Nuer

The Nuer, who call themselves Naath, are a Nilotic ethnic group centered on the Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan, with further communities in the Gambella region of Ethiopia, and they form the second largest ethnic group in South Sudan out of roughly two million people, about 1.8 million of them living within the country. They speak Thok Naath, a Nilo-Saharan language, and their society is built around cattle, which the anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard described as the thread running through Nuer institutions: cattle anchor the Nuer economy, serve as bridewealth in marriage, mediate relations with the spirit world, and even supply personal names, and animals are never slaughtered casually but always within a ritual framework. Alongside pastoralism the Nuer grow millet and fish the region's rivers and swamps, and kinship obligations run deep, with households expected to share surplus food with neighbors regardless of individual wealth. Adult male initiation traditionally includes gaar, facial scarification usually cut as six parallel lines across the forehead, a mark that has long distinguished Nuer subgroups from one another.