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 The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, now called Sirius A. Moon is traveling through Cancer today. He was told that fishlike creatures called the Nommo had come to Earth from Sirius to civilizes its people. WebThe population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000.. . Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. Here, then, is another datum to be investigated when it is possible." Concludes Sagan, "There are too many loopholes, too many alternate explanations for such a myth to provide reliable evidence of past extraterrestrial contact. Furthermore, there had been a double star (Ortiz de Montellano).*. Nigel Appleby whose book Hall of the Gods was withdrawn from publication has admitted to being tremendously influenced by Temples Sirius Mystery. The mystery of the ancient "red" Sirius also remains baffling. Some of this information has been selectively interpreted by Temple to support his claims. 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. space. According to Robert Temple (The Sirius Mystery), the Dogon had Readers of Skeptic are not so sanguine. 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). Why would Europeans feel compelled that they needed to discuss astronomy with such a primitive tribe and why would this transfer of knowledge that only lasted 5 weeks have such an impact on the Dogan people that they would include it in their cultural practices? To be specific they sound like the kinds of astronomical conclusions one might draw from studying the heavens through a small portable telescope. Because Sirius B moves from 8 to 31 AU distance from Sirius A, it is unlikely that planets orbiting Sirius A would have stable orbits. "Perhaps (Oberg) is unaware," Temple went on, "that the differential curvature of the earth variously distorts distances shown on maps. 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. sigui, held by the Dogon every sixty years. According to the Dogon, the instructor gods descended from Sirius and brought knowledge and wisdom. Carl Sagan agreed with Temple that the Dogon could not have acquired The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. claims about the antiquity of this information or of a connection with 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. 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]. The Dogon have a traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. WebNew evidence deals a devastating blow to what was considered to be the best case for extraterrestrial visitation. 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). The Nine became part of the UFO and New Age mythology and many claim to be in contact with them. 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. civilization. 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. A must for every bookshelf.ORDER the book, It seems clear that the Dogon did indeed get their information from other cultures. 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. Journalist and skeptic James Oberg collected claims concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries. Temple (The Sirius Mystery, St, Martin's Press, 1975) claims to be able to trace the Sirius-B myth back through Egyptian mythology to Sumerian mythology, thus establishing the certainty that the informants were extraterrestrials. (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982), pp. The Sirius mystery, though, remains of great interest to many researchers today. 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. 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. 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. Astronomers classify Sirius as a "class A" star, hotter and younger than our sun, Its brightness is due largely to its proximity; it is barely eight light- years away from the earth. Based on Carrolls website (skepdic.com), the Dictionary is the definitive short-answer debunking of nearly every thing skeptical. On this episode of MonsterTalk we chat with archeologist Dr. Ken Feder about giants, biblical archeology and one of the biggest hoaxes in American history. 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." The Dogon have a traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. WebThe claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have also been challenged. [7] Others, such as Marcel Griaule's daughter Genevive Calame-Griaule and an anthropologist, Luc de Heusch, came to criticize Van Beek's dismissal as "political" and riddled with "unchecked speculation", demonstrating a general ignorance of Dogon esoteric tradition. 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." The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, now called Sirius A. 30-31. Although he was an anthropologist, Griaule was keenly interested in astronomy and had studied it in Paris. Fishs map and Hills map look similar only because the lines connecting the stars look the same. Other Temple claims, including some wild assertions from The Secrets of the Great Pyramid, can as easily be checked and as easily demolished. 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? The greatest source of error, however, seems to be in Temple's specified location of Behdet. Sagan, Carl. The interval between ceremonies may be forty, fifty or sixty years. 1999. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. 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. Randi, James. interesting that the Greek Sirius is Seirios.". Copyright 19922023. 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). 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. the Sirius "Mystery". Cuddle up with someone. The Stone Age storytellers speak by their campfires of other people on other planets and of other mysteries. Another claim: that in Egypt the oasis of Siwa and the ancient Nile City of Thebes are both equidistant from the shrine city of Behdet, in the delta -- and the same exact distance, too. The tribe has a periodic Sirius festival called the "Segui" ceremony; each celebration lasts several years (the last was in 1968-72.) The oldest traces of life on Earth go back to about that time. He certainly did not have permission to use that statement as part of the promotion, I'11 just have to be even more careful hereafter.". Temple's book and the debates that followed its release publicized the existence of the Dogon tribe among many New Age followers and proponents of ancient astronaut theories. his informants in such a forceful leading manner that they created new "Robert Temple on three different occasions, by mail and phone, attempted to get support from me and I steadfastly refused," Asimov wrote. the Dogon. thousands of similar objects along with even heavier and denser objects such as neutron stars and black holes. Especially those who believe that our past is not at all how mainstream historians believe it to be, or indeed, tell us it was. 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery. Could Sirius B have been a red giant a few thousand years ago? This step was taken by others, particularly Temple, in the Sixties and Seventies. 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). "their purpose in disguising their secrets was to see that the secrets could survive.". In that case the Dogon (and everyone else) would have had little trouble seeing both stars then. To recapitulate: Griaule claimed to have been initiated into the secret mysteries of the male Dogon, during which they allegedly told him of Sirius (sigu tolo in their language) and its two invisible companions. If so, I wonder why that passage was ever "worth pointing out" in the book in the first place. Temple's impressive research was encouraged by noted futurist Arthur C, Clarke (although Clarke now prefers the "modern influence" hypothesis). He soon multiplied to become six pairs of twins. Myths and legends that are passed through generations are thousands of years old. WebRe: Dogon Sirius claim debunked - Graham Hancock Official Website Mysteries Taken from [ library.thinkquest.org] According to the Dogon priests, Sirius is orbited by a tiny secret star that they refer to as 'po', which traces an elliptical path around Sirius taking 50 years to 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). On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. fifty years. The obviously advanced astronomical knowledge must have come from somewhere, but is it an ancient bequest or a modern graft? Is Sirius a Triple Star?, Adams, H. H. 1983. The third explanation is that they learned the information from Europeans or in European schools. He points out that the Dogon myths also describe a third star (astronomers would call it "Sirius C"), as yet undiscovered. They all have one thing in common: enormous monsters. S]V',H79aD>1 Q@d(FOY;"36y0Z{VXEJwOx._tto}#&i|HR-i4 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. The Dogon and Sirius. You guessed it -- Sirius! How did the Dogon obtain this knowledge? Mysteries (Ballantine Books, 1999). Obviously, no Earth-based species was flying to other stars back then! James and Thorpe understate the problem when they say this is very worrying. Griaule claimed that about 15 per cent of the Dogon tribe possessed this secret knowledge, but Van Beek could find no trace of it in the decade he spent with the Dogon. 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. 6, "White implausible notions such as the claim that the Dogon got their knowledge their knowledge without contact with an advanced technological complete diagram that the Dogon showed to the French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, who were the original Cook some soul food. 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. Sirius B without the need of a telescope because of their special eyesight "Nowhere in his 295 page book does Temple offer one specific statement from the Dogon to substantiate his ancient astronauts claim." by Liam McDaid. A revised edition was published in 1998 with the new subtitle New scientific According to the Dogon, the instructor gods descended from Sirius and brought knowledge and wisdom. 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. To Temple, this proved that "geodetic surveys of immense accuracy were thus practiced in ancient Egypt with a knowledge of the All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule. Van Beek states that this creates a major problem for Griaules claims. (I must confess I've felt that way about some other people, tool). According to Sagan, western Africa has had many visitors from Just when multi-cellular life would began, Sirius A would become a Red Giant, crisping any nearby planets. Read Skeptic on Apple or Android devices, or on PC or Mac via PocketMags.com. 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. 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. 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. Using spherical trig, I got 612.3 km for the Siwa-Behdet leg and 654.8 km for the Thebes-Behdet. The Skeptics Society is a non-profit, Sagan, Carl 1980. The Pleiades are sometimes mentioned, but this is not possible. Temple has either misinterpreted Dogon beliefs, or distorted 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. The only mystery is how anyone could take seriously either the notion of Print versions available in Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. He says the references are there but recorded in riddles which he alone has been able to decipher. McDaid, Liam. Temple's theory is heavily based on his interpretation of the work of ethnographers Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. The antiquity of the Dogon astronomy is not so obvious as ancient astronaut enthusiasts claim but neither has it been disproved. Speculation about the Dogon on numerous websites is now mingled with fact, leading to wide misunderstanding among the public about Dogon mythology. 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. 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. More recent research suggests that the contaminator was Griaule himself. "[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 has made very few verifiable assertions about mythology (and The Sirius Mystery is overwhelmingly about ancient myths, not about the Dogons or modern astronomy). The Dogon. I published, showed the distances to be nowhere close, in error by tens of miles, at least ten percent -- hardly "immense accuracy. It's almost certainly a hoax. 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. Temple's book mentions the absorption of a Christ-figure into the traditional Dogon Pantheon, obviously a recent addition. The immunity of pseudoscientists to criticism is well known to skeptics, yet I was curious. York: Random House, 1995). Seriously: The Dogon and Sirius? The number "fifty" has great signifance in ancient myths. 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 The Sirius mystery, though, remains of great interest to many researchers today. Griaule did not attempt to explain how the Dogon could know [6] The claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have also been challenged. Figure 1. companion" (Bullard). 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. He shows a total ignorance or disregard for almost every fact in my book, and there is hardly a single thing in his review which is remotely accurate." Perhaps so -- it does seem like a trivial point, arguing over how different two meaningless geographical distances really are. 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. Sagan suggests, however, that that civilization was Temple offered another line of reasoning. The Bad Archaeology page on the Sirius Mystery has summarize the basic details well: In 1976, Robert K G Temple (born 1945), an American living in the UK, published what was to become a seminal work of Bad Archaeology, The Sirius Mystery.