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Messengers from Sirius
The Dogon, the Stars, and the Science of the Ancients
By Jojo Penwood
Beneath the sandstone cliffs of Mali, the Dogon people have preserved a cosmic legacy that defies conventional history. Messengers from Sirius explores one of the most provocative mysteries of ancient knowledge: how a pre-technological African society came to possess precise astronomical information about Sirius B—a white dwarf star invisible to the naked eye and only confirmed by Western science in the 20th century.
Anthropologist Jojo Penwood takes readers on a sweeping journey through Dogon cosmology, symbolism, and ritual, revealing a worldview where science and spirituality are inseparable, and the stars are not distant objects but conscious entities woven into the fabric of daily life. From the amphibious Nommo beings said to descend from Sirius, to the 60-year Sigui ceremony that mirrors the orbital cycle of Sirius B, the Dogon tradition challenges our assumptions about how knowledge is acquired, preserved, and understood.
Blending anthropology, astronomy, philosophy, and indigenous science, this book invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between myth and fact, oral tradition and empirical data, ancient wisdom and modern cosmology. Whether the Dogon's knowledge came through ancestral observation, cultural transmission, or something more mysterious, Messengers from Sirius opens a dialogue between worlds—between Earth and sky, past and future, science and symbol.
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