The nineteenth century saw massive upheaval among the Sirikwa societies, old identities such as the Maliri and the Chok were annihilated or assimilated giving way to new identities such as the Pokot. Others like the Sengwer and Lumbwa acculturated to the new reality, merging and dropping their old identities to become Nandi and Kipsigis. These new societies retained many elements of their old way of life – like the iron-age Sirikwa societies they were primarily semi-nomadic pastoralists. Their economy revolved around raising livestock and cultivating sorghum and pearl millet on the western highlands of Kenya as it had since at least the last millennium B.C.Chesaina, C. Oral Literature of the Kalenjin. Heinmann Kenya Ltd, 1991, p. 2Ehret, Christopher. An African Classical Age: Eastern & Southern Africa in World History 1000 B.C. to A.D.400. University of Virginia, 1998, p. 178
