Claim Type: Nomadic

Tech Era: Bronze Age

Key Inventions: Horse Domestication

Map

The Luorai Tribe has its origin in the Sudd marshes where all Nilotic peoples resided in the Bronze Age. Like other Nilotics, they were primarily cattle-herders, living a nomadic way of life in the marshy landscape.

The Luorai were one of the first recorded Nilotic peoples to leave the marshlands and migrate to the North and East. The reason for this migration has been lost to time, but myth and legend tells of a great battle between two gods, the Black God and the Red God, and between two peoples, the Black Tribe and the Red Tribe. The Luorai are said to descend from an attempted peace between those two tribes whereby Luoti, a young man of the Black Tribe married Raina, a young woman of the Red Tribe. Luoti and Raina are said to have been rejected by both of their families of origin, and formed their own tribe, which then migrated far to the East.

How much of Luoti and Raina's story is historical and how much is mythical is unclear. However, the cultural resonance of this story was felt by the Luorai people throughout their history. [My next few posts will detail this story]