Dogon People -- The Tellem People: The Cliff Dwellers Before the Dogon
Dogon People -- The Tellem People: The Cliff Dwellers Before the Dogon
Identity and Origins
The Tellem were the inhabitants of the Bandiagara Escarpment before the Dogon's arrival in approximately the 13th-15th centuries CE. Their name comes from the Dogon language and means "we found them" -- a designation given by the Dogon to the culture whose material remains they encountered when they arrived. The Tellem's own name for themselves is not preserved.
The Tellem's ethnic and linguistic origins are uncertain. They are believed to be related to the Kurumba people of Burkina Faso, suggesting origin from the east. What their culture called itself, what language they spoke, and what happened to them as a people after the Dogon arrived remain partially unresolved questions.
The Impossible Granaries
The Tellem's most famous achievement -- and their most persistent mystery -- is their system of cliff-face granaries and burial chambers perched in niches in the Bandiagara cliff face at heights of 100 to 200 feet or more above any path a person could reasonably access without modern climbing equipment.
The granaries and burial chambers show:
- Careful construction in mud-brick with plastered surfaces
- Evidence of regular use and maintenance over centuries
- Preservation of organic materials (textiles, wood, grain) aided by the dry cliff environment
- Multiple generations of use -- the burial chambers contain hundreds of human remains spanning several centuries
How the Tellem accessed these niches is genuinely unknown. Proposed explanations:
- Rope ladders attached to pegs in the cliff face (no physical evidence of anchor points has been found in the appropriate positions)
- Gradual erosion that has removed former ledges and access routes (possible but not confirmed geologically)
- Scaffolding from the plain below using very long poles (the heights involved make this implausible)
Some researchers have proposed that the Tellem were outstanding climbers using techniques now lost, and that the apparent inaccessibility reflects modern assumptions about what human beings can do without mechanical assistance.
The Preserved Textiles
The dry cliff environment has preserved Tellem organic materials to an extraordinary degree. Tellem burial sites have yielded:
- Woven textile fragments that include some of the oldest preserved woven cloth in West Africa, dating to the 10th-14th centuries CE
- Wooden objects including bowls, bows, and figurines
- Iron implements including bracelets and tools
- Organic food remains confirming agricultural production
The textiles are of particular importance because they demonstrate that the Tellem practised sophisticated weaving -- the same art that is central to Dogon cosmology and that the Nommo are said to have taught to humanity. Whether there is a historical connection between Tellem weaving traditions and Dogon cosmological weaving symbolism is unknown, but the temporal and spatial proximity of two cultures both organised around weaving as a central practice is at minimum a coincidence worth noting.
What Happened to the Tellem
The standard account is that the Tellem were displaced or absorbed by the Dogon over the 15th-17th centuries. Some Tellem may have moved north and east, potentially contributing to the origin of the Kurumba people of Burkina Faso. Others may have been absorbed into the Dogon community through marriage and cultural integration. The Tellem as a distinct cultural identity disappears from the historical record by approximately the 17th century.
