I love to tell the story around here of the time I went to visit the Hopi Reservation out in Arizona. Sweetie and I were talking to a man older than we were which made him an elder to us. He told us the story of the time the White man came to their mesa and wanted take samples of some of their artifacts in order to tell them how old they were.
I guess he felt I could sympathize when he said with exasperation; we know how old they are.
We're a people black as is your night
Born to spread Amma's eternal light
Which since time began
Has been to bring truth to every man
Our ancestors have since long ago
Passed their wisdom down so we to know
For here lies the key
That will help unfold the mistery
A seed's a star
A seed's a star's a seed
A star's a seed
A star's a seed's a star
More lyrics: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/stevie+wonder/#share
Stevie was talking about the Dogon people.
The culture of the Dogon tribe in West Africa centers around a star in our gallery. Sirius A is a big, bright star, has two and a half times the mass of our sun. Sirius, or actually its companion star, Sirius B. Sirius B has ninety-five per cent of the mass of our sun The Sirius Star is in the Canis Major Constellation. Sirius is visible with the naked eye, its companion is not. Now what is really fascinating about this is how these people knew about this, after all they have no telescopes. Sirius B wasn’t even visible with telescopes until 1862, or photographed until 1970. Dogon astronomical lore is dated back to 3200 B.C.
According to the Dogon legend the tribe was visited by a race of people called the Nommos, which come from the Sirius system. The Nommos resembled ugly amphibious beings. It is believed that the Nommos gave the Dogon tribe knowledge about their solar system. For instance: Jupiter has four major moons, Saturn has rings, and the plants revolve around the sun, and not vice versa. These facts weren’t known until Galileo invented the telescope.
Snip
Carl Sagan believes that our modern knowledge of the Dogon tribe came from westerners or Europeans, who discussed astronomy with the tribes’ priests. Sagan believes that if Europeans came to the Dogon tribe, they most likely would of discussed “astronomical matters”, and talked about the brightest star in the sky. This however doesn’t explain a 400 year old artifact that shows the Sirius configuration. It also doesn’t explain how the Dogon tribe knows how dense Sirius B is.
Linky
Some more on Dogon cosmology
The week in Youtube
There were two captures this week that have made quite a splash.
This was a very impressive sighting
Here’s one that is racking up the views, and getting a little main stream attention from Oakland
This was supposedly on the news in Peru
CGI?
My FAVORITE of the week
UFO’s got free tickets to go see U2
Namaste friends
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