[5], Astronomer Carl Sagan touched upon the issue in his book Broca's Brain (1979), seeing problems in Temple's hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery. Robert Temple, who spent eight years studying mythology, is convinced that he can trace the Sirius-B information back to the Sumerians. The alleged visitors from outer space (I must confess I've felt that way about some other people, tool). 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. double star (Ortiz de Montellano).*. Legends of the Dogon Belief in a Long-Solved Mystery Resurfaces. Print versions available in Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. 1978. Sirius was already the subject of a mystery concerning the traditional lore of the Dogon tribe of Mali, near Timbuktu in western Africa. Were aliens, lost technology or something else entirely involved? Its second, 1998, edition is called The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago. ", A series of articles has appeared in the Griffith Observer, an astronomy magazin 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. What about Sirius? 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). by Liam McDaid. The Dogon have a traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. 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). Unfortunately the ancient records contain no clear, unambiguous references to this Sirius lore although the works of historians, astronomers and philosophers were explicit and detailed on innumerable other subjects. 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 A Search for Faint Companions to Nearby Stars Using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2,. 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. Liam is the author of Urban Astronomy and is a Senior Scientist for Skeptic. [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. 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. 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. by Liam McDaid. African thought. McDaid, Liam. Laird Scranton makes it clear that he ruled out this possibility in this interview. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule. Van Beek states that this creates a major problem for Griaules claims. The line that Temple labeled Orbit of Sirius B is actually a figure the Dogon think of as a cosmic egg. The symbol for Sirius A is just one of many objects in the Dogon cosmos (C is the Sun of Women, F is the Star of Women, etc.). (Copyright: R. Ibata (Strasbourg Observatory, ULP) et al., 2MASS, NASA). Temple offered another line of reasoning. 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. This step was taken by others, particularly Temple, in the Sixties and Seventies. WebNew evidence deals a devastating blow to what was considered to be the best case for extraterrestrial visitation. Is Sirius a Triple Star?, Adams, H. H. 1983. terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial. "It does not!" Flim-Flam! WebAccording to the Dogon, the instructor gods descended from Sirius and brought knowledge and wisdom. A revised edition was published in 1998 with the new subtitle New scientific e issued monthly by the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. If a European But if the error is real, it reflects on the only kind of hard, checkable, testable evidence Temple has offered for his theories. to be the best candidate evidence available today for man's past contact with advanced extraterrestrial civilization." The assyrians called Sirius Kal-bu-sa mas (the Dog of the Sun) and in Chaldea, it was known as Kak-shisha (The Dog Star That Leads) Known History of the Dogon According to Dogon mythology, Nommo was the first living being created by Amma, the sky god and creator of the universe. The Dogon were in fact aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system (i.e. Some pseudosciences such as homeopathy and free energy never die. The Symbolism of the Tarot: The Minor Arcana, The Symbolism of the Tarot: The Major Arcana, My Reading with Kristine from Psychic Source Review, Get the best Psychic Reading Ever Best Psychics Ive Reviewed, The Cathars: the struggle for and of a new Church, The Strange Stone Discs of Baian-Kara-Ula, William Blake: What paintings of visions come. Credulous scholars, like Young and Temple, were taken in and through them a whole generation has swallowed the false mythology of aliens from the Dark Sirius Companion. This article appeared in Fortean Times. Afrocentrists, on the other hand, claimed that the Dogon could see 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. It's almost certainly a hoax. The author mentions that he could have made the book much longer but restrained himself "lest I blow this book up into a pufball of miscellaneous odds and ends" -- which prompted one reviewer to remark that Temple had stopped much too late to avoid that fate. When I set him a draft of a sharply critical review written for Astronomy magazine, he replied with a blistering counterattack in a letter to my editor: "A virulent attack against my honesty, integrity, and intelligence," he called my review. 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? The Dogon legend connected with Sirius, wrote Ridpath, "is riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally." by Philip Coppens. (Copyright Lee Krystek 1998) In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. Griaule and Dieterlen's claims, to fit his fantastic story. 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. stream Sagan has recounted numerous examples from Arizona and New Guinea -- and other scholars have noted similar instances -- of the rapid assimilation of new stories, songs and lore into the eclectic mythology of Stone Age peoples. (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982), pp. According to the Dogon, the instructor gods descended from Sirius and brought knowledge and wisdom. Griaule, Marcel. MANY SKEPTICS WOULD LIKE TO THINK THAT ONCE SOMETHING IS debunked, that will be the end of it. For example, he claims that the Dogon have a drawing like the one in Figure 1. Some pseudosciences such as homeopathy and free energy never die. Temple has made very few verifiable assertions about mythology (and The Sirius Mystery is overwhelmingly about ancient myths, not about the Dogons or modern astronomy). "At first glance," Sagan admitted, "the Sirius legend of the Dogon seems If so, I wonder why that passage was ever "worth pointing out" in the book in the first place. Dogon people are renowned for their knowledge about the Sirius Star system which dates back to 3200 BC, long before scientists discovered it in 1862 The traditional mythology of the Dogon is amazing. The Dogon and Sirius. To be specific they sound like the kinds of astronomical conclusions one might draw from studying the heavens through a small portable telescope. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, now called Sirius A. Using spherical trig, I got 612.3 km for the Siwa-Behdet leg and 654.8 km for the Thebes-Behdet. 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 Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. extraterrestrials, the Nommos, some 5,000 years ago. Legends of the Dogon Belief in a Long-Solved Mystery Resurfaces. Except that this isnt the original Dogon drawing. "[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. Temple claimed that the Dogon knew about two smaller stars that are closely related to Sirius Sirius B and Sirius C. The mystery was how they had obtained this knowledge, as these companion stars cannot be seen by the unaided eye. Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious According to Sagan, western Africa has had many visitors from The Dogon have a traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. 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. Nigel Appleby whose book Hall of the Gods was withdrawn from publication has admitted to being tremendously influenced by Temples Sirius Mystery. But was anything left out? A substantial bulk of The Sirius Mystery consists of comparative linguistic and mythological scholarship, pointing out resemblances among Dogon, Yoruba, Egyptian and Sumerian beliefs and symbols. It was very unlikely that the Dogon had learned of this stars existence from Westerners prior to the visit by Griaule and Dieterlen. One of Temple's main civilization. That in itself is extraordinary.". The obviously advanced astronomical knowledge must have come from somewhere, but is it an ancient bequest or a modern graft? 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