Far more than any culture I’ve studied, the Dogon retain a clear sense of what their own myths and symbols mean, how those symbols and myths interrelate, and how they – the Dogon – came by their knowledge.

The Dogon priests explicitly attribute their cosmologic knowledge to teachers, as do the Buddhists, as do the Na-Khi, the Maori, and to some degree countless other cultures who assign their civilizing skills to godlike ancestor/teachers. As I’ve said, even the Egyptians believed that they had acquired their written language from gods.

I realize that, when it comes to reliability, some researchers consider the testimony of ancient cultures to be akin to the testimony of a four-year-old. But if a group of nursery school students were the only witnesses to the abduction of their teacher, and all independently reported that the perpetrator was a tall, thin, red-headed man with a beard, my contention is that the police should be out looking for a tall, thin, red-headed man with a beard.

Why in the world should be look elsewhere for a solution BEFORE we carefully explore the solution consistently put forth by the cultures themselves?

- Laird

The Dogon priests correctly understand that Barnard’s loop is a kind of bubble formed when stellar wind causes stellar matter to encircle. They understand that it is a birthplace of stars. They understand that it is calculated to eventually burst. If their belief in a relationship between Barnard’s Loop and the Sirius stars turns out to be wrong, I would be surprised simply based on what I see as their track record so far when it comes to correctly understanding creational processes. But I can’t categorically prove that their view is correct, and can’t positively contradict your view that it isn’t.

Right now there are a number of points of science that the Dogon affirm to be true, but modern science is not yet in a position to firmly validate or refute. These include descriptions of how a simple act of perception can transform the wavelike behavior of matter to particle-like behavior. Dogon descriptions of the descending components of matter are in general agreement with atomic theory, quantum theory and string theory, which themselves await reconciliation by our own science. So far, based on my experience, my money is on the Dogon.

- Laird

So they’ve got the shape right, the location right, the description right, the properties of the structure right, the description of how it is formed right, and characterize its overall appearance right.

What else do you require in the way of identification?

- Laird

This statement encapsulates why I think your reasoning, as you present it here, is flawed. Ask the question differently: if you didn’t know from modern astronomy that Sirius B existed, would the Isis/Nephthys relationship make you want to ask an astronomer to search for a dark companion to Sirius?

In fact, 2/3 of stars are in multiple star systems. Would that suggest to you that the ancients who spoke of stars in terms of gods with mates were therefore aware that stars usually come in multiples? Or could it just be a coincidence that they thought of gods in terms of what they knew about humans, who have mates, and that when we think of pairs, mating comes to mind?

I am also curious, is your research based on your reading of Griaule, Dieterlen, Snodgrass, et al., or have you done your own work among the Dogon? I am gleaning that it is the former, so forgive me if this next question is presumptuous… But couldn’t the deep connections between Buddhism, Judaism, and Egyptology and the Dogon cosmology have been introduced by Griaule and collaborators? Surely, Griaule was well-versed in these traditions. Could he have kept that compartmentalized, so that while gathering all this information from the Dogon, he never introduced his own knowledge into his subjects’ beliefs?

I would not be skeptical that ancient religions shared many themes, but as a former astronomer, I find the scientific claims very questionable. I also have been trained to be suspicious of patterns, because people are good at finding them where none existed.

Oh, and regarding an earlier comment, it is very unlikely that Sirius B was produced after a supernova. The energy involved in a supernova would require that the core of a star burn to iron, and the explosion would leave either a neutron star, black hole, or nothing at all.

Unless despite all that you’re still willing to assign the commonality of meaning in just this one lone case to coincidence – the ONLY reason the words “atanu/atenu” mean “deputies” is because of the characterization they have been given as “deputies of Sirius” in the Dogon cosmology. If the Egyptians have that reference, then – given the wealth of other likely correlations – they surely understood Sirius on the same terms as the Dogon. All of the other Dogon evidence supports this view.

Realize also that the term “atanu” comes as a part of the explanation of a Dogon tradition of placing large stones on a plateau to represent important stars in their cosmology – one that we can again tie directly to Egypt.

There’s very little “reading back” going on here. As is my primary intent, I’ve simply laid the Dogon values side by side, head-to-head with the Egyptian values and pointed out in as polite a way as I can that they offer a REALLY, REALLY close match.

- Laird

Anyway, here are a couple essays on linguistics giving an excellent explanation, with multiple examples, of why it is horribly misleading to attempt to find language relationships via matching apparently similar words.

Deriving Proto-World with tools you probably have at home.

How likely are chance resemblances between languages?

TL;DR: If you computer-generate completely random and unrelated “languages”, you can expect 10% or more of their vocabularity to match. If you compare any pair of real human languages known to be unrelated, you can expect to find 1000 or more apparent cognates by chance.

BTW, I think I’m still waiting on any cite for N. African Buddhism that’s more substantial than “Well, it could have happened.”

When it comes to Sirius, the Dogon share the same calendars as ancient Egypt, including one in which the first day of the year is tagged to the rising of Sirius. The Dogon associate their ancestor/teachers with Sirius – the Egyptian word for teacher is a homonym for their name for Sothis/Sirius. Griaule claims awareness on the part of the Dogon of at least two stars in the Sirius system, one of which is a bright sunlike star whose brightness masks a second dark dwarf star – Egyptian mythology associates Sirius with the star goddess Isis, who is said to have a sister Nephthys, hailed in one Egyptian hymn as “Mistress of the Night concealed by the light….” Some researchers see correlations between the Dogon Sigi festival, which is based on Sirius, and the Egyptian Sed festival. Much as the Dogon week of five days is half of the Egyptian 10-day week, the Sed festival recurs in a period that is half of the Dogon Sigi cycle. This cycle is the orbital period of the two Sirius stars. Within the context of other Dogon/Egyptian word correlations, the Dogon word Sigi presents a good correlate to the Egyptian “skhai”, which means “to celebrate a festival.”

The Dogon Sirius references are given within the context of a much larger, much more complex cosmology. The implication is that, if the Egyptians can be shown to have virtually all of the same cosmological elements and words, it’s fair to claim that they shared the same cosmology. As an analogy, if we can show that an unknown animal had a tail, two ears, four legs, a wet nose, was friendly to man, and it barked, then we are on comfortable ground to conclude that it was probably a dog.

- Laird

- Laird

I am grateful for the research Mr. Scranton is doing. Given its complexity and innovative forms of inquiry, errors and mistakes are bound to occur. But I am more than willing to follow him on his journey of discovery into Dogon cosmology. And I thank Avi Solomon and boingboing for publishing this interview that sheds a little more light on this path.

Think of comparative cosmology this way: Consider that I’m simply testing whether I can use the words, symbols, myths and concepts of the Dogon to make predictions about what I’ll find in Egyptian cosmology. And so, one by one I go through the Egyptian references: Creation from water … OK check! A hidden god whose name can also mean to grasp or hold firm, pronounced like Amma….OK check! A jackal who symbolizes disorder in another “World”… OK check! A canid who serves as judge…Check!

Eventually, after checking off a whole litany of symbols, words, concepts, deities and so on, I come to Sirius. The Dogon describe two Sirius stars. I know that in Egypt, Sothis/Isis is Sirius. Is there any evidence in Egypt of a second Sirius star? Ah, yes, there’s second stellar goddess named Nephthys who is defined as Sothis/Isis’s sister…OK check.

Again, have I proved that Nephtyhs represents Sirius B? No. Within the context of the many other correlations that seemingly coexist is the existence of Nephthys as sister of Sothis/Isis consistent with the Dogon notion of two stars? Yes!

- Laird

this guy is featured heavily in the ‘documentary’ series “The Pyramid Code”, currently available via netflix streaming.. I am a little embarassed to admit that I watched the whole thing, as its definitely a steaming pile of sorts.

also, and to me more interestingly, the other night I stumbled upon this video of a free climber ascending a cliff above a dogon village – http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=isojdv36z0 – some of the ‘granary’ structures are shown and mentioned, as well as the 800-yr-old ruins of a lost ‘pygmy’ culture, situated 200 meters up the cliff face!

For example, the Japanese word for name is “namae”. Just look at that! It’s obvious that “name” and “namae” are just variations on the same word, so Japanese must be descended from ancient Anglo-Saxons who somehow wandered to Asia, or perhaps the entire English language and culture was derived from ideas imparted by a secret society of Shinto priests living underground in Yorkshire. (You never heard of them because they’re secret, see?)

I knew a guy who was quite sure that Japanese must be related to his native Hungarian, IIRC because they both had a lot of word forms with “shta” endings.

TheDonna, your link was apparently suppressed by the Great Academic Conspiracy. Would you mind reposting it? That sounds interesting. I was aware of the Graeco-Buddhist history of Gandhara, now northern Afghanistan, but not of Buddhism making its way to the Middle East or North Africa.

A last thought: I’m more likely to accept someone from some academic specialty as an authority on software development than the other way around.

The Dogon priests count it among the very most important and significant references in their cosmology. If the Dogon tradition of placing stones on plateaus to represent stars correlates to the Egyptian tradition – as suggested by Robert Bauval’s OCT theory – then the Egyptians considered the Barnard’s Loop reference to be important enough to merit the construction of the three large pyramids at Giza.

Likewise, in the Kaballah tradition, the concept of the Chariot is considered to be of such importance that the insiders who eventually learn about it are explicitly forbidden to discuss it with anyone of a lesser initiated status than themselves.

Now, on even the off chance that these kinds of references could reflect real astronomic knowledge, why in the world would a serious-minded, dedicated astronomer consciously choose NOT to invest a little time exploring that possibility?

As the Steely Dan song goes – and no personal slur meant to you – “The things that pass for knowledge I don’t understand.”

- Laird

http://www.shrawasti.com/historical-interaction-between-the-islamic-and-buddhist-cultures

- Laird

- Laird

- Laird

The way that my argument is structured:

The validity of Griaule’s Dogon cosmological form is affirmed by Snodgrass Buddhist cosmology, as are the symbolic shapes and meanings evoked by the cosmology AND the sequence in which they are evoked.

Although the Dogon words are given in a different language than the Buddhist, the concepts and their paired meanings affirm each other. Meanwhile, the Egyptian words affirm a second time that the meanings Griaule presents belong properly with the pronunciations and drawn shapes he assigns them to. These with some tolerance for differences in expression allowed – for example,where the Buddhists pair the concepts of “essence” and “substance”, the Dogon pair “mass” and “matter”. Where the Egyptians pair “good” and “evil”, the Dogon pair “truth” and “error”.

In essence, we have three separate sources in very substantial agreement with one another about what can only be called a shared system of cosmology.

- Laird

My contention is that the evidence is enough to suggest a correspondence between the deities. Now, would anyone seriously argue that there is no reasonable relationship between the names?

- Laird

- Laird

- Laird

“In India, Muslim invasions eliminated the last strongholds of long-declining Buddhism, including…” with the part before your ellipses no-where nearby.

* To our knowledge, there was no significant ancient “Buddhist” settlement in North Africa (some merchants? Probably. A small community in some trading centre? could be, but we don’t have any proof of it. Bigger settlements? could be, but it is more difficult and we don’t have absolutely any clue about this kind of settlement)

* No one knows for sure the origin of the Dogon people

* … so, when you read something like “In fact, the Dogon are known to have migrated to their current location from a region of North Africa that was a known home to ancient Buddhism”, you have a clear idea of the kind of guy you’re dealing with.

And, of course, as has been pointed out, the “linguistic” arguments are nonexistent.

The Dogon are a pretty interesting bunch of people. When I was (much) younger, I was amazed by a short film featuring a Dogon hunter shooting in the bush using a Dogon-made flintlock with Dogon-made gunpowder. It’s a pity to see such a culture treated in this dismal way…

No one disputes the correlations that traditional researchers have made between deities of various ancient cultures based on the role a god or goddess plays in a myth, the specific acts they are credited with, the icons that attend the god or goddess, the star they are symbolically paired with, or the familial relationship they share with other gods and goddesses within the same mythology.

If it is also true that the two compared deities share markedly simlar names, no serious researcher – other than a linguist – is going to deny the likelihood that the words also relate within the context of the cosmology. UNLESS you were willing to make the (in my mind) questionable claim that all the other elements relate, but the similarity of the names must be mere coincidence.

Now consider that in cases such as Amma/Amen, it is well documented that the words are explicitly correlated to one another in African languages other than the Dogon, and so are explicitly correlated by speakers of the language.

Also, it is simply NOT true – except perhaps in the very narrow view of a strict linguist, perhaps -that the only evidence that can be legitimately brought to bear when comparing two words is linguistic evidence. My experience has been that in any other context or discipline, four or five points of correlated evidence – such as I provide for these Dogon and Egyptian words of cosmology – supports the fair contention of a relationship.

- Laird

- Laird