These two sites, the former a rock hewn church and the latter a prehistoric archeological site, are to be found within about 15 Km of each other on the south western Jimma road out of Addis Abeba some 50 Km away. The Melka Konturé site was intermittently habituated from the Early Stone Age up to the New Stone Age for around 1.8 million years. It is an archeological site lying at the bank of Awash River, of which archeological findings are exhibited in the National Archeological Museum in Addis Abeba. Although there is little indication of the significant history of the site on the ground, there are also some interesting exhibits housed in a small but informative museum. The oldest known Homo sapiens cranial fragments estimated to be about 500,000 years old and Homo erectus fossils which are at least 1.5 million years old are some of the relics which the site has yielded.
Dating back to the 15th or even as early as the 13th century by some accounts, the Adadi Mariam Church is not as old as some of the rock hewn churches of the northern highlands but is nonetheless an impressive and revered place of worship which attests to the early adoption of Christianity in the surrounding Guraghe area. The church was destroyed by Ahmed Gragn in the early 16th century and was only discovered and rehabilitated in the reign of Emperor Menelik. It has been in active use ever since.