The Dogon live in the southeast of the Republic of Mali in western Africa. This nationality numbers about 800 thousand people, of which the overwhelming majority are Muslims, a small part of Christians, and even less pagans. The Dogon have their own languages and a rich history. Other civilizations had little impact on Dogon culture.
This is understandable, since they live in remote areas, where conquerors and missionaries could not get for a long time. Little is known about the origin of the Dogon. Their ancestors settled in Mali in the X-XII centuries, displacing other tribes and partially adopting their traditions. Strictly speaking, the Dogon are not much different from many other tribes in this region.
But what, then, attracts the attention of ufologists and astronomers to them? And the fact that, being a rather backward African tribe, the Dogon have amazing knowledge about the constellation Canis Major. To realize the depth of knowledge of the Dogons, you need to plunge into their beliefs.
The heavenly creator in the Dogon religion is Amma, at first Amma was only a void that existed outside space and time. Apart from this emptiness, nothing existed until Amma opened his eyes. His thought "came out of the spiral", and our world began to grow rapidly - this idea, according to some researchers, is a mythological transposition of the Big Bang Theory. The Creator God created Nommo - the first living being. Soon it split up, and part of it rebelled against Amma. Contrary to the will of its creator, Nommo (or rather, his "separated" part - Ogo) built a ship and after a long journey descended to Earth. Amma did not forgive disobedience and in the end decided to destroy his rebellious child: according to local beliefs, Nommo arrived on Earth during a "fire storm". " Allegedly, it was thanks to him that the Dogon acquired valuable knowledge about the Universe.
Dogon mythology is closely related to Sirius - the brightest star in the night sky, included in the constellation Canis Major. Sirius is 22 times brighter than the Sun and, according to legends, it is on it that the "homeland" of the god Amma is.
In Dogon myths, Sirius is described as a double star - just like in the ideas of astronomers. Around Sirius A (Sigi tolo in Dogon) revolves an invisible white dwarf - Sirius B (in Dogon language - Po tolo). Nowadays, scientists are confident in the correctness of this interpretation. But if we can observe Sirius A with the naked eye, then Sirius B can only be viewed through a telescope. The white dwarf was discovered only in 1862, and how the Dogon found out about it is not clear. But that's not all: the Dogon “know” that the rotation period of Sirius B is 50 Earth years (according to modern astronomical data - 51 years), and every half century they organize the Sigi holiday, thus marking the “rebirth of the world”. A common coincidence? But the Dogon also know thatthat Sirius B is a white dwarf - they even designate this star as a white stone.
Surprisingly, according to the Dogon priests, another star revolves around Sirius A - Sirius C (this is still a conventional designation). Its existence has not yet been officially confirmed, but in 1995 astronomers Duvent and Benest reported that they had observed Sirius C. Perhaps Sirius C really exists and is a small star.
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It is believed that in addition to knowledge about Sirius, the Dogon also had information about the structure of the solar system in ancient times - they, for example, were aware of the rings of Saturn. In addition, they divide celestial bodies into planets, stars, satellites, etc. The Dogon are sure that people also live on other planets, although they are different from you and me.
Proof of contact
All this knowledge is known thanks to the book "The Pale Fox" by the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule. He and his colleague Germaine Dieterlen have studied Dogon culture for over twenty years. Other researchers also put forward the hypothesis of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. One of them was, for example, the writer Robert Temple, who published the book The Mystery of Sirius. In the second half of the 20th century, the public's attention was also attracted by the work of the French astronomer Eric Garrier, in which he convincingly proved the veracity of the idea of paleocontact.
However, many scientists actively criticize these assumptions. One of them is an anthropologist from Belgium Walter van Beek, who spent twelve years of his life communicating with the Dogon. According to him, for all the time he was among this people, he did not hear absolutely anything that would be mentioned in the work of Marcel Griaule - about any Sirius or the structure of the solar system.
But it is also possible that van Beek communicated with those representatives of the Dogon who do not possess such knowledge … The fact is that Dogon legends can only be retelled by the initiates - the olubar. It is known that Marcel Griaule talked for a long time with several Dogon, who have access to secret knowledge. One of the patriarchs, a Dogon named Ongnonlu, described to Griaule the basis of a system of traditional beliefs. Subsequently, Ongnonlu's words were supplemented by other noble Dogon.
Lost in translation
Dogon ideas about the structure of celestial bodies are far from strictly scientific understanding. Their knowledge of Sirius is part of their traditional beliefs and is closely intertwined with myths. To indicate the movement of Sirius B around Sirius A, the Dogon made sketches. They could have been figures laid out on the ground or inscribed on stone. Oral legends are also composed about Sirius. One of the Dogon ritual songs contains the following words:
The path of the mask is the star Digitaria (Sirius B), this road goes like Digitaria.
In any case, the French ethnographer Marcel Griol, who knows the intricacies of Dogon dialects, insisted on this version of the translation. But there is also an alternative, literal translation of these lines, which completely changes their meaning:
The path of the mask is a straight vertical, this road goes straight.
Versions and assumptions
Some researchers have tried to explain the Dogon mystery without resorting to "alien" versions. But these attempts at times only strengthened the position of the paleocontact hypothesis.
Take, for example, the common version of ancient telescopes. It is known that the Dogon had contact with the ancient Egyptians. In theory, they could have inherited astronomical knowledge from them. Another question - was there anything to inherit? After all, even if we assume that the ancient Egyptians had primitive telescopes, they still would not allow us to see Sirius B: it became known only with the advent of modern equipment.
Another version says that the Dogon could have … their own telescope. True, in this case we are talking only about a natural phenomenon that can replace optics. There is an assumption that water, rotating at a constant speed in an enclosed space, under certain conditions could form a giant concave mirror and would make it possible to distinguish the heavenly bodies reflected in it. Allegedly, this is how you can see the stars that are hidden from the naked eye …
A no less strange hypothesis says that the Dogon possessed unique vision, which allowed them to see Sirius V. Indeed, a trained eye is able to distinguish objects at a considerable distance. But in the case of Sirius B, even the keenest eyesight will be powerless. In general, according to Marcel Griaule's words, the Dogon knew not only about the very existence of Sirius B, but also about its orbit, mass and density. Not to mention the knowledge of the African tribe regarding other celestial bodies. It is impossible to explain all this by some ancient devices or physiological features of the Dogon.
There is, however, another version that can give an exhaustive answer to the question of the secret of the Dogon: knowledge about astronomical bodies was brought by European missionaries who visited the Dogon even before the expedition of Marcel Griaule. The end of the 19th century (Sirius B was discovered a little earlier) became the period of the greatest activity of Christian missions, and, possibly, later the Dogon intertwined the stories of white-skinned guests into their traditional system of values, and subsequent generations took them for real ancient traditions of their ancestors.
On the other hand, it is not so easy to imagine that European missionaries were telling Africans about the structure of our universe, and not about Jesus Christ. However, the version that the astronomical knowledge completely unnecessary in everyday life was left by the aliens to the wild tribe also sounds rather ridiculous.
Paleokontakt: truth and fiction
To our question, the well-known ufologist, coordinator of the Cosmopoisk association Vadim Chernobrov answered:
- Based on the available facts, we see that in some astronomical questions the level of the Dogon even exceeded the modern one. Where did they get this knowledge from is a mystery. It is not even known for certain in which of the villages the main material evidence of this knowledge is located. The main interest is, of course, the data on Sirius. One of the Dogon myths tells about a system consisting of three stars. According to the Dogon information, the third star (as yet unknown to science Sirius C) revolves around Sirius A along a longer trajectory. For a long time, official science did not recognize the idea of the existence of Sirius C, but then scientists observed X-rays from the Sirius system, and it became clear that a third star might exist.
But examples of paleocontact are not uncommon. Including - on the territory of Russia. Take the Ainu, for example. This people once inhabited the vast territory of South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the southern tip of Kamchatka and modern Japan. The origin of the Ainu mythology remains a mystery.
The works have not yet been written about a possible connection in the past between the Ainu and a highly developed civilization, but the main proof of the once existing paleocontacts is the strange statuettes of the Ainu several thousand years before our era. These statuettes, apparently, were preserved for a long time as family heirlooms, but then (probably at the time of the arrival of the Japanese) the Ainu began to bury them in the ground in observance of mourning rituals. The statuettes were buried, laying stones on all sides and covering with stone slabs. In such a strange form, the dogu - the oldest possible evidence of alien visits to Earth - is still found.
