ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with non-verbal aspects of culture and oral traditions. E. Haberland postulates a connection between the elaborate numerical systems, which among the Oromo are not only characteristic of the gada systems but also pervade the calendar, and old oriental cultures. One feature which distinguishes oral traditions from other cultural phemonena is that the former have history as their subject matter, while the comparison of artefacts, institutions, rules, rituals, etc., only allows indirect conclusions about how they came to have their present shapes and distributions – that is, about history. Some political institutions of the groups in question seem to have been fashioned after Boran models, and linguistic and cultural borrowings from the Boran can even be shown in the case of the Rendille, the group most remote from Boran control. Much would need to be said about Samburu and possibly other Maa influences on elaborations of Rendille age-set rituals, on Rendille youth culture and on Rendille kinship terminology.
