The Dogon are a sparsely settled agricultural tribe in the foothills of the rocky Ploto region in southeastern Mali. However, this is a tribe that has preserved its culture, artwork, religious beliefs, and knowledge of astronomy. Research has shown that they have more advanced astronomical knowledge than hundreds of similar societies. This information, which contradicts the technological level of their civilization, is so mysterious that the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent beings can be easily accepted without much thought. But let's take a closer look!

Dr. Marchel Griaule (1898-1956), a German anthropologist, and Germaine Dieterlen (1903-1999), a French anthropologist, were the first Western scientists to study the Dogon, and they studied the Dogon for 30 years, beginning in 1931. During their studies, the anthropologists combed through the myths and ancient traditions of the Dogon and found that the Dog Star, a very distant star, was depicted as "Sirius".

The power of Star Po

According to the Dogon priests, this star, which they called Sirius, had another hidden star in its orbit and took 50 years to complete its orbit. This hidden star was called “Po”. According to the Dogon, the Po star was made of a strange but very durable metal called “Sagala” and weighed more than all the iron in the world. Germaine Dieterlen has repeatedly found depictions of Sirius and its satellite Po in 400-year-old Dogon inscriptions. We can look at Dogon beliefs in general as folkloric or mythological depictions, and if we continue to accept this, we will reach shocking conclusions more easily, because according to modern science, Sirius and Po are real. The star Sirius does indeed have a satellite, which is now called Sirius B. But this star is so small that it is impossible to see with the naked eye, and it did not enter the astronomical literature until 1862. It wasn't until 1862 that Alvan Clark, an American optical engineer and telescope maker, who was also an astronomer, saw Sirius and its moon through a powerful telescope.

Later studies showed that the satellite Sirius B orbits the star Sirius in an elliptical orbit. It takes 50 years to complete one orbit. The satellite is 100,000 times darker than the big star. It was first photographed in 1970. So the existence of Sirius and its satellite Sirius B is scientifically certain. So how did the Dogon, a primitive tribe, know about this star, its satellite, its orbit and the time it took to complete the orbit, without any instruments? Even stranger, how did the Dogons know that Sirius B was so heavy, long before it was scientifically established in 1926 that this star has a very heavy mass?

According to scientific findings, one cubic meter of this star weighs around 20,000 tons, more than all the iron in the world combined. How did a primitive tribe like the Dogon acquire such important astro-physical data? And there is more: the Dogon have also found that Sirius B gets brighter when it approaches Sirius, and that this happens once a year during its orbit. Who knows, if we look at other scriptures that have not yet been analyzed, maybe we will be able to find some more findings that modern science has not yet discovered.

Seeing the Stars

Dogon inscriptions containing information about Sirius B may be of interest to many astronomers. But what interests them more are the findings that have not yet been reported. Griaule and Dieterlen found that Dogon beliefs mention a second small satellite orbiting Sirius, and that this satellite is at a different angle to Sirius B and has a different orbit than an ellipse. The Dogon called this small star “Enome Ya”, meaning the sun of women. I wonder if astronomy has not officially released this information, but is hiding it?

We know that many astronomers saw such a star in the 1920s and named it Sirius C, but for some reason this discovery was not recorded. Could the findings mean something more than astronomical progress? Moreover, given the latest research, what the Dogon say is plausible. If Sirius C exists and is brighter than Sirius B, it belongs to the group of red dwarf stars, which would be of interest to many astronomers. They also periodically flare up, that is, glow, and then return to normal. If the periodic flaring occurred in the 1920s, astronomers must have seen it. If this is true, the question of how the Dogon acquired such sophisticated knowledge remains unchanged. Until the 1970s, the ability of such stars to explode was not known before Griaule and Dieterlen spoke to Dogon elders. More importantly, Dr Richard Donnison and Iwan P. Williams, astronomers at the University of London, announced in a 1978 scientific journal that if Sirius C exists, based on calculations, the orbit of this satellite may not be exactly elliptical, but circular, as the Dogons described it. The Dogons were once again vindicated, but was it all just a coincidence? If we think to explain the Dogon discovery of Sirius in this way, then we will find many other coincidences related to this tribe. And this is the original rule, because...

Beyond Jupiter

To complicate matters further, the findings of the priests of this primitive tribe go beyond Sirius. The Dogon priests told the French anthropologist that Jupiter has four moons, Saturn is surrounded by rings, the Earth is round and orbits in a circle. They even talked about galaxies, stars and the Milky Way. All the information was absolutely correct, except for the number of moons of Jupiter. But none of this was information that could have been obtained in such a primitive society, without technology. And even their information about Jupiter's moons is not wrong. Because although Jupiter has more than a dozen moons, only four of them have the form and characteristics that can be considered satellites.

The incredible astronomical knowledge of the Dogon has attracted the attention of some astronomers, but has not received the real attention it deserves in the scientific world. When Griaule and Dieterlen asked the Dogon how they acquired this knowledge, the Dogon gave a surprising answer. According to the Dogon, many years ago their ancestors had been visited by strange creatures from the sky from which they had received their knowledge. The Dogons had pictured these visitors as short and stocky, with fish tails and human heads, and the creatures had landed with a great noise, kicking up dust. A star-like object also hovered and waited. Was it the space shuttle that landed on the ground and the mothership that remained above? These answers and the Ufological predictions led many astronomers away from the Dogon mystery. But only one person studied this strange community for 8 years. This man, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of England, was Robert Temple, and in 1976 he published his knowledge of the Dogon in a book called “The Sirius Mystery”. In the book, Temple included not only Griaule's and Dieterlen's analysis but also his own analysis and the Dogon's accounts, and Temple says that the Dogon's knowledge existed long before they settled in Mali, that alien beings gave them this knowledge, and that there was knowledge of Sirius in ancient Egypt. But that is not all. Take a look at the following quote; “The Dogon are thought to be culturally and perhaps physically descended from ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks are claimed to have descended from the Argonauts, mythological sea travelers. They first moved west from Lydia, and centuries later settled on the banks of the Niger River in Mali, where they mixed with local blacks. The Dogon say that their greatest mystery was transmitted by the Egyptian “Danaos” - to the Greeks, then to Lydia and finally to Mali. This great mystery includes the knowledge of Sirius. We have studied ancient Egypt and found that the Egyptians knew about Sirius as early as 3000 BC.”

Fish Men of Babylon

In his work, Temple points out that the Dogon depictions of gods resemble aquatic beings and the gods of other civilizations, such as those of Mediterranean mythology. These gods are also portrayed as teachers who educate the community and are depicted with organs that could live in water. If the Mediterranean is the origin of the Dogon, it is logical to think that the representations of the Visitors resemble aquatic creatures. Chronologically, we first see similar depictions in Babylonian paintings of fish men. The Babylonians called them "annetodi," which means "hideous. The strange and ugly appearance of the creatures kept them from entering Babylonian society and teaching them civilization. The largest of the Annetodi was "Oannes". Oannes was depicted as half man and half fish. A fish behind the head of a bearded man or a fish tail behind a human body. According to Babylonian belief, this god of water would one day come back to teach the people something, and then he would reach under the water all the way to the Persian desert. The creature lived in Apsu, an underwater city. I wonder if Oannes was "Nommo", the Dogon god of visitors. A representation of a god similar to Oannes was found in Palestine. He had the body of a man but the tail of a fish and his name was "Dagon".

Further west, the Egyptian city of Pharos was known as the home of the "Old Man of the Sea," and its god was called Proteus. The god was the son of the oceans, and the description of this god dates back to ancient Greece. According to a traditional belief, Proteus sometimes hid in a cage to protect himself from the fire of the star Sirius. We don't know what all the water-related gods are describing. Perhaps these descriptions show the evolution of the Dogon god Nommo.

Temple's theory was accepted by two famous and important figures, Ian Ridpath and Prof. Carl Sagan, who believed that this phenomenon must be closely related to visitors from outer space. In the late 1920s, the existence and mass structure of Sirius B began to attract the attention of the Western world. During this time, Ridpath and Sagan suggested that interested people visit the Dogons. They could use the traditional myths about Sirius B to gather scientific data. Finally, in 1931, Griaule and Dieterlan made this visit.

Dogon Cultural fusion?

At first glance, this may seem like a reasonable solution. After all, it is not the first time that an isolated, primitive society has encountered foreign visitors and government officials and been influenced by the culture of a higher society. This is why many scientists favor such an explanation for the Sirius mystery. For Temple, such an explanation seems flawed, and he goes back to his 1990 paper "Fate". In it, he tells of a letter he wrote to the government of Mali. He asked the government when the first missionaries went to the Dogon tribe. The Malian government replied that the first missionary visit to the Dogon was in 1949. This was long after anthropologists had learned about Sirius from the Dogon. As far as we know, Dogon knowledge goes back 400 years, but despite all the evidence, Dr. Dieterlan's statement was not accepted.

All to be Announced

Temple's theory completely denies that the Dogon received information about Sirius from missionaries or government officials. But no one, not even Temple, has been able to explain from whom the Dogons got this information other than missionaries. This information could only have come from a civilization more advanced than our own. But the clues to trace it seem almost non-existent. Could it be that somewhere in the past we have visitors from places we don't know about? Are we really aware of what is happening above our heads? More interestingly, who visited the Dogon and why, and will they come again? Who knows, maybe they are coming.

What are the Skeptics Saying about Dogons?

According to Robert Temple, the Dogon tribe of 100,000 people in East Africa had communicated with extraterrestrials. Temple's main evidence was that the Dogon tribe's sources contained information that the star Sirius was related to Sirius B. The Dogon knew about Sirius B, the satellite of the star Sirius, and that it takes 50 years to complete its orbit. The Dogon made sand paintings to illustrate their beliefs.

The figures Temple presented were not original, the Dogons had shown French anthropologists their true source. The Dogon also have various interesting astronomical beliefs. For example, the system of the solar center, the oval satellites, information about the moons of Jupiter and the rings around Saturn. If there are no extraterrestrial visitors, where did the Dogon get all this information? How did they gather this information without telescopes or scientific equipment? Prof. Carl Sagan says that the Dogon could not have obtained this information without contact with technologically advanced civilizations. There are also those who argue that this civilization was more terrestrial than extraterrestrial. The Dogon were curious about astronomical mysteries and the sky. As Sagan says, if a European had visited the Dogon in the 1920s and 1930s, conversations would have turned into astronomical events involving Sirius, the focus of Dogon mythology and the brightest star in the sky.

What's more, after Griaule's visit to the Dogon in the 1920s, the knowledge gained leads us to the question of how this could have happened without any technology. This is good material for discussing the visitors and the outside world. (Sagan also attributes some of the controversy to the nature of white dwarfs. For example, Sirius B is an extremely heavy white dwarf star, like one ton per m³.

Levent Aslan

13 January 2025