A little side entertainment for you fellas.
The Dogon and Sirius
The Dogon and Sirius
The Dogon are an ethnic group located mainly in the administrative districts of Bandiagara and Douentza in Mali, West Africa. Dogon religion is defined primarily through the worship of the ancestors and the spirits... They were called the 'Nommo.'
The Dogon are famous for their astronomical knowledge taught through oral tradition... referencing the star system, Sirius.
As the story goes... in the late 1930s, four Dogon priests shared their most important secret tradition with two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen after they had spent an apprenticeship of fifteen years living with the tribe. These were secret myths about the star Sirius, which is 8.6 light years from the Earth.
The Dogon priests said that Sirius had a companion star that was invisible to the human eye.
As the story goes... in the late 1930s, four Dogon priests shared their most important secret tradition with two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen after they had spent an apprenticeship of fifteen years living with the tribe. These were secret myths about the star Sirius, which is 8.6 light years from the Earth.
The Dogon priests said that Sirius had a companion star that was invisible to the human eye.
They also stated that the star moved in a 50-year elliptical orbit around Sirius, that it was small and incredibly heavy, and that it rotated on its axis. The Dogons calendar is quite non-traditional in that its fifty year cycle is based neither on the Earth's rotation around the Sun (as is our Julian calendar) nor the cycles of the Moon (a lunar calendar).
Instead, the Dogon culture centers around the rotation cycle Sirius B which encircles the primary star Sirius A every 49.9 - or 50 years...
Since 1844, astronomers had suspected that Sirius A had a companion star. This was in part determined when it was observed that the path of the star wobbled. In 1862 Alvan Clark discovered the second star making Sirius a binary star system (two stars).
The Dogon also claimed that a third star Emme Ya - sorghum female - exists in the Sirius system.
It is described by the Dogan as,
"the seat of the female souls of living or future beings."