(4140) Wed 4 Aug 93 9:19p
From 'The Unexplained' No. 6. Published by Orbis Publishing,
Great Britain.
MEMORIES OF A DISTANT STAR?
THE DOGON PEOPLE OF WEST AFRICA HAVE A DETAILED KNOWLEDGE OF
THE UNIVERSE THAT IS ASTONISHINGLY ACCURATE. WAS IT, AS THEY
CLAIM, PASSED ON BY ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS?
Like many African tribes, the Dogon people of the Republic
of Mali have a shadowed past. They settled on the Bandiagara
Plateau, where they now live, some time between the 13th and
16th centuries. For most of the year, their homeland - 300
miles (500 km) south of Timbuktu - is a desolate, arid, rocky
terrain of cliffs and gorges, dotted with small villages built
from mud and straw.
Although most anthropologists would class them as
'primitive', the two million people who make up the Dogon and
surrounding tribes would not agree with this epithet. Nor do
they deserve it, except in the sense that their way of life has
changed little over the centuries. Indifferent though they are
to Western technology, their philosophy and religion is both
rich and complex. Outsiders who have lived with them, and
learned to accept the simplicity of their lives, speak of them
as a happy, fulfilled people whose attitude to the essential
values of life dates back millennia.
VISITORS FROM SIRIUS
The Dogon do, however, make one astounding claim; that they
were originally taught and 'civilised' by creatures from outer
space - specifically, from the star system Sirius, 8.7 light
years away. And they back up this claim with what seems to be
extraordinarily detailed knowledge of astronomy for such a
'primitive' and isolated tribe. Notably, they know that Sirius,
the brightest star in the sky, has a companion star, invisible
to the naked eye, which is small, dense, and extremely heavy.
This is perfectly accurate. But its existence was not even
suspected by Western astronomers until the middle of the 19th
century; and it was not described in detail until the 1920s,
nor photographed (so dim is this star, known as Sirius B) until
1970.
This curious astronomical fact forms the central tenet of
Dogon mythology. It is enshrined in their most secret rituals.
portrayed in sand drawings, built into their sacred
architecture, and can be seen in carvings and patterns woven
into their blankets - designs almost certainly dating back
hundreds, if not thousands of years.
INTERPLANETARY CONNECTION
All in all, this has been held as the most persuasive
evidence yet that Earth had, in its fairly recent past, an
interplanetary connection - a close encounter of the
educational kind, one might say. The extent of Dogon knowledge
has also been subjected to scrutiny, in order to establish
whether all that they say is true, or whether their information
may have come from an Earthbound source - a passing missionary,
say.
So, how did we in the West come to know of the Dogon
beliefs? There is just one basic source, fortunately very
thorough. In 1931, two of France's most respected
anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen decided
to make the Dogon the subject of extended study. For the next
21 years, they lived almost constantly with the tribe; and , in
1946, Griaule was invited by the Dogon priests to share their
innermost sacred secrets. He attended their rituals and their
ceremonies, and learned - so far as it was possible for any
Westerner to do - the enormously complex symbolism that stems
from their central belief in amphibious creatures, which they
called Nommo, and that came from outer space to civilise the
world. (Griaule himself came to be revered by the Dogon as much
as their priests, to such an extent that at his funeral in Mali
in 1956, a quarter of a million tribesmen gathered to pay him
homage.)
The findings of the two anthropologists were first published
in 1950, in a cautious and scholarly paper entitled 'A
Sudanese Sirius System' in the Journal de la Societe des
Africainistes. After Griaule's death, Germaine Dieterlen
remained in Paris, where she was appointed Secretary General of
the Societe des Africainistes at the Musee de l'Homme. She
wrote up their joint studies in a massive volume intitled Le
Renard Pele, the first of a planned series, published in 1965,
by the French National Institute of Ethnology.
>>>>>
* SLMR 2.1a * When childhood dies, the corpse is called an adult.
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<<<<Originally From: [-RICH WOODS-] To: [-JOHN POWELL-]
> Conference: [-0005 - F:BAMA-] @ [-XBN-] on [-01/07/94-]
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>
>Here is the info I have......
-Almost perfect rendition of the myth of the mysterious Dogon tribe
deleted-
And here, again, is what I discovered on the mystery by looking up a
few facts. If there's a FAQ, something about this should be in it.
[Begin included text]
I did an hour's research on the Dogon mystery last night (not as big
a deal as it sounds, I have a pretty decent collection of astronomy
books and periodicals at home), I learned quite a bit. This may get a
little long...
Apparently the originator of the mystery is Robert K.Temple in the
1975 book, "The Sirius Mystery". He says that the Dogon have a
traditional belief in Sirius B, which claim that it's made of a
material called "sagala" (translation: "strong") "so heavy that all
earthly beings combined cannot lift it". The Dogon also accept the
idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and are aware of the 4
Galilean moons of Jupiter and Saturn's rings. As in the previous
reply, this was all discovered in the 1930s, when the Dogon were
anthropologically investigated.
Ok, so what did western civilization know about these things by 1930?
Sirius B was discovered in 1862 (not 1962) by Alvan Clark as he was
testing the new lens he'd made for Dearborn Observatory's 18 1/2 inch
refracting telescope. He at first thought he'd found a defect in the
lens, but he finally realized he'd discovered the companion star that
had been suspected since 1844. From 1834 to 1844 F.W.Bessel had
noticed a wavy irregularity in the motion of Sirius against the
background stars, and had concluded that it had an invisible
companion. The orbit of the proposed compainion had been calculated
in 1851 by C.H.F.Peters.
By 1910 astronomers began to realize that there were a class of stars,
eventually called white dwarfs, which were very small and dim, yet
very massive, which meant they had to be incredibly dense. In 1915
the first spectrum of Sirius B was obtained by W.Adams at Mt.Wilson,
which is all that would have been needed to classify it as a white
dwarf. However, I couldn't find any information on when it was indeed
realized that Sirius B was a white dwarf.
Saturn's rings and Jupiter's Galilean moons had been known since the
invention of the telescope. By 1930 four more of Jupiter's moons had
been discovered, however, the fifth was found as late as 1892 by
E.E. Barnard, and the rest followed as photography came into use as
an astronomical tool around the turn of the century.
As for a third star, Phillip Fox reported in 1920 that the image of
Sirius B had appeared to be double, using the same 18 1/2 inch
refractor with which Clark discovered B. R.T.Innes in S.Africa and
van den Bos, a renowned double-star observer, also reported the 3rd
star. I should note here that these were visual studies, and the
object in question is at the very limit of what can be observed with
a telescope. In 1973 a study by I.W.Lindenblad at the U.S.Naval
Observatory concluded that there is no astrometric (measurement of
irregularities of motion against the background, probably on
photographs) evidence for a 3rd star.
My conclusions: Nothing extraordinary need be invoked to account for
the Dogon's knowledge. Someone probably gave the Dogons the
information, probably after 1920. I admit there are inconsistencies:
anyone astronomically knowledgeable enough to know about Sirius B
would most likely have known about the additional moons of Jupiter,
but then again, so would any hypothetical visitors from beyond. Also,
why did the Dogons claim that this was part of their traditions?
By the way, I could not confirm the Dogons knowledge of a 3rd star.
This is unfortunate, as it would prove beyond doubt that they were
given all this information by someone, as the modern study showed no
such star.
[End included text]
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Here's some information I have on the Dogon and their mythology. I
don't remember who transcribed this:
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The following texts are from THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD: AN ATLAS OF THE
UNEXPLAINED, by Francis Hitching.
The Dogon
South of the Sahara desert live four related tribes of Africans whom
the French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen
studied from 1946-1950, living mainly with the Dogon people and
inspiring such confidence that four of their head priests were
persuaded to reveal their most secret traditions. There is no doubt
that what the two scientists were told was authentic; so highly
respected were they by the Dogon that when Griaule died in 1956,
250,000 Africans from the area gathered in tribute for his funeral in
Mali.
Drawing patterns and symbols in the dusty soil, Dogon priests showed
that they had inherited from ancient times a knowledge of the
universe that was unbelievably accurate. The focus of their attention
was the star Sirius, the brightest in the sky -- in fact, a binary
star; around Sirius A, the star we can see, revolves Sirius B, a
"white dwarf" star of great density which is totally invisible to the
naked eye, and was seen for the first time in 1862 by the American
Alvan Clark when he peered through the largest telescope then
existing, and spotted a faint point of light; being 100,000 times
less bright than Sirius A, it was not possible to capture it on a
photograph until 1970. Yet the Dogon not only knew about this star,
but also many of its characteristics. They knew it was white, and
that although it was "the smallest thing there is," it was also "the
heaviest star," made of a substance "heavier than all the iron on
Earth" -- a good description of Sirius B's density, which is so great
that a cubic metre weighs around 20,000 tons. They knew correctly
that its orbit round Sirius A took 50 years, and was not circular but
elliptical; they even knew the position of Sirius A within the
ellipse.
Their knowledge of astronomy in general was no less astonishing. They
drew the halo that surrounds Saturn, which is impossible to detect
with normal eyesight; they knew about the four main moons of Jupiter;
they knew that the planets revolved around the sun, that the Earth is
round and that it spins on its own axis; incredibly, they were sure
that the Milky Way is a spiral-like shape, a fact not known to
astronomers until well into this century. They also believed that
their knowledge was obtained from extra-terrestrial visitors.
Amphibians from Sirius
...this star (called Sirius B by modern astronomers) has formed the
basis of the most sacred Dogon beliefs since antiquity. So how could
they have learned so much about it? There seem only two conceivable
possibilities: either they used some form of divination or distant
viewing, as in psychic experiments being carried out today; or, as
the Dogon themselves believe profoundly, visitors from a planet
attached to Sirius B landed on Earth and passed on the knowledge
themselves. This is the solution which the historian Robert Temple
has explored in a remarkable book "The Sirius Mystery," in which he
makes out a persuasive case for the Dogons being the last people on
Earth to worship extra-terrestrial amphibians who landed in the
Persian Gulf at the dawn of civilization, and whose presence can be
detected in drawings and legends of the gods of ancient Babylonia,
Egypt, and Greece.
He describes how the Dogon call the creatures Nommos, who have to
live in water. They are said to have arrived in an ark, and drawings
in the dust portray "the spinning or whirling descent of the ark."
They describe the noise of thunder that it made, and a whirlwind of
dust caused by the violence of its impact with the ground. Other
legends tell of "spurting blood" from the ark, which may refer to its
rocket exhaust; the Dogon also seem to make a distinction between the
ark that actually landed on earth, and a star-like object in the sky
that may represent the main inter-stellar spaceship.
All this might just be science fiction curiousity were it not for the
extraordinary scholarship that took Robert Temple back to the origins
of the Dogon in Libya, and from there to the undoubted parallels
between their Nommo and the amphibian god of Babylon, Oannes, a
superior being who with his companions was to have taught the
Sumerian mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, social and political
organization, and written language....Surviving fragments of the
"Babylonian History" written in Greek by a priest named Berossus,
describe Oannes closely: "The whole body of the animal was like that
of a fish; and it had under a fish's head another head, and also feet
below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His
voice, too, and language, were articulate and human; and a
representation of him is preserved even to this day....When the sun
set, it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea,
and abide all night in the deep; for he was amphibious."
Having established the parallel between the two gods, Robert Temple
makes a closely-argued case that Oannes and the Sirius connection is
at the heart of the Classical "mystery religions" that have so far
defied explanation because they were deliberately recorded in coded
form; initiates of the mysteries were forbidden to reveal the arcane
knowledge they had been taught. But various clues were written down
to indicate the link with Sirius -- for instance, the repeating motif
of 50 representing the orbital period of Sirius B, and a dog-headed
deity or other dog-associations representing Sirius A, the "Dog Star."
Temple recounts many legends that back up his theme, and because
these were originally intended to be elusive, it is not surprising
that they have many other interpretations. But it is hard to disagree
that a Sirius factor is present in many of them. Moreover, there is a
rich fund of material in Greek myth that tends to support his theory,
but is not included in his book.
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