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From: wayne@csri.toronto.edu (Wayne Hayes)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space
Subject: Re: Catch-A-Planet (was:Re:Curiosity)
Message-ID: <1989Jul22.113648.13792@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 22 Jul 89 15:36:48 GMT
References: <7092@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <790@censor.UUCP> <2729@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu> <479@tahoma.UUCP>
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
Lines: 52

In article <479@tahoma.UUCP> jpg3196@tahoma.UUCP (James P. Galasyn) writes:
> 
> Off-the-wall observation here, which probably belongs in
> talk.religion.newage:  the Dogon tribe, among others in Africa, have rather
> precise astronomical information on the period of Sirius B, the white
> dwarf companion of Sirius.  It can't be seen by the naked eye (by a long
> shot), yet this knowledge is thousands of years old.

Read _Broca's_Brain_, by Carl Sagan. He debunks this in chapter 6,
"White Dwafs and Little Green Men".

	The story goes basically like this. Sirius B was discovered in 1862
by Alvan Clark. At the time, white dwarfs hadn't been discovered. It was
realized that Sirius B was quite an extraordinary star, so much so that the
story make headlines in regular newspapers, so the average guy-on-the-street
knew about Sirius B.

	Then 70 years later, in the 1930's, Marcel Griaule, an anthropologist
with a knowledge of astronomy, discovers the Dogon's incredible myth about
Sirius B. He also discovers that they know about Jupiter's 4 moons and
Saturn's rings. It appears the Dogon have knowledge that could only have
come from extra-terrestrials. However there was 70 years between the
discovery of Sirius B and Griaule's account of their legends. It is not
inconceivable that the Dogon had had contact with other Westerners who
told them of Sirius B, and then subsequently incorperated this story
into their myths.

	The important thing to note is that the Dogon are not as dogmatic
about their myths as most western religions are, so they are not above
changing their myths which are, by the way, passed on completely by
word of mouth. Sagan cites another tribe in an adjacent valley that
suffered from a rare disease called Kuru, a virus. In 1957, a physician
studying this disease showed the tribespeople what the virus looked like
though a microscope. A few months later, a different phyisician (not
knowing that they had observed the virus through a microscope) asked
them to describe what they know about the disease. Part of the description
told of an "invisible evil", accompanied by a diagram in the sand that
looked very similar to the Kuru virus. The tribespeople maintained that
this was part of their legend, and only later did the physicians realize
that the myth had been changed to account for the knew information of
the first physician. (They probably weren't trying to dupe us, that's
just the way their verbal legends grow.)

	Anyway, there is of course no firm evidence that the Dogon
had been visited by Westerners before Griaule, but the popularity of
Sirius B and the fact that there WERE Westerners exploring that area
before Griaule seems a much more likely explanation that Extra-
terrestrial visitors. Read Broca's Brain for more info.
-- 
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Wayne Hayes	INTERNET: wayne@csri.toronto.edu	CompuServe: 72401,3525