The Dogon & the Nommos: Star Knowledge from the Water Beings

The story of the Dogon and the Nommos begins with a puzzle that, depending on who you ask, is either one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for ancient extraterrestrial contact or one of the most fascinating examples of how Western academics can project their own assumptions onto indigenous knowledge systems. The puzzle is this: a people with no written language and no telescopic technology appeared to possess, centuries before Western astronomy could confirm it, precise knowledge of an astronomical phenomenon that is invisible to the naked eye.

The object in question is Sirius B — a white dwarf star that orbits Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius B is far too faint and too close to Sirius A to be seen without a powerful telescope. It was first predicted mathematically in 1844, first observed in 1862, and first photographed in 1970. Yet when French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen conducted fieldwork among the Dogon people of Mali between the 1930s and 1950s, they recorded detailed knowledge of Sirius B that the Dogon called po tolo — the smallest and heaviest of stars, with a 50-year orbit around Sirius A.

The Dogon’s 50-year figure is remarkably close to the actual orbital period of approximately 50.1 years. They described Sirius B as dense and small — accurate characterizations of a white dwarf star. And they spoke of a third star in the Sirius system, which some researchers have taken as a prediction of the hypothetical Sirius C. Their explanation for this knowledge was consistent and detailed: the Nommos, amphibious beings who came from the Sirius star system, descended to Earth in what the Dogon described as a spinning, whirling vehicle that landed in water. The Nommos lived in the water, taught humanity the foundations of civilization and astronomy, and eventually returned to the sky.

Skeptics have offered several alternative explanations. The most common is that Griaule and Dieterlen contaminated their data — that Dogon informants, through prior contact with Western-educated visitors, had absorbed knowledge of Sirius B and presented it back as ancient tradition. Anthropologist Walter van Beek, who conducted his own Dogon fieldwork in the 1990s, found that many Dogon he interviewed had no knowledge of the Sirius B tradition, significantly challenging the case for its deep antiquity.

Van Beek’s findings are significant. But they do not entirely resolve the puzzle. The Sirius B knowledge was consistently documented by Griaule and Dieterlen over decades. The iconographic tradition surrounding the Nommos is ancient and pervasive in Dogon culture. And the question of how any pre-telescopic people could independently arrive at accurate knowledge of a white dwarf star’s density and orbital period has not been definitively answered.