Dogon Dwelling – Africa

By: Subharanjan Gupta

May 28 2012

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In the early 20th Century two French anthropologists named Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen spent a good deal of time living with the  Dogon in order to study their ways. In 1930, after they had been living with the tribe for some 15 years, four Dogon Priests decided that it was time to take the Frenchmen into their confidence and invited the men to share in the tribes most important and secret tradition. The tale was the secret Dogon creation myths about their sacred star which they named as Po-Tolo. The star to which they were referring is Sirius which located some 8.6 light years from earth. Sirius is also the brightest star in the night sky. The Dogon told the Anthropologists that Sirius was the home of the Gods who had made them who they are – some 8,000 years ago. They told them that Sirius is the smallest and heaviest thing there is and that it was white in color. They said that it had a companion star, invisible to the human eye but that it moves around Sirius in an elliptical orbit that took 50 years. They said Sirius was incredibly heavy and that it rotated on its axis and they further describe it as having a circle of reddish rays around it that is ‘like a spot spreading but staying still’. Dogon oral traditions also quite adamantly state that they have known for thousands of years that Jupiter had moons and Saturn had rings around it.