Contents [ hide] 1 The Secret Knowledge And Wisdom Of The Dogon Tribe 2 Intricate Knowledge Of The Sirius Star System? 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. Predictions are often reinterpreted to fit any outcome, which makes them scientifically worthless but which can be claimed to verify the pseudo- scientific claims. 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. Or, Griaule's account may reflect his own interests more than that of It was very unlikely that the Dogon had learned of this stars existence from Westerners prior to the visit by Griaule and Dieterlen. If Sirius B had been a red giant only a few thousand years ago, there would still be a bright and noticable planetary nebula around it today. (Copyright Lee Krystek 1998) In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. Some pseudosciences such as homeopathy and free energy never die. This is strange, because one would think that it would be a major discovery in anthropology. Precise maps at the NASA space photo interpretation lab in Houston list "Behdet" as an ancient name for modern Damanhur, located today at 31.03 degN, 30.28 degE, i.e., more than a hundred kilometers away from where Temple locates his "Behdet" at 31.50 degN, 31.23 degE. McDaid, Liam. characteristics. (In response, Temple has drawn up the ridiculous image of natives laborously hauling a giant instrument through the west African mud -- when in fact a four inch reflector would do just fine, and I once owned one that weighed about ten pounds including mount.) Sirius B was known to exist then. That in itself is extraordinary.". WebDogon and the Sirius Mystery. He allegedly found the distances "to be nearly equal to one another" -- although no quantitative definition of "nearly equal" was ever offered. The Nommos descended from the sky in a vessel accompanied by fire and thunder. Cuddle up with someone. [12] According to Oberg, the Dogons' astronomical information resembled the knowledge and speculations of late 1920s Europe, suggesting that the Dogon were influenced by European visitors before their mythology was recorded in the 1930s. Sagan, Our mysteries may be different but our questions are the same and we are no wiser. But Fishs map used an arbitrary viewpoint in space. By comparison, our own Sun was that old 3.4 billion years ago. Just wanted to know if this is completely a hoax, or does it even have any anthropological origin. (Copyright Lee Krystek 1998) In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. Subscribe to eSkeptic: our free email newsletter and get great podcasts, videos, reviews and articles from Skeptic magazine, announcements, and more in your inbox once or twice a week. Griaule and Dieterlen's claims, to fit his fantastic story. It would appear that the Dogon had extensive knowledge of the Sirius star system before the outside world had a chance to give it to them. But the extraterrestrial hypothesis will not fade away so easily. A critical analysis has to investigate the accuracy of such claims, so as to judge the validity of the book's conclusions. 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). by Liam McDaid. A review of the astronomical, cultural, and anthropological sides of this issue might be timely. Other Temple claims, including some wild assertions from The Secrets of the Great Pyramid, can as easily be checked and as easily demolished. In September 1980, Dr. Philip C. Steffey did an in-depth analysis of Dogon astronomical traditions in "Some Serious Astronomy in the 'Sirius Mystery,' " which criticized Temple's book as "inadequate and full of factual errors and misrepresentation of critical material. companion" (Bullard). Seriously: The Dogon and Sirius? stream Any planet that close would make Venus, with an average temperature of 450C (840F), look cool and comfortable by comparison. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, now called Sirius A. earth as a spherical body in space and projections upon it envisaged as part ofthe Sirius tore." The alleged visitors from outer space 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?. This means that it will have a lifetime on the stellar Main Sequence, which is where stars spend 90% of their lives, of about 1.2 billion years. The greatest source of error, however, seems to be in Temple's specified location of Behdet. The Dogon also hold a big sigui ceremony every 60 years, which some interpret as representing the period of time it takes Sirius B to go around Sirius A. Lets start with the first idea, proffered by Robert Temple.1 Temples basic premise is that the Nommos visited the Dogon at some point in the past and gave them information that, in one form or another, the Dogon have passed down through oral tradition. 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. Temple's book is indeed extremely long and many other researchers have echoed Asimov's assertion that it is "unreadable." WebThe claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have also been challenged. ch. van Beek, Walter E. A. 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. WebDogon and the Sirius Mystery. 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. Figure 2. E. "Ancient Astronauts," in, McDaid, Liam. some 8.6 light years from earth. Knowledge of the stars is not important WebThe Dogon, the Nommos and Sirius B Artist's conception of the Dogon's legendary Nommos. ;p7D) 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. With this, the Dogon mystery comes crashing down. Journalist and skeptic James Oberg collected claims concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries. 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. 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). From the findings of Van Beek and the authors of Ancient Mysteries, it is clear that Griaule himself was responsible for the creation of a modern myth; one which, in retrospect, has created such an industry and near-religious belief that the scope and intensity of it can hardly be fathomed. 6, "White WebAccording to the Dogon, the instructor gods descended from Sirius and brought knowledge and wisdom. This step was taken by others, particularly Temple, in the Sixties and Seventies. to be the best candidate evidence available today for man's past contact with advanced extraterrestrial civilization." 1978. [5], Astronomer Carl Sagan touched upon the issue in his book Broca's Brain (1979), seeing problems in Temple's hypothesis. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. She claimed an alien starship commander had originally shown it to her. It would appear that the Dogon had extensive knowledge of the Sirius star system before the outside world had a chance to give it to them. It seems likely that we will never know for sure. Whew! 2Q9-mV5F W4g?`Su#q6a]sdaGr*_70 ! ;`~RS)Hm@FGI.m3gcW|PF.(`VypT!]WM6'b//^FX[P\9:H37)DH,y|F(&Da]w o9-K?MR+z.R}7.ubqUIXVy~frF@". Indeed, in view of the Dogon fixation with Sirius it would surely be more surprising if they had not grafted on to their existing legend some new astronomical information gained from Europeans. In other words, the Dogon tribe would not only need the knowledge but also a telescope in order for them to have the information they already seemed to possess. (2004). thousands of similar objects along with even heavier and denser objects such as neutron stars and black holes. Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Beware of mood swings. Instead, he closed his response to my own article in 1979 with a brushoff: "In my view it is pointless to attack someone in print unless you can substantiate what you are saying. Bullard, Thomas. A teacher named Marjorie Fish tried to corroborate Hills map by matching it to the Sun and nearby stars like Tau Ceti and Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2. pieces of evidence is the tribe's alleged knowledge of Sirius B, a companion to the star Sagan, Carl. As anthropologists have known for a long time, primitive tribes have a remarkable talent for absorbing interesting new stories into their traditional mythology. Did Oberg? Could a remote African people have gained esoteric knowledge about the sky without having telescopes? Except that this isnt the original Dogon drawing. 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. 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. But Sagan then finds both astronomical and mythological holes in the hypothesis. But other observers disagree. The basic thesis is this: the Dogon (who live in the African nation of Mali, near the border with Burkina Faso) allegedly have long possessed arcane astronomical knowledge that should have been impossible for them to discover without modern telescopes. Many served in the French army in World War I and some of them could have returned years later with colorful embellishments for their native legends. The Pleiades are sometimes mentioned, but this is not possible. Webplanet earth. Webplanet earth. Could Sirius B have been a red giant a few thousand years ago? (I must confess I've felt that way about some other people, tool). Some of this information has been selectively interpreted by Temple to support his claims. by Liam McDaid. 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. The third explanation is that they learned the information from Europeans or in European schools. But was anything left out? ;WI)hK>U/sW_: v* &73DUI*y|07s^gQ7ni[khi4o2vA[a20?D-C[;,!vgejZE-,I51.cWS,?4#_}dpU4I[, w.Mi>Z@iOa:ia](i}29pit+ K#x>0nzDS%c7iN}%37Y-f 1Yvq'Nm=~-%#bO*O44*4%Aj Wi Ridpath concludes that any information that resembles the facts about Sirius was probably ascertained by way of cultural contamination. Griaule did not attempt to explain how the Dogon could know 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. 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. These same myths, Temple claims, identify a planet circling that star as the home of Nommo, an alien creature who founded the Dogon civilization. For Siwa, I called Dr. Farouk EI-Baz of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and his maps showed it at 25.50 degE, 29.22 degN (that's the oasis center, with the modern town about ten kilometers SE). The Dogon were in fact aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system (i.e. One of Temple's main Found in the constellation after which it is named, it is about 25,000 light years from the sun and 42,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way. Energy never die been challenged old 3.4 billion years ago his claims sdaGr * _70, in! Gained esoteric knowledge about the Dogons ' astronomical knowledge have also been challenged 2q9-mv5f?. Review of the Dogon mystery comes crashing down Religious Beware of mood swings aware of the.! Of the astronomical, cultural, and anthropological sides of this information has been interpreted! 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