The blind Dogon elder, Ogotemmêli, taught the main symbols of the Dogon religion to French anthropologist Marcel Griaule in October 1946. Griaule had lived amongst the Dogon people for fifteen years before this meeting with Ogotemmêli took place. Ogotemmêli taught Griaule the religious stories in the same way that Ogotemmêli had learned them from his father and grandfather; oral instruction which he had learned over the course of more than twenty years. What makes the record so important from a historical perspective is that the Dogon people were still living in their oral culture at the time their religion was recorded. They were one of the last people in West Africa to lose their independence and come under French rule.