The scientific and technical knowledge of ancient peoples sometimes boggles our imagination. So, the Sumerians, who lived in the south of modern Iraq, even 5000 years ago knew about the existence of all nine planets of the solar system. And one more, tenth, the reality of which scientists still argue. And here is another example of the amazing knowledge about space, preserved from ancient times by one of the African peoples.
Aboriginal people educate professors
In 1931, a French ethnographer, Professor Marcel Griolle, visited the Dogon tribe, in the bend of the Niger River, on the territory of the present Republic of Mali. These farmers who do not know the written language are an ancient people, in terms of the level of civilization they do not stand out among the neighboring tribes. However, the professor was very interested in the unusual content of their legends, orally passed down from generation to generation for many centuries. They talked about no less than the origin and structure of the universe, as well as about the long-standing ties of this people with space.
Since then, Professor Griaule and his colleagues regularly went on expeditions to the Dogon, scientists lived for a long time among hospitable Africans, and they gradually imbued with confidence in the benevolent and inquisitive white people and gradually initiated them into their innermost secrets.
The most "dedicated" were Griaule himself and his main assistant, Professor Germaine Deterlin, who, after Griaule's death in 1956, continued their common cause. Griaule and Deterlin presented the truly sensational results of their research in a number of publications, the first of which was published in 1950.
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How it really was
According to modern scientific concepts, the Universe was formed about 13 billion years ago as a result of the Big Bang, before which all its matter, compressed to an unimaginable density, occupied an infinitely small volume, and such categories as space and time were completely absent. Since the Big Bang, the Universe has been constantly expanding, there is a continuous process of "scattering galaxies".
This is scientific. And here is how the formation of the Universe is described in the ancient Dogon legends:
“At the beginning of all things was Amma, God, who was on nothing. Amma was a ball, an egg, and this egg was closed. Apart from him, nothing existed. The world inside Amma was still without time and space. Time and space merged into a single whole in him. " But the moment came when “… Amma opened his eyes. At the same time, his thought came out of the spiral, which, whirling in his womb, designated the future growth of the world."
As for the modern world, according to legend, "it is infinite, but it can be measured." It is noteworthy that this formulation is very close to the one given by Einstein in his theory of relativity.
Our Galaxy - the Milky Way - is the Dogon "border of place". “The boundary of a place denotes one part of the stellar world, of which the Earth is a particle, and the whole world is spinning in a spiral. Amma created an infinite number of stellar worlds in the form of a spiral.
And again, an amazing coincidence: most galaxies known to science have exactly the shape of a spiral.
The device of the universe "in Dogon style"
According to Dogon beliefs, the Earth is not the center of the universe, and its inhabitants are not the only living beings in the Universe.
“Spiral stellar worlds are inhabited worlds. Amma, who gave the world movement and form, simultaneously with all things created living beings both on our planet and on other Earths."
Incredibly, the Dogon legends contain not only such concepts as "stars", but also "planets", and even "satellites of planets." “Fixed stars are stars that do not revolve around other stars. The planets and satellites of the planets are stars that revolve in circles around other stars. " But how could people who were in a semi-primitive state of life know that "the Sun revolves around its axis as if under the action of a spiral spring, and the Earth revolves around itself and at the same time runs around space in a Great Circle"?
From the planets of the solar system, the Dogon distinguish those that are visible to the naked eye - Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. It turns out they know that Venus has a satellite. Modern science does not yet know this.
The Dogon illustrated their stories with symbols and diagrams, sometimes quite complex, but always very visual. They depicted Jupiter in the form of a large circle, on which four small circles are located - the satellites of the planet. Today we know 16 satellites of Jupiter, but four of them, discovered in 1610 by Galileo, are the largest and brightest. The Dogon Saturn was depicted as two concentric circles, explaining that the outer circle is a ring (or rings).
Main star
In Dogon mythology, Sirius, the brightest star in our firmament, takes center stage. According to their concepts, Sirius is a stellar system "which had a major influence on the development of life on Earth and is the basis of the foundations of the universe." The Dogons claim that this star system consists of Sirius proper, a second star (Sirius B) and a third star (Sirius C). At the same time, they add that both "additional" celestial bodies are so close to the main star that they cannot always be seen. To date, astronomers have discovered only the second of these stars. The existence of Sirius C is still the subject of debate among scientists.
About Sirius the Dogon say that “this star revolves around Sirius, making one revolution in 50 years. When Sirius B approaches Sirius, he begins to shine very brightly, and when he moves away from him, he begins to flicker, so that it seems to the observer that Sirius B has turned into several stars. By the way, astronomers confirm this periodicity of the Sirius glow.
Sirius B cannot be seen with a simple eye, and until the middle of the 19th century, no one, except the Dogon, knew about its existence. “Sirius B,” say the Dogon, “is the heaviest of the heavenly bodies. It has such a density that even if all people were brought together, they would not be able to lift the smallest piece of it. Indeed, Sirius B was the first white dwarf discovered in the Universe to burn out and shrink to an incredible density: one cubic centimeter of its substance weighs 50 tons!
Are Earthlings aliens from the Sirius system?
According to one of the Dogon myths, people were transported to Earth by "heavenly arks from a planet whose sun was the star Sirius B before its explosion."
Descending, the ark "described a double spiral, displaying with its movement the course of life in that vortex that revived its very first particle." But the DNA molecule - the carrier of our genetic code - has the form of a double helix!
Dogon legends tell about two stages of the coming to Earth of representatives of civilization from the Sirius star system. The first is associated with the arrival of a creature named Ogo. The second - with the landing on Earth of the ark, on board which were Nommo and the first people. About the personality of Ogo himself is said rather vaguely. It seems that this subject was a semblance of Satan - he was a fallen angel who rebelled against Amma and, at the same time, took possession of some of his innermost knowledge.
Oho allegedly visited space three times, and he made his space sorties in the "small arks". There is an interesting mention in the Dogon stories that the “po” particles served as the source of energy for his space arks - the fundamental basis of the cosmic universe.
Another character - Nommo - appears in the form of an archangel executing the orders of Amma. His main task was to create life on Earth and populate the planet with people. The Dogon myth describes in detail the preparation of such an important mission. On board the ship was everything needed to create life on Earth, as well as people - four pairs of twins, or eight Ancestors. The ship flew to Earth through a special "time window" in the sky, which was created by Amma.
When the ship landed, Nommo descended to Earth first, followed by all the other arrivals. When the ark was empty, Amma pulled the brass chain on which the ship hung up into heaven and closed the heavenly window. This meant the end of all ties between the crew of the ark and the civilization that sent it. For the people who became the first earthlings, there was no way back. It was necessary to settle down on a new planet, to “multiply and multiply” on it.
Secret source of knowledge
To the question of scientists: "How did you know all these details and details?" - The Dogon replied that they learned a lot from the drawings on the walls in the Sacred Cave. This cave is located on their land, it goes deep into the mountain, and it contains many amazing wall paintings, which were more than 700 years old by the middle of the 20th century.
Some of the Dogon drawings can be seen on the rocks
The cave is guarded by a special person who is revered by the tribe as a saint. He constantly sits in front of the entrance to it. This person is fed, looked after, but no one can touch him or just get close. When he dies, another holy man takes his place. The location of the cave is the strictest secret, which the priests of the tribe flatly refuse to reveal to white people. They only claim that it contains a large number of "proofs."
However, there were also such "white-skinned" people who managed to visit there. One of them is Eugene Garnier, a Belgian ethnographer who entered the Sacred Cave in 1932. But, like all his European predecessors, after visiting the cave, he soon died. At the same time, there were no signs of violence on the bodies of all the victims in the cave, and the autopsy revealed cerebral hemorrhage in all.
They said that when taken out, Garnier could no longer speak, but he managed to draw something …
Vadim Ilyin