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The konso people are different from the aforementioned people of the Omo valley because they have developed their own material culture. The konso people have a long tradition of commemorating dead heroes with carved wooden figures known as ‘waka’ which literary means something of the grandfather.
When a hero or important man has died, waqa figures are carved in his honor and placed in public places or along a pathway. The people of Konso are also popular in their skill of building terraces on the sloppy terrains in order to prevent soil erosion.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011, the Konso Cultural Landscape is named after its agriculturist inhabitants, who have molded their 230km2 homeland of semi-arid hills into productive agricultural land. A striking feature of Konso is the ancient hilltop paleta (terrace and walled villages) – strange hobbit-warrens towered over by generation poles felled from a sacred forest, and studded with curvaceous thatched community houses. The Konso are also renowned for their waka grave-markers, anthropomorphic hardwood statues carved to mimic the deceased, and for their communally constructed reservoirs.
