Within the loop of the Niger River in Mali, between the town of Mopti and the Burkina Faso border, there is a place where steep cliffs at the edge of an arid plateau dominate a sandy plain. Over 500 meters high in places, the escarpment is fissured with deep ravines, where rain caught in the cracks of the grey rock supports the growth of dense and varied vegetation. This is the Land of the Dogon. The Dogon, who today number about 300,000, are of the Malinke (Mandingo) ethnic group. Their ancestors are thought to have fled from the Mali Empire under the reign of Sundiata Keita in the fifteenth century and found refuge at the Bandiagara cliffs, where they displaced another people, the Tellern, who left behind abundant evidence of their own cultural traditions in tombs set in caves in the rock face. The communities at the site are essentially[…]
