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explores the mystery of the Dogon people of West Africa, who possessed detailed, ancient astronomical knowledge of the star Sirius B long before modern scientists discovered it.
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00:00This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
00:15The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
00:30These dances, these masks, these strange rituals have meaning.
00:47They describe precisely the relationship between a remote African tribe and the heavens.
00:53This tribe believes all life comes from a distant dark star, invisible to the naked eye.
01:03Recently, modern science was able to find this star and confirm its existence.
01:09Now we must ask, how did a primitive people, lacking instruments of any kind, discover a dark star hidden deep in space?
01:23In Central Africa, among fortress-like cliffs on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, live a people called the Dogon.
01:37A thousand years ago, fleeing from warring tribes, the Dogon found refuge here.
01:42The Dogon have endured and preserved mysterious ancient knowledge.
01:48Knowledge of an invisible star and its movements through the heavens.
01:53The hum of the bull roar is believed to be the voice of the sacred star.
02:11It calls initiates to a ceremony high in the cliffs.
02:23Dating back to a time when the Western world was locked in the Dark Ages, this ritual has taken place year after year.
02:36During the ceremony, the full spectrum of Dogon knowledge is revealed and passes from generation to generation.
02:43A circle within a circle depicts Saturn and its rings, which can only be seen with a telescope.
03:00A large circle and four satellites.
03:16The planet Jupiter and its moons.
03:19Most remarkable is this symbol.
03:28It represents the orbit of the Dogon star, a phenomenon deep in stellar space.
03:35Yet, no such orbiting star is visible from the Earth.
03:39It was not until this century that Western astronomers began to suspect its existence.
03:47A desert tribe called the Dogon, isolated in the African wilderness, may have identified a star invisible to the unaided eye.
03:55How is this possible?
03:56How could the Dogon possess this sophisticated astronomical information?
04:01Approximately 200,000 Dogon live in 300 villages scattered through their land.
04:14Throughout most of Africa, the simple melodies of the shepherds' flutes reflect the unchanging pattern of village life.
04:21On the surface, there is little to separate the Dogon from countless other tribes.
04:35What makes the Dogon different is a unique social harmony maintained by strong tradition.
04:43Among these people, murder, theft, and suicide is all but unknown.
04:50Greed is rare.
04:51Disputes are settled by debate in open forum.
04:58A goat has broken down a neighbor's wall and damaged his crops.
05:03The farmer demands repayment.
05:06The goat's owner insists it is the farmer's fault.
05:09He should have built a better wall.
05:13The elders decide that indeed the wall should be stronger.
05:17That both men should rebuild it and replant the crop.
05:21Millet beer marks the settlement.
05:36The Dogon believe in a perfectly ordered existence.
05:39They believe they are a part of something much greater than themselves.
05:44That each task, however menial, reaffirms their integral connection with the rhythm of the universe.
05:50In myths and symbols, the Dogon link the lowly with the lofty, the known with the unknown.
05:58All human activity is inscribed from the origin of man to the mystery of death.
06:04The spinning and weaving of cotton describes the dogon myth of creation.
06:10Each strand by itself is of little importance, but united by a guiding intelligence, they become an ordered fabric.
06:21Planting, harvesting, the winnowing of grain from chaff, each act of Dogon life has a practical and a spiritual value.
06:42The study of the dogon has lured men like Dr. Hans Guggenheim, an anthropologist from Harvard University.
06:54He has probed the relationship between the Dogon and their mysterious dark star.
06:59In order to discover this mystery, the mystery of Dogon knowledge about the stars, we have to begin by looking at the inside of the granary.
07:13Because the Dogon link in their knowledge the science of growing grain and the understanding of the stars.
07:21All ancient civilizations have needed knowledge of the heavens for the growing of grain.
07:33Just as ancient astronomers studied the positions of the sun, moon, and stars,
07:39Amandingi, the elder, climbs to a place among the rocks to observe the sun as it moves along a heelstone.
07:46He will determine the exact time when his people must sow the seed that will ensure their survival.
08:02This land is normally a desert.
08:05The rainy season is short.
08:08Planting must begin at precisely the right moment.
08:11The harvest which follows must last through the harsh months of drought.
08:19Life or death of the tribe depends on the accuracy of observation by men like Amandingi, the Dogon astronomer.
08:29As Amandingi studies the heavens, is it possible that he can reach beyond the visible universe?
08:36Is it possible that he can sense phenomena deep in space?
08:41The Hogan, the high priest of Eru, is the chief of Dogon religious knowledge.
08:54Selected more than 30 years ago by signs and prophecies, he lives a prisoner in a small temple compound.
09:01The Hogan is adored and provided for by his people, but cannot be touched by man or woman.
09:13He is the living repository of all that is known.
09:16His isolation from worldly needs and worldly concerns ensures that the sacred knowledge he keeps will remain pure.
09:24Should the Hogan be contaminated by human contact, he must be killed.
09:36Away from the clamor of village life, in caves and rock shelters, the teachings of the Hogan are renewed.
09:42Tribal legend tells us that beings called Numo descended from the sacred star and appeared before the Dogon ancestors.
09:59The Dogon were entrusted by the Numo with 366 symbols given without meaning.
10:05The Dogon were charged with interpreting them and preserving the information for future generations.
10:14The symbols reveal an astonishing scope of astronomical knowledge.
10:20An infinite number of stars and spiraling worlds.
10:23After more than five years among the Dogon people, Dr. Guggenheim has gradually gained the confidence of the Dogon elders
10:37and acceptance into the inner circle of secret knowledge.
10:42The Dogon belief, the universe was born in a vast explosion and as it opened up, everything that we know about
11:00and everything that the Dogon know about in the world came pouring out and nothing was left except a shell.
11:08This empty shell became the star that they called the Pontolo, and that we call Sirius B.
11:19In 1950, astronomers confirmed the existence of the Dogon star.
11:24At the United States Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C.,
11:36chief astronomer Dr. Irving Lindenblad devoted years to the search for the dark star.
11:41The Sirius system is a very interesting challenge observationally
11:45because it is very difficult to observe a star ten seconds from such a bright object as Sirius A.
12:00After the years of effort, Dr. Lindenblad finally succeeded in taking this photograph of Sirius B and its giant companion.
12:08The Dogon possess even more startling information about the star they hold sacred.
12:18They say that when it gave forth all its energy, it collapsed in upon itself,
12:22becoming incredibly dense and so heavy that all the earthly beings combined cannot lift it.
12:29The San Fernando Observatory, Sylmar, California.
12:37Dr. Gary Chapman is an astronomer specializing in the physical characteristics of stars.
12:44By splitting the light collected from a distant star into colored bands,
12:49its physical characteristics can be analyzed.
12:52The Sirius B is fairly normal in the surface layers,
12:54but we do rely on the calculations to tell us that the interior is essentially out of nuclear fuel.
13:01It's a dead star.
13:02We know from modern calculations that it has a very, very high density,
13:06has a density about five million times that of water,
13:11and if you were to be on the surface of Sirius B right now,
13:14you'd be crushed very, very flat
13:15because the surface gravity is about a hundred million times that of the Earth.
13:20The symbol is explained.
13:29The knowledge preserved in rituals through the centuries has been confirmed.
13:35Beyond the Dogon knowledge of the dark star,
13:37the symbols reveal more information about the celestial universe.
13:41They correctly place the Earth and our solar system within the Milky Way
13:46and state correctly that the massive cluster of stars
13:50is far more distant than the planets.
13:54The understanding of astronomical movements
13:56led the Dogon to investigate the human anatomy.
14:00They discovered the circulation of blood in the body
14:03long before it was discovered by the English physician William Harvey
14:07in the 17th century.
14:08These symbols and the knowledge they hold
14:12are the legacy of the mysterious Pneumos,
14:15the messengers from the dark star.
14:20Many cultures claim their knowledge was given them
14:22by god-like beings descended from the heavens,
14:25but the Dogons insist their gods descended from one star in particular,
14:29which they're able to identify and describe in detail.
14:33Does other evidence exist of this encounter between gods and men?
14:38In 1937, French anthropologists shot this rare film of the Dogon.
14:46They found the people in a frenzy of preparation for a huge ceremony.
14:56The scientists were told the funeral of an important man would soon take place.
15:01But all this was an elaborate deception designed to protect their secret knowledge.
15:18The anthropologists counted themselves fortunate
15:21to have the opportunity to observe the making of ritual masks
15:25representing the panoply of Dogon spirits.
15:30It would be years before the scientists would understand their true meaning.
15:34It would be years after men areeras of one sound King
15:42...
15:43...
15:44...
15:45...
15:55...
15:55the giant ritual which the anthropologist witnessed was not a funeral at all it was the
16:09ciggy occurring every 60 years the ciggy is the most important ceremony in dogon life
16:16the ciggy is an event relating directly to the sacred star the ciggy marks the completion of an
16:23orbit the time when earth the giant sirius and the sacred star are directly aligned the moment
16:31when the dogon and their star are closest for western science to determine the orbit of the
16:39dogon star required calculations based on decades of astronomical observations minute shifts in the
16:47position of the giant sirius led astronomers to suspect the gravitational influence of an unseen
16:53companion when computer studies of the data were complete they verified that a small star orbited
17:00sirius every 60 years exactly as the dogon claimed the interesting thing is that in their vision of
17:10the stellar universe they arrived at the conclusion that it was the smallest invisible star that was at
17:19the center of the universe that moved the universe and that held serious city to law in place and
17:27determined its cause in an elliptical way which they have painted and graphed on the the walls of their caves
17:39in ellipse which has been borne out by western observations
17:46more than four decades have passed since the last ciggy only the oldest among the dogon recall it the greatest experience of their lives
17:58it is from the citadel shrine of yuga dugaru that the order to commence the next ciggy will come
18:07here live the only men who claim they have actually seen the alignment between the earth and the distant star
18:15elders of a secret society they are the venerated guardians of the shrine where they say a place in the cliff begins to glow when it is time for the ciggy ritual
18:29what mysteries inspire these people to devote their lives to the keeping of a shrine to the knotting of a rope measuring the time until a ceremony they will not live to see
18:41in sanctuaries hidden among the cliffs there is evidence of the antiquity of the ciggy ritual
18:48the mask called na dates from an early observation of the dark star
18:53it is believed by scientists to be more than 300 years old
18:58masks for future rituals will be modeled on this example
19:02so what conclusion does one come to from the dogon knowledge of the star sirius
19:09i feel there are one of three possibilities
19:11a that they have supernatural knowledge or extrasensory perception
19:15b perhaps they've been visited by creatures from outer space
19:20or c that the whole thing is coincidence
19:22and i must say as a professional astronomer i strongly side with item c that it's coincidence
19:28how they managed to calculate this we don't know it is a mystery that we have been unable to solve
19:36and up to now and that the dogon are not going to tell us
19:43the average lifespan among the dogon is 38 years the ciggy ritual is held every 60 years
20:03yet every dogon youth learns the complicated movements of the dance hoping he might someday participate in the ceremony
20:12each hopes that he will be the one to wear the grand mask
20:27the grand mask
20:30the symbol of the sacred star
20:32turning in endless orbit around the giant sirius
20:37akhi
20:42ala
20:45ala
20:55ala
20:58Today, the modern world surrounds the Dogon.
21:18Their children will attend schools.
21:20Roads will connect them to major cities.
21:23Western goods and technology will soon be commonplace.
21:26As they gain new knowledge, will they lose this ancient wisdom?
21:32Can they travel into the future guided by tradition and social harmony?
21:39Will they retain the guiding wisdom of the Dark Star?
21:47Coming up next, 20th Century with Mike Wallace reports on gang violence in America.
21:52Then, Weapons at War takes you aboard for a history of aircraft carriers.
21:57And log on at Veterans.com, a new website brought to you by the History Channel.
22:02Veterans.com, a place where veterans, their families, and others can connect, share stories,
22:07and pass on the legacies of all American veterans.
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