies such as Kadero.

After Kush collapsed in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, Nilotic speakers moved south from central Sudan between the fifth and eleventh centuries, taking up ironworking. From the thirteenth century eastern groups entered the Kenyan and Tanzanian highlands, building the Sirikwa dairying culture of about 1200 to 1800.

The Shilluk under Nyikang settled the White Nile around 1500 and made Fashoda their capital around 1700, while Luo migrants spread around Lake Victoria and the Dinka kept their transhumant herds in the Sudd marshes. Through these centuries the Nilotic tongues remained unwritten, carried by oral tradition.