Konso

Site visited in November 2022. During my trip to Ethiopia, I visited the village of Gamole, which is a living open-air museum and a monument to the culture of the Konso people. Within three lines of stone walls (once protecting against wild animals and invaders, today only of symbolic meaning) people live mainly engaged in farming on the terraces, which are a symbol of the region. Such terraces are commonplace in the Philippines, China or Vietnam, but in Ethiopia they are a real revolution - only the Konso have transformed the landscape in this way, other tribes have treated the mountains as a demarcation line, and only goats graze there from economic activities.

Our fixer arranged a guide with whom we safely explored the village. From the guide we know that the Konso people are divided into 9 clans, and marriage is allowed only with a person from another clan. The people are ruled by a king, and when he dies, everyone pretends to be sick. They embalm the corpse and keep it for 9 years, 9 months and 9 days, and only after this period they stop pretending and celebrate the coronation of the new king, the eldest son of the predecessor. What if there is no son? I don't know, we didn't go into details about Konso's succession rights.

The people are also known for putting so-called waka, wooden monuments in memory of rulers and other distinguished figures. And in the center of the village he …

Konso is very special place for me! especially for its settings and natural gifts and talents of the residents. As one one of konso people I feel proud of being from land with such type of natural blessings and from a society with such type of talents. i.e tracing, wood curving(waka), conflict resolution techniques. this is just to say a little of what Konso is endowed with.

As we visited the Konso area of S Ethiopia in Dec 2007 we will be particularly interested to see what actually emerges within the nomination which is currently foreseen for 2010. The description on Ethiopia’s T List entry of 1997 isn’t that exciting – “Konso-Gardula (paleo-anthropological site)….. discovered in 1991. The sites are dated to be between 200.000 and 2000000 years old…. Early and middle pleistocene animals and hominides fossils along with early Acheulian and Oldowan cultural materials ….. Twelve individual hominides identified to be Homo erectus and Australopithicus Boisei…”. Ethiopia already has 2 paleo-anthropological sites inscribed at Lower Awash and Omo and also had another at Melka Kunture deferred in 1980 (which we also saw). Clearly Ethiopia is important for its central role within the East African “Cradle of Mankind” and can be rightly proud of such remains as have been found within its boundaries – but can it be making too much of a “good thing”?

In fact, subsequent documents seem to suggest that the nominated site will cover rather more than these “paleo anthropological remains”. The first is dated 1999 when UNESCO granted $15000 for “Preparatory Assistance - Konso Cultural Landscape”. The documentation states “The Konso region is known for the recent discovery of 17 paleo-anthropological sites dated from the middle and lower Pleistocene age. It is also a remarkable landscape which contains outstanding geo-morphological features, sacred forests and stone terraces”. By 1999 we have a presentation by Yonas Beyune at a “World Heritage Convention and Cultural …