The Dogon of Mali

What would the world be without mysteries? What would it be without stories, myths and legends? The world would have a void that can never be filled. It would be incomplete; forever missing something.

Mysteries and stories are a part of what give life to this Earth of ours. They give us identities, for the peoples of the world can each claim their own. It matters not some mysteries will never be proven to be true, and it matters even less many are mere works of fiction; because in an odd and ironic twist of fate, many of these mysteries give birth to what grows on to be fact.

What are we talking about here? We’re talking about those ancient tales that defy all logic and leave us wondering, ‘how?’ We’re talking about stories that speak truth, but leave us more in

doubt than we were before hearing them. Tales that, by all accounts, should not be true; and yet, they are.

Perhaps nothing exemplifies this so much as an ancient people who still walk the world. The Dogon of Mali in West Africa, like all other African cultures and traditions, have a wealth of myths and stories passed on from the genesis of their tribe all through to this day.

The Dogon of today still retain many of the gifts of knowledge their ancestors passed down to them, but none of these ancient gifts have grabbed and held on to the attention of the Western world so strongly like that of their astronomical lore.

The Sacred People

To someone looking in on the Dogon people from the outside world, they might seem like just one of many African tribes, but there is so much more to these people than that. Until recently, much of the world had remained ignorant of their existence because the Dogon have isolated themselves in the plateau and rocky region of the Bandiagara.

Just like their ancestors, the lives of the Dogon are still devoid of the amenities that are now a staple of the modern world. Electricity, road systems and plumbing remain unknown to the Dogon, but it would be fallacious to assume this has hindered them in anyway.

The way of life of the Dogon is not one of strife or hardship, no. They are a proud people with a proud tradition and heritage that have been maintained and unspoiled by colonists, hostile tribes and the modern world. Few other peoples can brag about strict adherence to culture and way of life like the Dogon can.

So many places in the land of the Dogon are sacred to them. Many of such places are even forbidden-particularly for outsiders-which is why visitors travel by foot or donkey and are often advised to take guides along with them should they come across sacred regions.

The People of Peace

Africa is no stranger to tribal wars and conflicts. Frictions between the infinite tribes calling Africa a home seem almost inevitable. Kinship is a very strong word to Africans. It holds so much meaning and recognizes dignity, which is why there is so much desire for dominance by one tribe over another, and war is mostly the medium used to achieve this; but not for the Dogon.

It is admirable how the Dogon have managed to thrive for so long with little recourse to war and bloodshed. It’s a feat which eludes many other African tribes. One can say it’s simply another measure of what makes these people unique. And this is not something peculiar to the people of present day Dogon because their history records them as a tribe that has always been nonviolent. The Dogon culture puts great emphasis on avoidance of contradictions and on consensus, and this has doubtless gone a long way in helping to maintain the peace they enjoy.

Much of what we know about the origins of the Dogon comes from oral tradition. We are told the ancestors of the Dogon made

Bandiagara a home around the 10th century. There were only four of these ancestors: Domno, Dyon, Arou and Ono. Before finding a home at Bandiagara, history says the Dogon migrated from the west bank of the Niger River around the 10th to 13th centuries. The people only ended up at the Bandiagara cliffs in the following centuries (14th or 15th).

They found a home here, but they also found a haven, for the matters of the outside world barely affected them. These cliffs protected them from war-charged tribes like the Islamic Peul who constantly tried to attack them.

It wasn’t until after the area was pacified by French colonialists in the year 1921 did the Dogon decide to venture to other parts of the land, but a great many of them yet remained where they were. The cliffs were sanctuary, and they have remained so ever since.

Astronomers or Seers?

Having a strong creed that preaches peace is one thing but that still isn’t what the Dogon are most known for. These people, since their tribe saw birth, have exhibited remarkably accurate knowledge on the solar system-the Sirius star system, in particular.

The Sirius is the brightest star in the sky but it is also a binary star, meaning it consist of two stars that orbit one another. Scientists dubbed this companion star ‘Sirius B’ when it was discovered in 1970 by a large telescope. This is where things start becoming intriguing.

The Dogon are thought to have descended from Egypt, and they already had extensive knowledge on solar systems since at least 3, 200 BC. Their astronomical lore encompassed the Sirius star system and planets like Saturn, to mention a few. That lore made mention of Sirius and its companion, which is visible to no human eye, and that’s an exact description of Sirius B is.

How is this possible though? How can an ancient people who had little access to even primitive technology possibly know anything about the infinite stars dotting the night sky? How could they have known something the rest of us only found out some decades ago? Have it at the back of your mind that the Dogon made this discovery in a period no less than 3000 years ago.

Could the ancestors of the Dogon have been astronomers with skill, intellect and talent well beyond their time, or did they have command over some mystic way of reading and interpreting the stars?

Neither, if we are to agree with history. There was a third factor involved. It’s because of that factor the Dogon were able to predict something that modern science was able to affirm merely less than a century ago. A brief look into the Dogon animist religion should give a better understanding of all this.

Fact or Fiction?

Animism has always been prevalent in Africa. The belief that everything natural-plants, animals, thunder and rocks-has innate spirits and can influence life is rampant among numerous tribes. This of course entails worship of deities, and for the Dogon, it’s primarily Amma, their creator god.

Much can be said about the many aspects of their religion but what we seek here is the myth of the Nommo and the Sirius B, which are also a very strong aspect of that religion. The Dogon have their own name for Sirius B, which is ‘Po Tolo.’

In the 1920s, four Dogon priests enlightened Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen, two French anthropologists, about a tiny and unusually dense star making orbits around the Sirius. This tiny star would later be known as Sirius B.

What makes this story so remarkable is that Sirius B could not have been seen prior to 1970 because that was when telescopes powerful enough to view it were developed. And yet, the Dogon knew. They knew long before any of us.

We reiterate the myth of the Nommo here again. The Nommo were a race of highly intelligent and superior beings who lived on a planet orbiting another star in the Sirius star system. Oral traditions of the Dogon describe the Nommo as amphibious beings that bore much resemblance to mermen and mermaids. These same beings appear in Acadian, Babylonian and Sumerian myths too.

Dogon mythos tells us that the Nommo came to Earth thousands of years ago in an ‘ark’ that spun as it descended, all the while making great noise and shooting wind all around it. These Nommo made contact with the Dogon and fed them knowledge of the Sirius B and other planets in our solar system. Jupiter and Saturn in particular was mentioned, because it was during this contact the Dogon were taught about the former’s moons and the latter’s rings.

This might all sound like basic knowledge to us now but remember, this ‘basic knowledge’ was only discovered after the advent of the telescope by Galileo; so the Dogon were essentially thousands of years ahead of everyone else on Earth when it came to knowledge on astronomy.

One can be quick to dismiss this myth as exactly that: a myth and nothing more, but evidence points to the contrary. We don’t need anyone to tell us about such evidence because it’s right up there in the sky. Sirius B still orbit’s Sirius as we speak,

and Saturn’s rings are still there, and the four moons above Jupiter have not gone anywhere.

So do we even call what the Dogon tell us about Sirius a myth at all? Isn’t it closer to fact than many of the western scientists’ claims of it being a fabrication? This has certainly led to scientists and scholars alike debating and exchanging criticisms of each other’s theories on the matter.

There are those who attempt to explain the myth of the Nommo as being false by claiming it was adulterated by contact with westerners in the early 1920s, but there are still those who beg to differ. Adams (1990, 60) was one such individual. He gives an account of the mystery surrounding the Dogon and the Sirius star system. He claims:

They knew of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, the spiral structure of the Milky Way, where our star system lies.

They claimed that billions of stars spiral in space like the circulation of blood in the human body…. Perhaps the most

remarkable facet of their knowledge is their knowing intricate detail of the Sirius star system, which presently can only be

detected with powerful telescopes. The Dogon knew of the white dwarf companion star of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. They

knew it’s approximate mass (“it is composed of ‘sagala’, an extremely heavy and dense metal such that all the earthly beings

combined cannot lift it”), it’s orbital period (50 years), and its axial rotation period (one year).

Regardless what we all believe, this fact remains: The Dogon have given us something to talk about and muse over for many years to come.

How credible their myth is matters little, because the beauty lies not in whether it’s true or not; it lies in how a heritage of a people has persevered for so long-from a time long before the

birth of many civilizations. The beauty lies in how we still marvel at this heritage up to this day.

The Dogon are a quiet secluded people, and though it was inadvertent, they have left their mark on the world by leaving us both in wonder, doubt and awe.

Author, Khalid Abdullahi