''The Sirius Mystery'' is a book written by Robert K. G. Temple (born Robert Kyle Grenville Temple in 1945) supporting the
pseudoscientific[Extract of page 133]
/ref> ancient astronauts hypothesis that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited the Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. The book was first published by St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, in the Equitable Building. St. Martin's Press is considered one of the largest English-language publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under si ...
in 1976. Its second, 1998, edition is called ''The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago''.
Overview
The book presents the hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
that the Dogon people of Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mal ...
, in West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
, preserve a tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Alpha CM ...
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 (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the ...
s of Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, the mythology of Greek civilization, and the Epic of Gilgamesh
The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with ...
, among other things. Temple's theory is heavily based on his interpretation of the work of ethnographers
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. A substantial bulk of ''The Sirius Mystery'' consists of comparative linguistic and mythological scholarship, pointing out resemblances among Dogon, Yoruba, Egyptian and Sumerian 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 white dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
companion star of Sirius A
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Alpha CMa ...
, invisible to the naked eye. Sirius B was first observed in 1862, and had been predicted in 1844 on dynamic
Dynamics (from Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power") or dynamic may refer to:
Physics and engineering
* Dynamics (mechanics)
** Aerodynamics, the study of the motion of air
** Analytical dyna ...
grounds. Temple considers alternative possibilities other than alien contact, such as a very ancient, advanced, and lost civilization that was behind the sudden appearance of advanced civilization in both Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
and Sumer. Temple does not argue that contact with an advanced civilization is the only way that the Dogon could have obtained what he understood to be accurate information on Sirius B, but he indicates that he personally finds the theory of alien contact more convincing.
However, doubts have been raised about the reliability of Griaule and Dieterlen's work on which ''The Sirius Mystery'' is based, and alternative explanations have been proposed. Noah Brosch
Noah Brosch (born 1948) is an Israeli astronomer, astrophysicist and space researcher.
Biography
Noah Brosch was born in Bucharest (Romania) in 1948 and immigrated with his family to Israel in 1963.
Brosch studied at Tel Aviv University (BSc ...
explained in his book ''Sirius Matters'' that cultural transfer could have taken place between 19th century French astronomers and Dogon tribe members during the observations of the solar eclipse on 16 April 1893. The expedition, led by Henri Deslandres
Henri Alexandre Deslandres (24 July 1853 – 15 January 1948) was a French astronomer, director of the Meudon and Paris Observatories, who carried out intensive studies on the behaviour of the atmosphere of the Sun.
Biography
Deslandres' un ...
, stayed in the field for five weeks, and it is reasonable that during this time many contacts with the locals took place, and that relatively modern astronomical knowledge was then transferred. The claims about the Dogons' astronomical knowledge have also 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 Geneviève Calame-Griaule and an anthropologist, Luc de Heusch
Luc de Heusch (7 May 1927 – 7 August 2012) was a Belgian filmmaker, writer, and anthropologist, professor emeritus at the Free University of Brussels. His 1967 film '' Thursday We Shall Sing Like Sunday'' was entered into the 5th Moscow Inte ...
, came to criticize Van Beek's dismissal as "political" and riddled with "unchecked speculation", demonstrating a general ignorance of Dogon esoteric tradition.
Reviews of claims
Ian Ridpath
In 1978, astronomer Ian Ridpath
Ian William Ridpath (born 1 May 1947, in Ilford, Essex) is an English science writer and broadcaster best known as a popularizer of astronomy and a biographer of constellation history. As a UFO sceptic, he investigated and explained the Rendl ...
observes, in an article in the ''Skeptical Inquirer
''Skeptical Inquirer'' is a bimonthly American general-audience magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) with the subtitle: ''The Magazine for Science and Reason''.
Mission statement and goals
Daniel Loxton, writing in 2 ...
'', "The whole Dogon legend of Sirius and its companions are riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally." Ridpath states that while the information that the Dogon probably gained from Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the presumed original Dogon knowledge of the star is very far from the facts. Ridpath concludes that any 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.
Carl Sagan
Astronomer Carl Sagan 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, their knowledge is therefore more likely to have come from European, and not extraterrestrial, sources.
James Oberg
Journalist and skeptic James Oberg collected claims concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book ''UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries''. According to Oberg, the Dogons' astronomical information resembled the knowledge and speculations of late 1920s Europe, suggesting that the Dogon were influenced by European visitors before their mythology was recorded in the 1930s. Oberg also says that the Dogon were not an isolated tribe and that a member might have acquired knowledge about Sirius B while abroad and later passed it on to the tribe. Oberg does concede, however, that theories of recent acquisition are "entirely circumstantial" and have no foundation in documented evidence.
Jason Colavito
The skeptic Jason Colavito
Jason Colavito (born 1981) is an American author and independent scholar specializing in the study of fringe theories particularly around ancient history and extraterrestrials. Colavito has written a number of books, including ''The Cult of Alien ...
counts ''The Sirius Mystery'' among the body of works in a tradition of ancient astronaut ideas that was ultimately inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
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 Holberg in 2007:
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 is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...
followers and proponents of ancient astronaut
Ancient astronauts (or ancient aliens) refers to a pseudoscientific hypothesis which holds that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this ...
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 what he refers to as "sinister cults" that have been inspired by his book.
He also used the second edition of his book to complain about what he said was "the extreme and virulent hostility towards me by certain security agencies, most notably the American ones."
See also
*List of alleged extraterrestrial beings
This is a list of alleged extraterrestrial beings that have been reported in close encounters, claimed or speculated to be associated with "Unidentified flying objects" (UFOs) (not to be confused with the meaning of the term 'alien species' in the ...
* Murry Hope
*Nommo
The Nommo or Nummo are primordial ancestral spirits in Dogon religion and cosmogony (sometimes referred to as demi deities) venerated by the Dogon people of Mali. The word Nommos is derived from a Dogon word meaning "to make one drink." Nommos ...
*Pseudoarchaeology
Pseudoarchaeology—also known as alternative archaeology, fringe archaeology, fantastic archaeology, cult archaeology, and spooky archaeology—is the interpretation of the past from outside the archaeological science community, which rejects ...
References
External links
''The Sirius Mystery: how do the Dogon people of Mali know about Sirius B?''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sirius Mystery
1976 non-fiction books
American non-fiction books
Ancient astronaut speculation
Books about extraterrestrial life
Books about Dogon religion
Books by Robert K. G. Temple
Pseudohistory
St. Martin's Press books