The following texts are from THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD: AN ATLAS OF
THE UNEXPLAINED, by Francis Hitching.


The Dogon

South of the Sahara desert live four related tribes of Africans whom the
French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen studied from
1946-1950, living mainly with the Dogon people and inspiring such
confidence that four of their head priests were persuaded to reveal their
most secret traditions. There is no doubt that what the two scientists were
told was authentic; so highly respected were they by the Dogon that when
Griaule died in 1956, 250,000 Africans from the area gathered in tribute
for his funeral in Mali.

Drawing patterns and symbols in the dusty soil, Dogon priests showed that
they had inherited from ancient times a knowledge of the universe that was
unbelievably accurate. The focus of their attention was the star Sirius,
the brightest in the sky -- in fact, a binary star; around Sirius A, the
star we can see, revolves Sirius B, a "white dwarf" star of great density
which is totally invisible to the naked eye, and was seen for the first
time in 1862 by the American Alvan Clark when he peered through the largest
telescope then existing, and spotted a faint point of light; being 100,000
times less bright than Sirius A, it was not possible to capture it on a
photograph until 1970. Yet the Dogon not only knew about this star, but
also many of its characteristics. They knew it was white, and that although
it was "the smallest thing there is," it was also "the heaviest star," made
of a substance "heavier than all the iron on Earth" -- a good description
of Sirius B's density, which is so great that a cubic metre weighs around
20,000 tons. They knew correctly that its orbit round Sirius A took 50
years, and was not circular but elliptical; they even knew the position of
Sirius A within the ellipse.

Their knowledge of astronomy in general was no less astonishing. They drew
the halo that surrounds Saturn, which is impossible to detect with normal
eyesight; they knew about the four main moons of Jupiter; they knew that
the planets revolved around the sun, that the Earth is round and that it
spins on its own axis; incredibly, they were sure that the Milky Way is a
spiral-like shape, a fact not known to astronomers until well into this
century. They also believed that their knowledge was obtained from
extra-terrestrial visitors.


Amphibians from Sirius

...this star (called Sirius B by modern astronomers) has formed the basis
of the most sacred Dogon beliefs since antiquity. So how could they have
learned so much about it? There seem only two conceivable possibilities:
either they used some form of divination or distant viewing, as in psychic
experiments being carried out today; or, as the Dogon themselves believe
profoundly, visitors from a planet attached to Sirius B landed on
Earth and passed on the knowledge themselves. This is the solution which
the historian Robert Temple has explored in a remarkable book "The Sirius
Mystery," in which he makes out a persuasive case for the Dogons being the
last people on Earth to worship extra-terrestrial amphibians who landed in
the Persian Gulf at the dawn of civilization, and whose presence can be
detected in drawings and legends of the gods of ancient Babylonia, Egypt,
and Greece.

He describes how the Dogon call the creatures Nommos, who have to live in
water. They are said to have arrived in an ark, and drawings in the dust
portray "the spinning or whirling descent of the ark." They describe the
noise of thunder that it made, and a whirlwind of dust caused by the
violence of its impact with the ground. Other legends tell of "spurting
blood" from the ark, which may refer to its rocket exhaust; the Dogon also
seem to make a distinction between the ark that actually landed on earth,
and a star-like object in the sky that may represent the main inter-stellar
spaceship.

All this might just be science fiction curiousity were it not for the
extraordinary scholarship that took Robert Temple back to the origins of
the Dogon in Libya, and from there to the undoubted parallels between their
Nommo and the amphibian god of Babylon, Oannes, a superior being who with
his companions was to have taught the Sumerian mathematics, astronomy,
agriculture, social and political organization, and written language....
Surviving fragments of the "Babylonian History" written in Greek by a
priest named Berossus, describe Oannes closely: "The whole body of the
animal was like that of a fish; and it had under a fish's head another
head, and also feet below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the
fish's tail. His voice, too, and language, were articulate and human; and a
representation of him is preserved even to this day....When the sun set, it
was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all
night in the deep; for he was amphibious."

Having established the parallel between the two gods, Robert Temple makes a
closely-argued case that Oannes and the Sirius connection is at the heart
of the Classical "mystery religions" that have so far defied explanation
because they were deliberately recorded in coded form; initiates of the
mysteries were forbidden to reveal the arcane knowledge they had been
taught. But various clues were written down to indicate the link with
Sirius -- for instance, the repeating motif of 50 representing the orbital
period of Sirius B, and a dog-headed deity or other dog-associations
representing Sirius A, the "Dog Star."

Temple recounts many legends that back up his theme, and because these were
originally intended to be elusive, it is not surprising that they have many
other interpretations. But it is hard to disagree that a Sirius factor is
present in many of them. Moreover, there is a rich fund of material in
Greek myth that tends to support his theory, but is not included in his
book.

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