Conclusions:

"The thing about a myth, is not whether it is true, or even whether it should be true, but that it is truer than truth itself."
-- Thomas Keneally.

It is rather unfair and arbitrary to pit some Dogon folk knowledge, whatever its source, against a hunka hardware like the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer or Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph. It shows at the very least that to verify this innocent folk data, Western Man has to put some massively sophisticated instrumentation on a rocket and blast it into earth orbit. 1990s knowledge here shows Sirius B facts known in 1950 (nature of Sirius B, orbit, i) to be reasonably accurate, while the Sirius C numbers and Sirius B's period of rotation appear to be large over-estimates. This can be taken by sceptics as further support for the Amandingue-van Beek hypothesis.

However, the Dogon and Griaule are not badly aquitted. They may have got some numbers wrong, but their suggestions of structure appear to be essentially correct (disputed existence of Sirius C notwithstanding, while the scientific evidence seems to point to this as still quite plausible). More impressive are the Dogon's imaginative perspectives (and this is all Dogon, not Griaule). Into this category comes the concept of "sagala" -- white dwarf material, the "flaring" of Sirius C, the idea that Saturn looks like the Milky Way, or the "placentas" idea having a real astrophysical analogue in the ejecta between close stars. Some odd facts, such as the knowledge that Sirius B is spinning and discarding matter, for instance, data established long after 1950, are hard to explain. The mystery may thus be rephrased from "how did the Dogon know about all this in medaeval times?" to "how did Griaule and the Dogon know about all this in 1950?" My answer is, they made well-informed guesses which turned out to be coincidentally correct -- more correct than they may have believed themselves.

Most tantalising are the extra details about planets in the Sirius system. Now astronomers admit that planets are relatively common, this claim also has a reasonable chance of confirmation. Western Man is challenged to build even bigger and badder rockets. Karl Popper once made a statement about a "good theory," that it should make a number of predictions that are verifiable by observation; the Dogon material is still, at the cusp of the millennium, a "good theory" by this criterion.

It all goes to show how much mystery there is still about Sirius, one of our closest stellar neighbours -- let alone the infinite Universe, and how human empirical knowledge is still insignificant compared to all there is to be learned.

"At the rim of the science of man, he embarked upon a veritable journey into the realm of intercultural fiction." (van Beek). Even at the threshold of the new era, Griaule is still there at the very rim of astrophysics. It might be better to think of him as a science-fiction writer, and originator of the "paleovisit" plot idea behind the classic film by Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, 2001 - A Space Odyssey. In a very literal sense, Clarke was among those initially intrigued by the Sirius Mystery as presented by Temple et al. in the 1970s. Since then, the idea has been taken on by host of imitators, most recently, Luc Besson's stylish parody The 5th Element. Lets face it, Griaule's Dogon data is the ONLY serious REAL contender.

The coincidences are still a challenge for astronomy. Regardless of the ET issue, Sirius C must be confirmed, and the other bodies if possible. If this can be accomplished, then heavy listening in the radio spectrum should be carried out: they may be watching TV and thus have a UHF shell. Silence recorded by the latest equipment is another non-existence proof, to be sure, but would be another death knell of claims the Sirius system is home to another race of beings.

If you agree with this, please help by sending the following email to Hubble [email protected] , NASA [email protected] , Jodrell Bank [email protected] and SETI [email protected] .

Dear Sir/Madam,

I'm troubled by our lack of knowledge about Sirius. I'd be grateful if you used your state of the art equipment to establish whether Sirius C exists, and if so, check it for radio sources.

Best regards,

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Back to start

Brief History of Time: From The Big Bang to Black Holes
Stephen W. Hawking, Bantam, 1988

Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas
Marcel Griaule, OUP, reprint 1990

The Pale Fox
Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, Continuum Foundation, 1986

Broca's Brain
Carl Sagan, Random, 1980

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