In the dry north and east of Sri Lanka, amid palmyra palms and colourful Hindu temples, live the Sri Lankan Tamils, an ancient community distinct from the island’s Sinhalese majority.

The Sukuma are the largest ethnic group in Tanzania, a Bantu-speaking people of several million who live in the fertile plains south and east of Lake Victoria. Their name means

In the cool, volcano-studded highlands of West Java live the Sundanese, the second-largest people of Indonesia, distinct in language and character from the Javanese of the east. Heirs to the

The Susu, or Soso, are a Mande people of the coast of Guinea, the dominant group of the country’s maritime region around the capital, Conakry, with communities also in Sierra

Known as the Tamu, the Gurung of central Nepal’s Annapurna hills are famed for their Gurkha soldiers, the trance-dance Ghatu, and a religion blending Buddhism, Bon, and the shaman.

On the sandy plateaus north of Brazzaville, where the Congo River widens into the great lake of Malebo Pool, live the Teke, one of the oldest peoples of Central Africa.

The Temne are one of the two largest peoples of Sierra Leone, dominant in the north and northwest of the country, where they number some two million or more. Settled

At the heart of mainland Southeast Asia live the Thai, the majority people of Thailand and the greatest of the Tai peoples of the region. Speakers of a tonal language

The story of the Tuvans, a Turkic herding people at the geographic center of Asia: their nomadic life of steppe and taiga, the astonishing art of throat singing, their rare blend of Tibetan Buddhism and shamanism, and their unusual path from brief independence into the Russian state.

On the rugged island of Timor, at the far eastern edge of the Indonesian archipelago, live the Timorese, a people of mixed Austronesian and Papuan heritage on the frontier between