Who Are The Dogon And Why Are They Interesting?

The Dogon are an African tribe living within the borders of present-day Mali. The French anthropologist Marcel Griaule spent time with them in the 1930s and reported that their mythology was unusual, telling of a race of extra-terrestrials, hailing from the Sirius star system, who once visited Earth and gave a helpful nudge to human civilisation. He claimed that the tribe had an advanced knowledge of astronomy, some of the details of which, for example that Sirius had companion stars – known as Sirius B & C, had not yet been confirmed by Western science.

When astronomers confirmed that Sirius B existed, and that it was a white dwarf, it chimed perfectly with reported Dogon lore which described Sirius B as small, heavy and not easily visible. This spawned a New Age belief that modern human civilisation had been created with help from extra-terrestrials.

In recent years, however, the work of Griaule has been called into question. Some have alleged that the Dogon had nothing like the knowledge of astronomy that Griaule claimed, and that he himself may have asked leading questions in such a way as to elicit the replies he desired.