They live in a variety of terrain, from the lowlands of South Sudan and the banks of the Omo River to mountains over 2,300 meters.
An overview of linguistic and anthropological research on Surmic is the book edited by Dimmendaal (1998), especially the bibliography article (Abbink and Unseth 1998).
All Surmic languages are presumed to be tonal, have implosive consonants, and have distinctive vowel length.
Majangir (also called Majang) and Southwest Surmic languages (Fleming 1983) share a number of traits, so they are therefore presumably reconstructable in Proto-Surmic: Some typologically exceptional points are discussed by Arensen, et al. (1997).
The original geographic home of the Surmic peoples is thought to be in Southwestern Ethiopia, somewhere near Maji, with the various groups dispersing from there: for example, the Majangir having moved north, the Murle having migrated clockwise around Lake Turkana (Arensen 1983:56-61, Tornay 1981), and the Mursi having moved into and out of the Omo River valley.