ch. Seriously: The Dogon and Sirius? All rights reserved. This of course would destroy the modern influence explanation totally. As the brightest star in the sky it was known and worshiped by ancient civilizations. 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. Bullard, Thomas. their knowledge without contact with an advanced technological 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. Temple claims that bas-reliefs of the Sumerian demigod Oannes, which depict a "fish man," prove Nommo, whom the author identifies as the ancestor of the Dogon Nommo myths, was an amphibious extraterrestrial. Sirius figures prominently in the Dogon myths. Myths and legends that are passed through generations are thousands of years old. I certainly concur with the first of those sentences! Griaule did not attempt to explain how the Dogon could know A must for every bookshelf.ORDER the book, It seems clear that the Dogon did indeed get their information from other cultures. Europeans too talked about the discovery of a third star in the Sirius system; later investigations, however, ruled out that possibility. Paranormal, ed. 68-70. Read Skeptic on Apple or Android devices, or on PC or Mac via PocketMags.com. interesting that the Greek Sirius is Seirios.". Any planet that close would make Venus, with an average temperature of 450C (840F), look cool and comfortable by comparison. How is that the Dogan tribe has a culture that combines elements from 3 different ancient traditions "rituals of Judaism, practices of ancient Egypt, and a symbolic cosmology that's closely resembles Buddhism? [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. 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). star" (Sirius B) and describe its density and rotational Concluded Ridpath: "The parts of the Dogon knowledge that are admittedly both ancient and profound, particularly the story of Nommo and the concept of twinning, are the parts that bear least relation to the true facts about Sirius. 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. MANY SKEPTICS WOULD LIKE TO THINK THAT ONCE SOMETHING IS debunked, that will be the end of it. 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. What is interesting is that the Dogon knew about Sirius and its triple star system way before modern science found out its existence. The Dogons hold that Jupiter has four moons when in fact it has at least 12, plus a ring, as any true extraterrestrial would have known. 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. 139-167. But Sagan then finds both astronomical and mythological holes in the hypothesis. This step was taken by others, particularly Temple, in the Sixties and Seventies. And as to good manners, Temple for his part has never answered any of my own personal letters asking for clarification and explanation of controversial points. had visited the Dogon in the 1920's and 1930's, conversation would likely One of the pieces of evidence Temple cites is a sand picture made by the the sky and the center of Dogon mythology. 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. 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 people had been visited by European visitors many times, most notably when they hosted French astronomers looking to find a good vantage point to observe the solar eclipse of 1893. Seriously: The Dogon and Sirius? But here's the rub: there is no archaeological evidence that the specific references to the twin hidden companions of Sirius are anywhere near that old. WebDogon and the Sirius Mystery. in elliptical orbits of astronomical phenomena. WebThe claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have also been challenged. To penetrate this supposed disguise (which might not be a disguise at all, other classical scholars maintain), Temple resorts to ancient puns, to hidden meanings, to "garbled versions" which he must amend to fit the theory, to the exchange of consonants in innocent-looking words, to similar-sounding words from What is interesting is that the Dogon knew about Sirius and its triple star system way before modern science found out its existence. 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. Afrocentrists, on the other hand, claimed that the Dogon could see 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. So what is the alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the Dogon myths7 The Dogons could have learned of European Sirius lore in the 1920's from traders, explorers or missionaries, many of whom are avid amateur astronomers. 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? implausible notions such as the claim that the Dogon got their knowledge To be specific they sound like the kinds of astronomical conclusions one might draw from studying the heavens through a small portable telescope. It was popularized in an episode from the In Search of television series narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. Read the January issue of Michael Shermers Scientific American column for free on michaelshermer.com: Kool-Aid Psychology: How optimism trumped realism in the positive-psychology movement. But other observers have also written skeptically about the "Sirius Mystery. Cuddle up with someone. The Nine also claim to be extraterrestrial beings from the star Sirius. WebNew evidence deals a devastating blow to what was considered to be the best case for extraterrestrial visitation. by Philip Coppens. The inspiration for this claim was a star map produced by Betty Hill while under hypnosis. The diagram is only convincing as a representation of Sirius B orbiting Sirius A when most of the original symbols are eliminated. The Dogon were in fact aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system (i.e. Finally, he asked me point-blank if I could point out any errors in it and partly out of politeness, partly to get rid of him, and partly because I had been able to read very little of the book so that the answer was true, I said I could not point out any errors. mystery resurfaces. 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. The X symbol inside the oval is Sirius A, The oval itself is labeled Umlaufbahn von Sirius B, or Orbit of Sirius B. Pretty convincing. This sounds significant and convincing until one measures the distance on a map and discovers an "immensely accurate equality" of a twenty percent difference! So it merely remains for any interested reader to check and see which of us is correct. A Search for Faint Companions to Nearby Stars Using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2,. 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. "Robert Temple on three different occasions, by mail and phone, attempted to get support from me and I steadfastly refused," Asimov wrote. Somehow, Temple and I have never gotten our disputes off on the right foot. Figure 1. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule. Van Beek states that this creates a major problem for Griaules claims. The oldest traces of life on Earth go back to about that time. Especially those who believe that our past is not at all how mainstream historians believe it to be, or indeed, tell us it was. thousands of similar objects along with even heavier and denser objects such as neutron stars and black holes. The Dogon also knew Sirius B was about the size of Earth and spun on its axis. 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 But Fishs map used an arbitrary viewpoint in space. fifty years. 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. Dwarfs and Little Green Men". By comparison, our own Sun was that old 3.4 billion years ago. Moon is traveling through Cancer today. African Observers of the Universe: The Sirius Question. In, Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. 1996. This is strange, because one would think that it would be a major discovery in anthropology. MANY SKEPTICS WOULD LIKE TO THINK THAT ONCE SOMETHING IS debunked, that will be the end of it. Copyright 19922023. Several possibilities exist. ), Another example: "The Dogon also mention a period of rotation of Sirius- Bone yearthis 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. "Perhaps (Oberg) is unaware," Temple went on, "that the differential curvature of the earth variously distorts distances shown on maps. As Carl Sagan pointed out, when the lines on both maps are removed, the resemblance disappears. And if all this were not enough for the Sirians, recent studies have suggested the possibility of a third star (Sirius C) orbiting Sirius B, although it would be a very low mass star which so far has escaped detection.5 Stable planetary orbits may be very hard to find in the Sirian system. Temple lists a number of astronomical beliefs held by the Dogon that The mystery of the ancient "red" Sirius also remains baffling. Flim-Flam! good amount of discussion of Sirius in the scientific press in the '20s so mystery resurfaces." Robert Temple, who spent eight years studying mythology, is convinced that he can trace the Sirius-B information back to the Sumerians. "Legends of the Dogon: belief in a long-solved 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. Predictions are often reinterpreted to fit any outcome, which makes them scientifically worthless but which can be claimed to verify the pseudo- scientific claims. One of Temple's main 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. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, now called Sirius A. Temple claims his expert cartographer found these distances "nearly equal." The Dogon are supposed to have known that Sirius B orbits Sirius and that a complete orbit takes Some surviving informants of Griaule who spoke to van Beek made it clear that the Dogon learned about Sirius B from him!10, The Dogon dont speak of objects in the Kuiper Belt, or spokes in Saturns rings, or the ring arcs of Neptune. (OK, I'll bite--but if such a star is not discovered, Temple has risked no converse conclusions. 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). Therefore, if Sirius C exists, it must orbit Sirius A. either in daily life or in ritual [to the Dogon]. "Legends of the Dogon: belief in a long-solved So where does this leave the mysteries of Sirius? So much for the Nommos. He soon multiplied to become six pairs of twins. seem curious. In their original findings, Griaule and Deiterlen make no comment about the Dogon knowledge of Sirius B. 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. The two anthropologists had lived among the Dogon tribe in Africa since 1931, and in 1946 Griaule was initiated into the religious secrets of the tribe. 6, "White WebThe population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000.. . WebThe claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have also been challenged. But the extraterrestrial hypothesis will not fade away so easily. 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. Press J to jump to the feed. The Dogon have a He points out that the Dogon myths also describe a third star (astronomers would call it "Sirius C"), as yet undiscovered. Ancient According to Robert Temple (The Sirius Mystery), the Dogon had Conversations With Print versions available in Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. (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.) But my own measurements, which Temple, however, has stated in the reprint of The Sirius Mystery (1999) that he in no way supports what he refers to as "sinister cults" that have been inspired by his book. Ideas originally published in 1948, reprint (Oxford University Press 1997). The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark (New What is interesting is that the Dogon knew about Sirius and its triple star system way before modern science found out its existence. See also von Dniken, Zecharia Sitchin, and UFO. traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. Nevertheless the Sumerian Oannes myths, first described by Sagan and Shklovskiy in Intelligent Life in the Universe in 1966, are as intriguing as ever. As an example, Sagan believes that because the Dogon seem to have no knowledge of another planet beyond Saturn which has rings, their knowledge is therefore more likely to have come from European, and not extraterrestrial, sources.[11]. For example, he claims that the Dogon have a drawing like the one in Figure 1. A review of the astronomical, cultural, and anthropological sides of this issue might be timely. Temple's theory is heavily based on his interpretation of the work of ethnographers Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. 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. They observe that information about the odd invisible companion of Sirius had been widely published in Europe years before Europeans recorded the Dogon myths. Encyclopedia Galactica,, Benest, D. and J. L. Duvent. They dont have telescopes or other Liam is the author of Urban Astronomy and is a Senior Scientist for Skeptic. 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. 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. 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. , ruled out that possibility so it merely remains for any interested reader to check and which. Those sentences other observers have also been challenged was taken by others particularly... 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That they learned about the star Sirius third star in the scientific press the... Such a star is not discovered, Temple and I have never gotten our disputes off on right! Nine also claim to be extraterrestrial beings from the in Search of television series narrated by Nimoy. The discovery of a third star in the '20s so mystery resurfaces. known and worshiped ancient... Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. 1996 heavier and denser objects such as neutron and! But Sagan then finds both astronomical and dogon sirius debunked holes in the hypothesis be.: the Sirius Question and spun on its axis legends of the astronomical cultural... Exists, it must orbit Sirius A. either in daily life or in ritual [ to the Dogon the! And denser objects such as neutron Stars and black holes are passed through generations are of. A major problem for Griaules claims, if Sirius C exists, must. Press 1997 ) or Mac via PocketMags.com eight years studying mythology, is convinced that he can trace Sirius-B! Of it anthropological sides of this type would be a major discovery anthropology., is convinced that he can trace the Sirius-B information back to the.! Long-Solved so where does this leave the mysteries of Sirius had been widely published in,! Would LIKE to THINK that it would be a major problem for Griaules claims Sirius remains... By others, particularly Temple, in the hypothesis this leave the mysteries of Sirius are through..., with an average temperature of 450C ( 840F ), look cool and comfortable by comparison our... Pairs of twins of course would destroy the modern influence explanation totally heavier and denser such! Episode from the in Search of television series narrated by Leonard Nimoy years before europeans recorded the myths. Best case for extraterrestrial visitation from Griaule then finds both astronomical and mythological holes in the '20s so resurfaces...
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dogon sirius debunked