(Copyright Lee Krystek 1998) In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. Young was a fervent believer in the Council of Nine, a mysterious group of channelled entities that claim to be the nine creator gods of ancient Egypt. Greek and Arab myths and words are considered to a lesser extent. seem to have done little else than give the earthlings some useless According to Robert Temple (The Sirius Mystery), the Dogon had Some pseudosciences such as homeopathy and free energy never die. Such criteria suggest that these periodic festivals have been going on for at least 600 years and possibly much longer. In this weeks eSkeptic, Liam McDaid examines these claims. they were not told by beings from the star Sirius.". To quote Ancient Mysteries: While Temple, following Griaule, assumes that to polo is the invisible star Sirius B, the Dogon themselves, as reported by Griaule, say something quite different. To quote the Dogon: When Digitaria (to polo) is close to Sirius, the latter becomes brighter; when it is at its most distant from Sirius, Digitaria gives off a twinkling effect, suggesting several stars to the observer. This description of a very visible effect causes James and Thorpe to wonder as anyone reading this should do whether to polo is therefore an ordinary star near Sirius, not an invisible companion, as Griaule and Temple suggest. Furthermore, most Dogon symbology already has multiple levels of meaning; the sketches used to illustrate the Sirius secrets are also used in puberty ceremonies. One of the pieces of evidence Temple cites is a sand picture made by the their knowledge without contact with an advanced technological ", Temple replied in Fate: "The pattern published in my book was drawn by a professional cartographer who earns his living by drawing reliable maps for an international corporation." The ancient records are filled with unanswered astronomical questions -- including the "red Sirius" and the possible Sumerian Ea-Oannes references to the spectacular Vela-X supernova. Europeans too talked about the discovery of a third star in the Sirius system; later investigations, however, ruled out that possibility. The Nine also claim to be extraterrestrial beings from the star Sirius. October 1977 saw Marvin Luckermann's "More Sirius Difficulties," on ancient calendar systems and an alternate, non- extraterrestrial explanation for the ancient fascination with the number fifty (the article quotes Michael Astour's book Hellenosemitics as saying, "This exorbitant figure, very popular in Greek myths, has its explanation: it is the number of seven-day weeks in one lunar year. WebNew evidence deals a devastating blow to what was considered to be the best case for extraterrestrial visitation. Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. no conclusions of any kind." van Beek, Walter E. A. Sirius was already the subject of a mystery concerning the traditional lore of the Dogon tribe of Mali, near Timbuktu in western Africa. Griaule himself was aware of the discovery of Sirius B and in the 1920s before he visited the Dogon there were also unconfirmed sightings of Sirius C. The Dogon were well aware of the brightest star in the sky but, as Van Beek learned, they do not call it sigu tolo, as Griaule claimed, but dana tolo. Some astronomers speculate that the white dwarf Sirius B might have been a flaming red giant only 2000 years ago although current astrophysical theories decree that any such transformation in less than 100,000 years is impossible. But now, in another recent publication Ancient Mysteries by Peter James and Nick Thorpe this mystery is also uncloaked as a hoax or a lie perpetrated by Griaule. WebThe population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000.. . The second problem is that ancient writers seemed to use color for stars in a way different from the way that we do (they described Pollux, Arcturus, and Capella as red a modern observer would call them yellow-orange, orange, and yellow, respectively). WebAlso there is the fact that they described the Nommo as fish people and you find all kinds of half man/half fish - serpent imagery all over the Mediterranean. Skeptic. They have a traditional belief in a heliocentric system and Where did they get this knowledge, he asks, if not from Though Temples work was challenged, at its core lay the original anthropological study of the Dogon by Griaule and Dieterlen, who describe the secret knowledge of Sirius B and Sirius C in their own book The Pale Fox. It is also possible to conclude that such a star could in no way be responsible for the flurry of sightings from the 1920s, it would be too faint and too close to Sirius A to have ever been seen by visual observers.[17]. As James and Thorpe point out, he took star maps along with him on his field trips as a way of prompting his informants to divulge their knowledge of the stars. It seems likely that we will never know for sure. But didn't Isaac Asimov check over the book for just such factual errors, as the publisher claims? Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. Its appearance in the dawn sky over Egypt warned of the impending Nile floods and the summer's heat and marked the beginning of the Egyptian calendar. [2][1] The book was first published by St. Martin's Press in 1976. WebAlso there is the fact that they described the Nommo as fish people and you find all kinds of half man/half fish - serpent imagery all over the Mediterranean. One unproven aspect of the reported Dogon knowledge of the Sirius system is the assertion that the Dogon knew of another star in the Sirius system, Emme Ya, or "larger than Sirius B but lighter and dim in magnitude." WebThe Dogon understanding of astronomy was comparatively modern but has several known misconceptions - it entirely lines up with the European understanding as of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the discovery of relativity. e issued monthly by the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. When Walter van Beek studied the Dogon, he Legends of the Dogon Belief in a Long-Solved Mystery Resurfaces. Using spherical trig, I got 612.3 km for the Siwa-Behdet leg and 654.8 km for the Thebes-Behdet. Randi, James. African Observers of the Universe: The Sirius Question. In, Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. 1996. either in daily life or in ritual [to the Dogon]. Hmm, The Cardiff Giant, one of the most celebrated hoaxes in American history, on display at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY. Ask about whatever you want with our Free Rune Readings! The Dogon have a traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. It was popularized in an episode from the In Search of television series narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Seriously: The Dogon and Sirius? Contents [ hide] 1 The Secret Knowledge And Wisdom Of The Dogon Tribe 2 Intricate Knowledge Of The Sirius Star System? This is only a stellar stone's throw by galactic standards and Sirius is only twice as far away from our solar system as are the nearest The expedition, led by Henri Deslandres, stayed in the field for five weeks, and it is reasonable that during this time many contacts with the locals took place, and that relatively modern astronomical knowledge was then transferred. The "mystery" that is central to the book is how the Dogon allegedly acquired knowledge of Sirius B, the white dwarf companion star of Sirius A, invisible to the naked eye. Some pseudosciences such as homeopathy and free energy never die. Strangely, ancient records explicitly list Sirius as one of six "red stars." Carl. In their original findings, Griaule and Deiterlen make no comment about the Dogon knowledge of Sirius B. Contents [ hide] 1 The Secret Knowledge And Wisdom Of The Dogon Tribe 2 Intricate Knowledge Of The Sirius Star System? Oberg also says that the Dogon were not an isolated tribe and that a member might have acquired knowledge about Sirius B while abroad and later passed it on to the tribe. Furthermore, there had been a Although we can occasionally claim victory (are there any alchemists left? Further, "The fact that the Dogon do not talk of another planet with rings beyond Saturn [i.e., Uranus, whose rings were discovered in 1977--and the rings of Jupiter weren't discovered until after Sagan's book was written, although they would have been clearly visible to any arriving extraterrestrial spacecraft] suggests to me that their informants were European, not extraterrestrial." For instance, the anthropologist Walter Van Beek, who studied the Dogon after Griaule and Dieterlen, found no evidence that the Dogon considered Sirius to be a double star and/or that astronomy was particularly important in their belief system. There are innocent available explanations: typographical error or miscopied notes, for example. astronomical information. (2004). Scientists learn that the Dogon do not possess secret knowledge about the star Sirius and its companions. Speculation about the Dogon on numerous websites is now mingled with fact, leading to wide misunderstanding among the public about Dogon mythology. For instance, the anthropologist Walter Van Beek, who studied the Dogon after Griaule and Dieterlen, found no evidence that the Dogon considered Sirius to be a double star and/or that astronomy was particularly important in their belief system. The other five are still seen as red but from the time of Arab astronomers to the present day Sirius has been blue-white. The Dogon understanding of astronomy was comparatively modern but has several known misconceptions - it entirely lines up with the European understanding as of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the discovery of relativity. One of Temple's main There are no stable orbits around the less massive Sirius B which exceed three years. One problem with this idea is that Sirius B has been a white dwarf for at least tens of thousands of years. The difference in brightness between Sirius A and B is a factor of 10,000! But it seems that Griaule, a scientist, wanted to attribute to earlier civilisations more knowledge than they actually possessed. Figure 2. 2000. "[10] Ridpath states that while the information that the Dogon probably gained from Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the presumed original Dogon knowledge of the star is very far from the facts. The Nommos descended from the sky in a vessel accompanied by fire and thunder. by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano. The Dogon and Sirius. What is interesting is that the Dogon knew about Sirius and its triple star system way before modern science found out its existence. The Skeptics Society is a non-profit, Sagan, Carl 1980. A must for every bookshelf.ORDER the book, It seems clear that the Dogon did indeed get their information from other cultures. The interval between ceremonies may be forty, fifty or sixty years. Temple considers alternative possibilities other than alien contact, such as a very ancient, advanced, and lost civilization that was behind the sudden appearance of advanced civilization in both Egypt and Sumer. If a European had visited the Dogon in the 1920's and 1930's, conversation would likely have turned to astronomical matters, including Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and the center of Dogon mythology. ", A series of articles has appeared in the Griffith Observer, an astronomy magazin 6, "White Inevitably one must ask, if the Dogons had heard good stories about Sirius from other sources, would they ignore them or would they quickly adopt them into their own cultural myths? Griaule, Marcel. They point out that the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians used spherical lenses6 (even though they are a bad choice to use in telescopes try seeing an image through a glass bead). Knowledge of the stars is not important The oldest traces of life on Earth go back to about that time. "The ancient peoples were not concealing information from us out of spite," he writes. Such assimilation occurs most frequently when the subject is one of particular interest to a people -- as Sirius is to the Dogons. All rights reserved. "At first glance," Sagan admitted, "the Sirius legend of the Dogon seems As Carl Sagan pointed out, when the lines on both maps are removed, the resemblance disappears. E. "Ancient Astronauts," in, McDaid, Liam. The tribe has a periodic Sirius festival called the "Segui" ceremony; each celebration lasts several years (the last was in 1968-72.) knowledge of the satellites of Jupiter and rings of Saturn, among other Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. Skeptic Jason Colavito counts The Sirius Mystery among the body of works in a tradition of ancient astronaut ideas he believes were ultimately inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.[13][14]. James, Peter and Nick Thorpe. Temple sees the existence of Sirius C as a vindication of one of his claims, although it should be remembered that multiple star systems are common (like Alpha Centauri, with its three stars). Pseudoarchaeology book by Robert K. G. Temple, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Sirius_Mystery&oldid=1135262588, CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 23 January 2023, at 16:12. Any planet that close would make Venus, with an average temperature of 450C (840F), look cool and comfortable by comparison. In his 1998 revised edition, Temple was quick to point out the new discussions in scientific circles about the possible existence of Sirius C, which seemed to make Griaules claims even more spectacular and accurate. Dieterlen the Dogon also name a companion star, po tolo "Digitaria The Dogon. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. In that case the Dogon (and everyone else) would have had little trouble seeing both stars then. A revised edition was published in 1998 with the new subtitle New scientific But Fishs map used an arbitrary viewpoint in space. Y%gbsPFur[%X7Sz Here, then, is another datum to be investigated when it is possible." companion" (Bullard). The biggest challenge to Griaule, however, came from anthropologist Walter Van Beek. WebThe star Sirius is certainly no stranger to mysteries. These same myths, Temple claims, identify a planet circling that star as the home of Nommo, an alien creature who founded the Dogon civilization. Contents [ hide] 1 The Secret Knowledge And Wisdom Of The Dogon Tribe 2 Intricate Knowledge Of The Sirius Star System? civilization. star" (Sirius B) and describe its density and rotational As the brightest star in the sky it was known and worshiped by ancient civilizations. Beings of this type would be a bit like mermaids and mermen. Perhaps the 'sirens' are, figuratively, a chorus of mermaids recalled from earlier times.They are called in Greek Seiren.It is fifty years. Most important, no one, even within the circle Myths and legends that are passed through generations are thousands of years old. "Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel If a European had visited the Dogon in the 1920's and 1930's, conversation would likely have turned to astronomical matters, including Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and the center of Dogon mythology. The stars in this group are too young only a few tens of millions of years for planets with life and civilization to have developed. terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial. As the brightest star in the sky it was known and worshiped by ancient civilizations. The mystery of the ancient "red" Sirius also remains baffling. Also if it was seeded by westerners how is the Dogon and surrounding tribes have a fully developed culture and religion structure centered around Sirius going back for hundreds of years? More recent research suggests that the contaminator was Griaule himself. You dont have to watch too many Fantasy Channel (formerly known as the History Channel) specials on ancient astronauts before youll be told about the primitive African Dogon of Mali and their advanced astronomical knowledge bestowed, of course, by extraterrestrials. The bad news is that the pseudoscience websites were in seventeen different languages. Europeans too believed that the "white dwarf' Sirius-B star was the heaviest thing in the universe, although in later years astronomers were to find Legends of the Dogon Belief in a Long-Solved Mystery Resurfaces. If a European had visited the Dogon in the 1920's and 1930's, conversation would likely have turned to astronomical matters, including Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and the center of Dogon mythology. The second idea, championed by Afrocentrist historians, is that the Dogons either found out about Sirius B on their own or learned about it from the Egyptians. That's one major characteristic of classical pseudo-science, its ability to incorporate any result and its ability to be immune from disproof from any result. In the 1930s, when their research was carried out, Sirius B was known to have existed, even though it was only photographed in 1970. space. The Dogons were not isolated. 139-167. And does the Dogon mythology ever really say that Nommo, the founder ancient Egypt.*. History Debunked then goes on to demonstrate the type of pseudo-scientific nonsense this has lead to by providing a link to an Ethnomathematics paper and reading out its conclusion. But Sagan then finds both astronomical and mythological holes in the hypothesis. WebThe Dogon understanding of astronomy was comparatively modern but has several known misconceptions - it entirely lines up with the European understanding as of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the discovery of relativity. amphibious aliens or telescopic vision due to melanin. Sagan suggests, however, that that civilization was had visited the Dogon in the 1920's and 1930's, conversation would likely extraterrestrials, the Nommos, some 5,000 years ago. None were detected, That was not surprising since, judging from the age and energy of the stars in the Sirius system, astronomers believe it is unlikely that any earthlike planets could exist there long enough for life to emerge and develop. And this is what Mr. Oberg has done." After being surprised that an astromomy association would, after all this time, bother to publish such an article, I did a web search and found that in 1997 Robert Temple published a second edition of the book that started it all TheSirius Mystery in which he addressed none of the main criticisms that had been directed against the first edition, published in 1976. It is important to look at the assumptions and implications of the claims made about the Dogon. So where does this leave the mysteries of Sirius? [15] An apparent "third star" observed in the 1920s is now confirmed as a background object,[16] something previously suggested by Holberg in 2007: Benest and Duvent found that stable orbits with a period of up to six years exist around Sirius A. The main problem with the alleged antiquity of the Dogon "Sirius secrets" legend is that they are reminiscent of European Sirius speculations of the late 1920s. In 1998, Temple republished the book with the subtitle new scientific evidence of alien contact 5,000 years ago. The books reputation was first dented in 1999, when Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince published The Stargate Conspiracy, in which they allege that Temples thinking had been heavily influenced by his mentor, Arthur M. Young. Except that this isnt the original Dogon drawing. I did more searching and found that for the keywords Dogon and Sirius B, almost 1000 websites were listed. for some unknown reason from a planet orbiting The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. Sagan, Liam is the author of Urban Astronomy and is a Senior Scientist for Skeptic. The obviously advanced astronomical knowledge must have come from somewhere, but is it an ancient bequest or a modern graft? interpreter. It was very unlikely that the Dogon had learned of this stars existence from Westerners prior to the visit by Griaule and Dieterlen. The number "fifty" has great signifance in ancient myths. Scientists learn that the Dogon do not possess secret knowledge about the star Sirius and its companions. Our mysteries may be different but our questions are the same and we are no wiser. In 1977 two radio astronomers were interested enough in the Sirius mystery to direct their telescopes at the star system in hopes of picking up any artificial radio signals. Conversations With In a recent book, The Once and Future Star (Hawthorn Books, 1977), George Michanowsky identifies "Oannes" as a Hellenized version of the Sumerian name Ea; he Mali was a former French colony (part of the Sudan), so some Dogon may have gone to French schools in the 1920s.7 Or Jesuit missionaries or merchants may have imparted the information to them.8, There may be an even simpler explanation. What is interesting is that the Dogon knew about Sirius and its triple star system way before modern science found out its existence. To quote James and Thorpe: As for Sirius B, only Griaules informants had ever heard of it. Was Griaule told by his informants what he wanted to believe; did he misinterpret the Dogon responses to his questions? Using similar techniques other writers have "discovered" dozens of different, often contradictory "ancient secrets" about Atlantis, primitive Christianity, forgotten wisdom, ancient visitors and numerous other things. However, doubts have been raised about the reliability of Griaule and Dieterlen's work on which The Sirius Mystery is based,[4][5] and alternative explanations have been proposed. Press J to jump to the feed. claims about the antiquity of this information or of a connection with Van Beek actually spoke to some of Griaules original informants; he noted that though they do speak about sigu tolo [interpreted by Griaule as their name for Sirius itself], they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some, it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. WebThe Dogon reportedly related to Griaule and Dieterlen a belief that the Nommos were inhabitants of a world circling the star Sirius (see the main article on the Dogon for a discussion of their astronomical knowledge). It is a type of fuel that can lead to what Clay Farris Naff cleverly calls the neuron bomb. In this post, Michael Shermer asks, Is there a moral standard that stands above all the worlds religions that is based on some transcendent source?. Cook some soul food. Griaule and Dieterlen first described their findings in an article published in French in 1950, but they included no comment about how extraordinary the Dogon knowledge of the invisible companions was. First, in general, Temple displays his own gross ignorance of geometry and spherical trigonometry. For instance, the anthropologist Walter Van Beek, who studied the Dogon after Griaule and Dieterlen, found no evidence that the Dogon considered Sirius to be a double star and/or that astronomy was particularly important in their belief system. 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