Konso Cultural Landscape
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How it came to be
Konso is an arid highland in southwestern Ethiopia of stone-walled terraces and fortified towns. Oral tradition says the Konso people moved here about 21 generations, or roughly 400 years, ago. Towards the end of the 19th century their land was incorporated into the Ethiopian empire by Menelik II.
Some terraces reach 8 metres in height; whole families build and maintain them to hold the soil against heavy rain. The hilltop towns, called paleta, are ringed by one to six walls of basalt boulders and contain open gathering places, mora, for communal and ritual life. A basalt stone, the daga-hela, is raised at each change of generation, and carved wooden figures, waka, commemorate the dead, set up in groups with their wives and the enemies they killed.
The first nomination covered 55 square kilometres; the revised one covered 230. ICOMOS recommended deferral in 2011, but that year the World Heritage Committee, at its 35th session, inscribed the site, the first cultural landscape in Ethiopia. As the waka have acquired monetary value, theft has become a concern, and some have been moved inside the town walls.
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