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Concept
Dinka people
Summary
The Dinka tribe (Jiɛ̈ɛ̈ŋ) are a Nilotic ethnic group native to South Sudan with a sizable diaspora population abroad. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Bor to Renk, in the region of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (two out of three Provinces which were formerly located in southern Sudan), and the Abyei Area of the Ngok Dinka in South Sudan.
They number around 4.5 million people according to the 2008 Sudan census, constituting about 18% of the population of the entire country and the largest ethnic tribe in South Sudan. Dinka, or as they refer to themselves, Muonyjang (singular) and jieng (plural), make up one of the branches of the River Lake Nilotes (mainly sedentary agropastoral peoples of the Nile Valley and African Great Lakes region who speak Nilotic languages, including the Nuer and Luo). Dinka are noted for their height, and, along with the Tutsi of Rwanda, they are believed to be the tallest people in Africa. Roberts and Bainbridge reported the average height of in a sample of 52 Dinka Agaar and in 227 Dinka Ruweng measured in 1953–1954. However, it seems that the stature of today's Dinka males is lower, possibly as a consequence of undernutrition and conflicts. An anthropometric survey of Dinka men, war refugees in Ethiopia, published in 1995, found a mean height of . Other studies of comparative historical height data and nutrition place the Dinka as the tallest people in the world.
The Dinka people have no centralised political authority, instead comprising many independent but interlinked clans. Some of those clans traditionally provide ritual chiefs, known as the "masters of the fishing spear" or beny bith, who provide leadership for the entire people and appear to be at least in part hereditary.
According to oral traditions, the Dinka originated from the Gezira in what is now Sudan. In medieval times this region was ruled by the kingdom of Alodia, a Christian, multi-ethnic empire dominated by Nubians. Living in its southern periphery and interacting with the Nubians, the Dinka absorbed a sizable amount of the Nubian vocabulary.
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