Oromo live in many regions as a result of expansion from their homeland in the central southern highlands beginning in the sixteenth century. Some Oromo groups, such as the Borana, remain pastoralists. Others, however, great majority of the people, have become plow cultivators or are engaed in mixed farming. A few groups, particularly the pastoralists, retain significant features of the traditional mode of social and political organization marked by generation. Other groups, particularly those in Shewa and Welega, have been influenced by Orthodox Christianity, and still others have been converted to Islam.
Omotic speakers live in the South.
Between the lakes of southern Ethiopia's Great Rift Valley and the Omo River live many groups that speak the omotic family languages. The diversity of their languages, and other linguistic considerations suggest that the ancestors of the speakers of Omotic languages have been in place for many millennia. Omotic speakers have been influenced linguistically and otherwise by Nilo-Saharan groups to the west and by East Cushitic groups surrounding them. As a result of the early formation of ancestral Omotic-speakers, external influences, and the demands of varied physical and social environments, the Omotic speaking groups have developed not only linguistic diversity but also substantial differences in other respects. Yet almost all of the analysis of Orthodox Christianity as practiced by Ethiopians has focused on the Amhara and Tigaray.