The Pale Fox

The Pale Fox - This is an important book in Dogon studies, because it was written by two of the pioneering anthropologists in the field. I am delighted that the continuum Foundation has sponsored the translation and publication in English of Le renard pale (The Pale Fox), a model of patient and sensitive anthropological fieldwork. In the 1930s an eccentric French ethnologist named Marcel Griaule arrived in what was then the French Sudan (modern Mali) intent on proving that the Africans were not ignorant savages with simplistic beliefs but sophisticated thinkers capable of great insights into science and philosophy and moreover that they were even the true originators of many of the mystical beliefs of the West, including the astrological Zodiac.