In the humid, green lowlands of Mexico’s Gulf coast, where the Sierra Madre descends toward the sea, live the Totonac, heirs to one of the great civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica.

Off the eastern tip of New Guinea, scattered across the warm waters of the Solomon Sea, lies a group of low coral islands whose people have become famous far beyond

Along the misty northern coast of British Columbia, where the Skeena and Nass rivers pour out of the mountains toward the sea, the Tsimshian nations built a society of great

Across the dry western plateau of southern Africa, from the sands of the Kalahari to the plains of the North West, live the Batswana, a Sotho-Tswana people of cattle-herders and

In the green valleys of eastern Qinghai, where the loess hills of the northwest give way to the edge of the Tibetan plateau, live the Tu, a settled farming people

The largest desert on earth looks empty on the map, and for a thousand years that emptiness had owners. The Tuareg, veiled Berber camel lords of the central Sahara, taxed

In the far northwest of the Amazon, along the blackwater rivers of the Vaupes where Brazil meets Colombia, live the Tucano and a mosaic of related peoples who together form

Turkish Encounter Song When I see your sultan at dawn, I said are you sultan? He said no-no. Her eyes are bright, her hands are hennaed, I said are you

The life of the Turks has passed through wars and struggle. You can feel this sadness in Turkish folk music.

Between Kiribati and Fiji lies one of the smallest nations on earth: nine coral islands, twenty-six square kilometers, none of it five meters above the sea. The Tuvaluans, Polynesians who