The Mao people are a Tibeto-Burman major ethnic group constituting the Nagas inhabiting of Nagaland in Northeast India.

[4] It displays a lot of variations in tonality, spelling and pronunciation among the Mao villages, suggesting a lack of interaction in the past.

In popular Mao folklore, there is a story transmitted through an old folksong which says that each of the three brothers descended from the first man was given a language and a script scrolled on three different materials by their father.

As the youngest of the brothers, the forefather of the Nagas did not understand the significance of having a script and casually tucked away the scroll at the side of his bed.

A very persuasive hypothesis is that "these stories represent a tribal memory of time when they were associated with a literate civilization, perhaps in Southeast Asia or China, before their migration to India.

The village of Makhel and the surrounding areas have several historical as well as mythological monuments and relics that are of interest to ethnographers, historians and cultural anthropologists.

Included in this group are the Mao, Poumai, Maram, Thangal, Angami, Chakhesang, Rengma, Lotha, Sema and the Zeliangrong people.

Although the ancestors of the ethnic group at one point of time, come and lived at Makhel and the surrounding areas, population increase must have made them to push outwards to find new habitations.

The ethnic groups that went northwards such as the Angamis, the Chakhesangs, the Rengmas, the Lothas and the Semas mention Khezhakenoma also as a place where they had once lived.

The rest of the groups such as the Mao Naga, the Poumais, the Marams, the Thangals and the Zeliangrongs, who moved westward, eastward and southward, do not have knowledge or mention of the place in their folklore.

Collectively claimed as the Chongliyimti clan, they are widely spread in different areas in the northern side of the Naga country.

[6] The village of Makhel and the surrounding areas in the heart of the land of the Maos are an ethnographer's delight and an open invitation to archaeologists too because of the various artifacts present and the never ending stories and legends associated with them.

There is a legend in Mao folklore which tells of the first woman named Dziilimosiiro (Dziilimosiia to some others according to variation in the dialect) from whom the whole of mankind has descended.

In her old age, the mother became weak and fell ill. Each of her sons took turns to stay at home and care for her while the other two went away for daily activities in the forests gathering food.

In another version, it is said that the conflict over who would inherit the motherland (called the ‘navel’ of the earth, meaning the middle ground) was resolved through a contest—a race—on the instruction of the mother.

However, their mother objected to it and accused Okhe of making an earlier, and therefore false, start as she wanted her favourite and youngest son, Omei, to inherit the motherland.

The three menhirs at Chazhilophi (near Makhel village), representing Tiger, Spirit and Man were erected in commemoration of the three brothers who once lived together.