Yaaku people
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Yaaku are a people who are said to have lived in regions of southern Ethiopia and central Kenya, possibly through to the 18th century. The language they spoke is today called Yaakunte. The Yaaku assimilated a hunter-gathering population, whom they called Mukogodo, when they first settled in their place of origin and the Mukogodo adopted the Yaakunte language. However, the Yaaku were later assimilated by a food producing population and they lost their way of life. The Yaakunte language was kept alive for sometime by the Mukogodo who maintained their own hunter-gathering way of life. However, they were later immersed in Maasai culture and adopted the Maa language and way of life. The Yaakunte language is today facing extinction but is undergoing a revival movement. In the present time, the terms Yaaku and Mukogodo (sometimes Mukogodo Maasai), are used to refer to a population living in Mukogodo forest west of Mount Kenya.
Etymology
The name Yaaku is said to be a Southern Nilotic term for hunting people while Mukogodo is a Yaakunte word meaning people who live in rocks.
History
Origins
According to Mukogodo traditions recorded by Mhando (2008), the Yaaku speakers moved into Kenya from southern Ethiopia.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2667274. The Library of Congress control number is sh2001004512. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yaaku people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.