Believed to be progenies of ancient Egypt, the Dogon people who live in the central plateau region of Mali, are among the few African tribes who have managed to preserve their culture over the years.
Early history is informed by oral traditions, which claim that the Dogon originated from the west bank of the Niger River (10th to 13th centuries).
They emigrated west to northern Burkina Faso, where local histories describe them as kibsi. Around 1490, they fled a region now known as the northern Mossi kingdom of Yatenga when it was invaded by Mossi calvary.
They ended up in the Bandiagara cliffs region, safe from the approaching horsemen. Carbon-14 dating techniques used on excavated remains found in the cliffs suggest that there were inhabitants in the region before the arrival in the Dogon, dating back to the 10th century.
Those Dogon who did not flee were incorporated into Mossi society and were known as the nyonyose, or descendants of the first inhabitants.
The ancestors of the Dogon came from Mande, an area in southwest Mali and northeast Guinea that was home to the thirteenth-century Mali empire. The Dogon migrated after the empire’s collapse to the cliffs of the Bandiagara plateau.
Dogon, ethnic group is located at the Central Plateau region of Mali that spreads across the border into Burkina Faso. The majority of them live on the rocky hills, mountains, and the plateau.
Fewer than half the Dogon are Muslim, and fewer still are Christian. Most practice traditional religion. This article was most recently revised and updated by Emily Rodriguez, Copy Editor.
Their main source of income is agriculture; crafts making, then metalworkers and leatherworkers, form distinct castes.
What makes this tribe distinct is that they are renowned for their knowledge about the Sirius system which dates back to 3200 BC, long before scientists discovered it in 1862.
According to them, the Sirius A, which is the brightest star in Earth’s night sky, had a much dimmer companion: Sirius B, which has a fifty-year elliptical orbit around the bright Sirius A and is extremely dense.
From oral tradition, the Dogon confirmed their affiliation with extraterrestrial bodies which visited earth some years ago.
Dogon religion is defined primarily through the worshiping of the ancestors and the spirits whom they encountered as they moved across the Western Sudan.
The Awa society is responsible for carrying out the rituals, which allow the deceased to leave the world of the living and enter the world of the dead.
Public rites include bago bundo (funerary rites) and the dama ceremony, which marks the end of the mourning period.
Awa society members are also responsible for planning the sigui ceremonies, which commence every sixty years to hand on the function of the dead initiates to the new recruits.
All of these rites involve masking traditions and are carried out only by initiated males who have learned the techniques needed to impersonate the supernaturals.
The leader of the Awa society is the olaburu who is a master of sigi so (the language of the bush). The society is divided in accordance with age-grades, ignoring traditional lineage and hierarchical ordering within the village.
According to them, monstrous-looking amphibious beings in the form of mermaids and mermen from the Sirius system known as Nommos, visited earth. The Nommos lived on a planet that rotated around other stars in the Sirius system.
The people of Dogon recount that the Nommos, after descending on earth in an ark-like structure, gave them information about the Sirius system and the earth’s Solar system: that Jupiter has four major moons, Saturn has rings and that all planets orbit around the sun.
They commemorate the Sirius A’s fifty-year elliptical orbit around Sirius B with the Sigui Celebration, held every sixty years. It is unclear why the Dogon commemorate the rotational year of the Sirius B every sixty years and instead of fifty.
However, since the last Sigui celebration was in 1967, the next celebration is expected to happen in 2027. They believe that the celebration of Sirius B’s rotation comes to renew the earth.
