Pre-Dogon people with large necropolises in Mali, Africa, of the 11th-16th centuries AD. The oldest wood sculptures to survive (dated 15th-17th centuries AD) were found in caves in the Bandiagara escarpment and are attributed to the Tellem. The figures, simplified and elongated in form, often with hands raised, seem to be the prototype of the ancestor figures that the Dogon carve on the doors and locks of their houses and granaries. Cotton and woolen cloth have also been found in the caves.