The Sirius Mystery
Encyclopedia
The Sirius Mystery is a book by Robert K. G. Temple
first published by St. Martin's Press in 1975. It presents the hypothesis
that the Dogon people
of Mali
in west Africa, preserve a tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius
star-system.
These beings, who are hypothesized to have taught the arts of civilization to humans, are claimed in the book to have originated the systems of the Pharaoh
s of Egypt
, the mythology of Greek civilization
, and the Epic of Gilgamesh
, among other things. Temple's theory was heavily based on his interpretation of the work of ethnographers
Marcel Griaule
and Germaine Dieterlen
. A substantial bulk of The Sirius Mystery consists of comparative linguistic and mythological scholarship, pointing out resemblances among Dogon, Egyptian and Sumer
ian beliefs and symbols. Greek and Arab myths and words are considered to a lesser extent.
The “mystery” that is central to the book is how the Dogon allegedly acquired knowledge of Sirius B, the invisible companion star of Sirius A. Temple did not argue that the only way that the Dogon could have obtained what he understood to be accurate information on Sirius B was by contact with an advanced civilization; he considered alternative possibilities, such as a very ancient, advanced, and lost civilization that was behind the sudden appearance of advanced civilization in both Egypt and Sumeria. He personally found the theory of alien contact more convincing, but he did not claim certainty about it.
However, some doubts have been raised about the reliability of Griaule and Dieterlein's work on which The Sirius Mystery is based, and alternative explanations have been proposed. The claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have been challenged. 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. Others, such as Marcel Griaule's daughter Genevieve Calame-Griaule and 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.
touched upon the issue in his book Broca's Brain
(1979), seeing problems in Temple's hypothesis. As an example, Sagan believes that because the Dogon seem to have no knowledge of another planet beyond Saturn
which has rings, that their knowledge is therefore more likely to have come from European, and not extraterrestrial, sources. This conjecture, however, has never been proven.
observed, in an article in the Skeptical Inquirer
, "The whole Dogon legend of Sirius and its companions is riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally". Ridpath stated that while the information that the Dogon probably gained from Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the presumed original Dogon knowledge on the star is very far from the facts. Ridpath concluded that the information that resembles the facts about Sirius was probably ascertained by way of cultural contamination. More recent research suggests that the contaminator was Griaule himself.
collected claims that have appeared concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book. According to Oberg, the Dogons' astronomical information resembles the knowledge and speculations of European astronomical knowledge of the late 1920s. The Dogon may have acquired their astronomical knowledge, including the information on Sirius, from European visitors before their mythology was recorded in the 1930s. Oberg also points out that the Dogon were not an isolated tribe, and thus it was not even necessary for outsiders to inform the Dogon about Sirius B. They could very well have acquired such knowledge abroad, passing it on to their tribe later. Sirius B was first observed in 1862, and had been predicted in 1844 on dynamic grounds. However, Oberg does concede that such assumptions of recent acquisition is "entirely circumstantial" and has no foundation in documented evidence.
"Benest and Duvent found that stable orbits with a period of up to six years exist around Sirius A. There are no stable orbits around the less massive Sirius B which exceed three years. Therefore, if Sirius C exists, it must orbit Sirius A. 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." The former study also concluded that while a triple system for Sirius could not be fully eliminated, the probability was low.
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. Speculation about the Dogon on numerous websites is now mingled with fact, leading to wide misunderstanding among the public about Dogon mythology. Temple, however, has stated in the reprint of The Sirius Mystery (1999) that he in no way supports cults that have been inspired by his book.
Robert K. G. Temple
Robert K. G. Temple is an American author best known for his controversial book, The Sirius Mystery which presents the idea that the Dogon people preserve the tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius star-system...
first published by St. Martin's Press in 1975. It presents the hypothesis
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
that the Dogon people
Dogon people
The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. The population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000 The Dogon are best known for their religious traditions, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and...
of Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
in west Africa, preserve a tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius
Sirius
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek: Seirios . The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris...
star-system.
These beings, who are hypothesized to have taught the arts of civilization to humans, are claimed in the book to have originated the systems of the Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
s of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, the mythology of Greek civilization
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, and the Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...
, among other things. Temple's theory was heavily based on his interpretation of the work of ethnographers
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule was a French anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France....
and Germaine Dieterlen
Germaine Dieterlen
Germaine Dieterlen was a French anthropologist. She was a student of Marcel Mauss and wrote on a large range of ethnographic topics and made pioneering contributions to the study of myths, initiations, techniques , graphic systems, objects, classifications, ritual and social structure.She is most...
. A substantial bulk of The Sirius Mystery consists of comparative linguistic and mythological scholarship, pointing out resemblances among Dogon, Egyptian and Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian beliefs and symbols. Greek and Arab myths and words are considered to a lesser extent.
The “mystery” that is central to the book is how the Dogon allegedly acquired knowledge of Sirius B, the invisible companion star of Sirius A. Temple did not argue that the only way that the Dogon could have obtained what he understood to be accurate information on Sirius B was by contact with an advanced civilization; he considered alternative possibilities, such as a very ancient, advanced, and lost civilization that was behind the sudden appearance of advanced civilization in both Egypt and Sumeria. He personally found the theory of alien contact more convincing, but he did not claim certainty about it.
However, some doubts have been raised about the reliability of Griaule and Dieterlein's work on which The Sirius Mystery is based, and alternative explanations have been proposed. The claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have been challenged. 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. Others, such as Marcel Griaule's daughter Genevieve Calame-Griaule and 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.
Carl Sagan
Astronomer Carl SaganCarl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
touched upon the issue in his book Broca's Brain
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science is a 1979 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Its chapters were originally articles published between 1974 and 1979 in various magazines, including Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, Physics Today, Playboy and Scientific American...
(1979), seeing problems in Temple's hypothesis. As an example, Sagan believes that because the Dogon seem to have no knowledge of another planet beyond Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
which has rings, that their knowledge is therefore more likely to have come from European, and not extraterrestrial, sources. This conjecture, however, has never been proven.
Ian Ridpath
In 1978, Astronomer Ian RidpathIan Ridpath
Ian William Ridpath is an English science writer and broadcaster made famous for his investigation and explanation of the Rendlesham Forest Incident of December 1980....
observed, in an article in the Skeptical Inquirer
Skeptical Inquirer
The Skeptical Inquirer is a bimonthly American magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry with the subtitle: The magazine for science and reason....
, "The whole Dogon legend of Sirius and its companions is riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally". Ridpath stated that while the information that the Dogon probably gained from Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the presumed original Dogon knowledge on the star is very far from the facts. Ridpath concluded that the information that resembles the facts about Sirius was probably ascertained by way of cultural contamination. More recent research suggests that the contaminator was Griaule himself.
James Oberg
Journalist and skeptic James ObergJames Oberg
James Edward Oberg is an American space journalist and historian, regarded as an expert on the Russian space program.-Biography:...
collected claims that have appeared concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book. According to Oberg, the Dogons' astronomical information resembles the knowledge and speculations of European astronomical knowledge of the late 1920s. The Dogon may have acquired their astronomical knowledge, including the information on Sirius, from European visitors before their mythology was recorded in the 1930s. Oberg also points out that the Dogon were not an isolated tribe, and thus it was not even necessary for outsiders to inform the Dogon about Sirius B. They could very well have acquired such knowledge abroad, passing it on to their tribe later. Sirius B was first observed in 1862, and had been predicted in 1844 on dynamic grounds. However, Oberg does concede that such assumptions of recent acquisition is "entirely circumstantial" and has no foundation in documented evidence.
Unproven claims
One unproven aspect of the reported Dogon knowledge of the Sirius system is the assertion that the Dogon knew of another star in the Sirius system, Emme Ya, or "larger than Sirius B but lighter and dim in magnitude". A dynamical study published in 1995, based on anomalous perturbations of Sirius B (suggestive of the star being gravitationally influenced by another body) concluded that the presence of a third star orbiting Sirius could not be ruled out. An apparent "third star" observed in the 1920s is now confirmed as a background object, something previously suggested by J.B. Holberg in 2007:"Benest and Duvent found that stable orbits with a period of up to six years exist around Sirius A. There are no stable orbits around the less massive Sirius B which exceed three years. Therefore, if Sirius C exists, it must orbit Sirius A. 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." The former study also concluded that while a triple system for Sirius could not be fully eliminated, the probability was low.
Temple's book and the debates that followed its release publicized the existence of the Dogon tribe among many New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
followers and proponents of ancient astronaut theories. Speculation about the Dogon on numerous websites is now mingled with fact, leading to wide misunderstanding among the public about Dogon mythology. Temple, however, has stated in the reprint of The Sirius Mystery (1999) that he in no way supports cults that have been inspired by his book.