In Search of . . .
The Dark Star episode from the Ae13U Blue Planet YouTube channel.
In Search of . . . The Dark Star, is a 1979 episode of the classic
documentary series that features the Dogon, a small African tribe, and
explores the question how they discovered the location of a “dark star” unseen from
Earth with naked eye. Is this just a coincidence, evidence of lost knowledge
and technology, or proof that aliens once visited the planet Earth? For most Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, this was their introduction to the mystery of the Dogon.
The Dogon are an agricultural
people residing in the nations of Burkina Faso and Mali in Central Africa,
having emigrated from the west bank of the Niger River during the 10th
to 13th centuries. In approximately 1490, the Dogon were driven to
the Bandiagara cliffs region to avoid Mossi kingdom horsemen, displacing or
absorbing the original inhabitants. (“Kuba”).
What is extraordinary about the
Dogon is the claim that their oral traditions also include tales of an
invisible star and its orbit from which visitors, known as the nummo, came to share their
knowledge with them. Alien astronaut theorists have jumped on this claim as
proof of visitors from another planet.
A Dogon village elder
The Dogon use a digeridoo-type musical
instrument, recreating the “voice” of the star, for calling
together those who are learning the oral traditions from the elders. This
ritual has been going on for hundreds of years, perhaps back to the time of their
finding refuge in this region in the late 15th century. Astronomical
information, such as Saturn, only seen with a telescope, or Jupiter and several
of its moons, is relayed in the gathering. More mysterious, however, is the
tale of a sacred star invisible to the naked eye from where mysterious beings
came to share their knowledge with the Dogon. This tale reportedly goes back
hundreds of years to the time of their diaspora to the Bandiagara cliffs.
French anthropologists Marcel
Griaule and Germain Dieterlen first learned about the tale of the invisible
sacred star during their work with the Dogon in the 1930s and 1940s (“Sirius”).
The Dogan star, Sirius B, was later confirmed to exist in 1950 using an
advanced telescope, and right where the Dogon said it would be. The Dogon’s
sigui dance ritual takes place every 60 years — identical to the orbit of
Sirius B — and includes wide circling movements by the dancers [note: some
sources say this is a 50-year cycle].
Dogon Drawing of the Dark Star's Orbit Sirius B Orbit Computer Simulation
Images from the In Search of . . . episode, "The Dark Star" (1979)
Is this evidence of alien
visitation? Lost knowledge and technology? The Dogon originally fled from a
region controlled by Timbuktu in Mali, not far from the Niger River. A center
of trade and political power at the time the Dogon fled the area, one could
speculate that the Dogon’s oral traditions preserve lost African or Arabic
knowledge acquired at Timbuktu. Some European knowledge could also have been
mixed in over the years, and one cannot dismiss bad translations and cultural
misunderstandings.
The big mystery, however, regards
the origins of the sigui ritual which emulates the orbit of Sirius B and marks
when the star and Earth are closest to each other. How the Dogon could have
identified a star invisible to the naked eye is a mystery. It is quite possibly
a coincidence considering that the odds of a star being located in any direction we
point is pretty high.
Computer simulation of the orbit of Sirus B from the In Search of . .
. episode, “The Dark Star.”
Carl Sagan himself addressed the
question of the Dogon's dark star and their acquisition of knowledge. In his book Broca's Brain, Sagan claims that accurate conjecture
about planetary orbits, while uncommon, is not beyond the capabilities of
pre-modern technology civilizations. Further, Robert Burnham, who wrote Burnham's Celestial Handbook, claims Sirius
B can be seen on a clear night sky with a 10-inch reflecting telescope (“Sirius”).
This leaves open the possibility that Sirius B may have been
discovered by a civilization more advanced than the Dogon, but decidedly
Earth-bound, and one which had knowledge of telescopic lens. This, I think, is more
likely and more remarkable than a deus ex machina explanation of an alien
visitation.
Even so, this is a hypothesis,
not proof, and it’s a mystery whose answer is still worth going In Search of . . .
Works Cited
“Kuba.” Art
& Life in Africa. The University of Iowa,
