They were South Cushitic speaking pastoralists who tended to bury their dead in cairns, whilst their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls, pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots.
Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest centre of pastoralism and stone construction in the region.
Through a series of migrations from Horn of Africa, these early Cushitic-speaking pastoralists brought cattle and caprines southward from the Sudan and/or Ethiopia into northern Kenya, probably using donkeys for transportation.
[6] The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples sometimes hunted medium and large game on the plains,[1] and during the culture's lowland phase, they likewise fished in Lake Turkana.
[1][14] According to Christopher Ehret, linguistic research suggests that these Savanna Pastoral Neolithic populations were the first Afroasiatic speakers to settle in the Central Rift Valley and surrounding areas.
[3] Recent genetic analysis of ancient remains has proven that the population of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic were also responsible for the pastoralist Elmenteitan culture that lived in the Rift Valley during the same period.
[15] The linguistic chronology of the historic population movements into the Central Rift Valley as well as the present and past distribution of Afro-Asiatic speakers further suggests that SPN peoples likely spoke South Cushitic languages.
[1] Regarding funerary tradition, the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples erected stone cairns in open spaces, rock shelters, crevices or against walls.