![]() What we know of Dogon cosmology and religion was attained through the expeditions of French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, which began in the 1930’s and continued until Griaule’s untimely death in 1956. Parallels such as these suggest that the Dogon religion may well have had its roots in much more ancient cosmological traditions. Likewise, key concepts are couched in well-defined cosmological keywords whose pronunciations and meanings often closely reflect similar pronunciations and meanings found in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language. Furthermore, the cosmology appears to be a close relative to the ancient Vedic tradition of India, which served as the foundation for Buddhism and Hinduism. Likewise, the cosmology is often expressed ritually through familiar acts that are shared commonly with Judaism – such as the wearing of skull-caps and prayer shawls, the celebration of a Jubilee year, and the practice of circumcision. These myths provide a conceptual framework upon which many Dogon civic traditions are based, and often take forms distinctly similar to those that are known to have existed in ancient Egypt. The Dogon are the keepers of a well-preserved cosmology that is cast in the symbols and myths of the classic ancient cosmologies. The current locale of the Dogon, which is far from any of the well-travelled routes of modern society, may have been a deliberate choice based on its ability to shelter a valued traditional way of life from unwelcome outside influences – the Dogon are thought to have migrated to this region from the Niger River in the 1500’s as a way of avoiding forced conversion to Islam.Īlthough Dogon society may seem well distanced from outside contact, their culture appears to constitute a kind of spiritual crossroads for several important ancient religious traditions. To all outward appearances, they are a primitive tribe, who manage a near-subsistence living as onion farmers, metal-workers, weavers, and artisans under the often difficult conditions of a Sahelian climate, one that typically provides four months of rain followed by an extended dry season. Along the cliffs of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali – south of the Niger river and north of Upper Volta – live the modern-day Dogon tribe, a reclusive society consisting of approximately 300,000 individuals.
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