The Dogon did not build the cliff dwellings that first drew outside fascination to Bandiagara; they inherited and adapted structures raised by an earlier people who were already there.
Built on someone else's foundations
Before the Dogon settled the Bandiagara escarpment, the Tellem people occupied dwellings and granaries built directly into the cliff face, structures the Dogon subsequently occupied, adapted and added to, meaning much of the escarpment's dramatic cliffside architecture reflects a layered sequence of at least two distinct populations rather than a single continuous Dogon building tradition from the start.
Granaries as landmarks
The Dogon's distinctive conical thatched-roof granaries, built into and along the cliffs, are as practically important as they are visually distinctive, storing grain in a manner adapted specifically to the escarpment's terrain and climate, and they remain in active everyday agricultural use rather than functioning only as a historical or tourist feature.
A ceremony held once every sixty years
The Dogon Sigui ceremony, involving elaborate masked dancers, is performed on a roughly sixty-year cycle tied to the community's own reckoning of generational renewal, with much of its specific ritual and initiatory content restricted to initiated members rather than shared publicly, a closed tradition this entry names as closed rather than describing in ritual detail.