Learn of Dogon country

Dogon Country is in Africa in Mali, in a majestic setting of steep walls of giant blocks of stone and debris. A spectacular cliff dotted with villages, which stretches 200 kilometers and rises to a height of 300 meters. This area is classified as World Heritage by UNESCO since 1981 for its archaeological sites and culture.

Dogon and living on the edge of the cliff is a world apart. A vertical universe. Born in Manding (Bamako region) and refusing Islamization, this people, one of the oldest Black African, arrived between XI and XII centuries in what we call today Dogon Country. The place was empty. The area was occupied by tribes of hunters and gatherers peaceful fruit, very skilled in magic: people tell. In Dogon language, "TELL" means "the ones I've found" the locals. The merger was peaceful as possible. Legend has it that magical rites and songs you sang their natives allowed them to climb vertical walls of cliffs without any difficulty. Their hands are stuck, simply rock.

The caves carved into the cliffs of Bandiagara housed numerous bones of tellems serving as the necropolis.

Also in these caves were found and many dry foods, caverns are a kind of fruit and grain warehouses. Today, even with ultra-modern equipment, inviolable rise to these places is almost impossible. Anthropologists Dutch Johan Huizinga and Roger Bedaux undertook to date "TELL attics," as they called them in cliff crevices. They found there and the remains of a lifting system with ropes, but, until now, the way the first stakes were stuck on a stone wall supporting no trace remains a mystery.

Passionate about riddles Africa, American anthropologist Claire Olivier travels two to three times a year since 1996, Mali. During one of these trips, she attended a festival of African art and dance with masks, one of the most important rituals of the Dogon.

Fascinated by their expressiveness when a researcher has established contact with some of the dancers, whom he invited to New York. Later, in February 2003, she was invited and hosted in turn by the Dogons. For 15 days there was almost nothing happened. From time to time, inaccessible to foreigners visiting shrines, accompanied by a guide permanently old girl wearing a mask. Head of the community, priest, healer and judge, old lived outside the village, on a cliff, only feeding on grasses and weeds. Constrained in total solitude, for life, his task was to keep in touch with the spirit of the dead, to find out what will happen in the future. And let perpetual wear a mask, which only drove the big holidays.

One of these events occurred on March 5 ceremony "large", the American anthropologist was accepted Dogon community that was celebrated in the upper part of the mountain plateau. Olivier Claire bought a rooster, a hen, a ram, millet beer, and presented himself wearing a dark blue coat, in front of 32 of the village wise. Some words, blessings, animal sacrifices and libation, he was raised and a "fetish", a large stone in the shape of a man who was raised vertically surrounded by a threshold of land called "gobos" which was meant attract cosmic benefits. Once the ceremony finished, Claire Olivier became "Yassagui", "sister masks", receiving the name of Sosselem ("the court before which there is nothing to add"). She was invited to return two months later, the ritual "Grand Lady".

It allows the souls of men elected community members valued and admired, who had the sumptuous funerals, to return to their ancestors, whose worship is one of the foundations of Dogon tradition. Olivier Claire says: "Clear the front, village wise sat in the shade of huts, so low that he could not stay indoors than lying. Their traditional outfits were made of bogolan, mud word means Dogon language, because of this fabric, which is a set of long strips of cotton sewn together, requires some scholarly mud baths, mix the leaves and roots . The ceremony lasts several days. Mainly, the cult of the dead is related to the preparation of a beverage made from millet and which resembles the taste of beer. Millet is crushed using stone mills, while the woman kneeling, repeat some gestures millennial worship ancestors. Later, they will pour out the drink in "Canary", some large pots made of earth, which keeps the liquid at an ideal temperature to ferment. But the peak of the holiday excitement was when all the mourners began to shout in a loud voice of death, spinning in circles. Perhaps because of those circular movements and chanting accompanied by bells, it seemed that the sky opens, indeed, to let to embrace the living with the dead. "

Amma God created the world and held it in his words. Dogon people say, speech organs are comparable to a weaving machine, bobbin being represented by language. Speech that comes from the mouth is like a band of fabric that runs with drawings and colors. This is uninterrupted from generation to generation. Ensemble related information transmitted oral tradition and is indispensable to the survival of the group. Breaking tradition means symbolically, self-denial, the death sentence.

For the people of oral tradition, the word is "manufactured" within the body of a man, which draws its substance the same time, the spiritual principles, but also of the four elements that compose it: fire, water, air, metal. Nature word depends on the dosage delivered. For example, too much heat leads to anger and burn it on the auditor. Because I do not know writing, Dogon transmits their history and tradition in talking mode, initiation. A collective ritual used by celebrations, but also individually in each family, from individual to individual.

At the entrance there is always a guardian, a holy man, elected by the tribe life that nourishes and takes care of his needs, but that no one can touch nor can approach him. This cave contains incredible objects and information that defies the imagination of contemporary man. The most important of drawings is actually an astronomical scheme, which refers to the brightest celestial body, known as Sirius A. On a clear night, if you locate Orion's belt, the three stars of its placed in a straight line, we can distinguish this very bright star. All these celestial configurations are depicted in cave Dogon but surprise them there with a celestial body that revolves around Sirius. The Dogon are really precise about it. They say it is very old, very small, as is done in what they call "the hardest material in the entire universe." Everything According to them, it takes nearly 50 years this small star to make a complete turn around Sirius.

The fact that a tribe in Africa who has some knowledge, in part, were confirmed only recently astronomy is absolutely amazing. This Might Be of little interest legend to anybody but the two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen, who from four Dogon priests it Recorded in the 1930's. Of little interest except exactly that, it is true. How did the people who lacked Any kind of astronomical devices knows so much about year invisible star? The star, The which scientists call Sirius B, wasn't Even photographed Until It Was done by a large telescope in 1970.

They know everything about a star that can not be seen with the naked eye and was not discovered in the

Western world than in 1862. That year was discovered a celestial body which was named "Sirius B". It is a small, white star, which revolves around Sirius both and around its own axis. Scientists then measured the weight, find out if it is "the hardest material made of the universe". Their first calculations determined that she weighed a little over 9 tons per cubic terms of side two and a half inches. It can, therefore, say that it was a very difficult matter, just as Dogon said. In addition, when scientists have calculated during rotation of Sirius B around Sirius A, they found that it was 50.1 years. Dogon knowledge about this topic was thus a coincidence.

But this is only part of the information which they possess. Dogon cosmogony mentions and about a third star, called "Ya enunciated" much lighter than Sirius B, and spinning in the same direction as him on a higher orbit. It looks like another planet revolves around the star. From here came "Nommo", the great ancestor of the Dogon. The Nõmme was ugly, amphibious resembled mermen and mermaids That Beings. they Also Appear in Babylonian, Accadian, and Sumerian Myths. The Egyptian Goddess Isis, who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, is linked with the star Sirius Also.

Apart from Sirius, Dogon knows about the existence of all the other planets in our solar system, including Neptune, Pluto, and Uranus. Their knowledge and ancestral targeting different phases of Venus, who know they are almost the same as those of the Moon and who gave them six different names.

They say that Venus has "a friend" who could be Toro asteroid, discovered near you. In addition, they divided the sky into 22 equal parts, and in 266 different constellations. In respect of Saturn, I know them all four satellites, although they can not be seen with the naked eye. For the Dogons, the universe revolves in a spiral cone and was created from a central kernel, through the voice of Amma, the supreme god. The universe is like, infinite, but nevertheless measurable. Finally, the Dogon say that all the stars are away from each other with a very high speed, a combination of rotational and translational motions, which are found in all parts of the universe. They say that somewhere in the sky, there are other inhabited planets. That the four major moons of Jupiter Has, That Has Saturn rings and That the planets orbit the sun. Were all facts the Westerners Discovered by Galileo invented the telescope only after.

The story of the Dogon and Their legend WAS first brought` to popular attention by Robert KG Published Temple in the book The Sirius Mystery Called in 1977. Science writer and Astronomer Carl Sagan January Ridpath made a reply to Temple's book, suggesting That this modern knowledge about Sirius must have come from Westerners who discussed astronomy with the Dogon priests. The priests THEN included this new information into the older Traditions. This, in turn, misleads the anthropologists.

But this knowledge does not stop people from cosmology, they also aim also and water, which they say is present everywhere, "even in stones". Recently, NASA engineers hypothesized to use rocks on the Moon or Mars, to recreate water hydrogen and oxygen, the precious liquid compounds. In addition, the Dogon know and existing blood cells in the blood, and other information on the physiology of the human body, which we have found a very little time. Not bad for a considered primitive tribe ...

The Dogon say their great ancestor Nommo, a native of one of the planets orbiting Sirius, descended to Earth aboard his ark from heaven and gave us knowledge about the universe. But that's not all. Great ancestor is actually a man-fish, coming from a planet covered in water and therefore living in the water. The stellar ship itself was filled with water. He said come a time, long before, to create the earth and to inoculate the plants already growing on "fields of heaven." But not only met Dogon-fish gods. Myths say that throughout their history, the Sumerians had received, and her visit "oans" people-fish, beaches the Persian Gulf, who came from heaven to educate, civilize and teach writing. Some stellar dolphins would be visited even the Aztecs, in Lake Titicaca, thousands of years ago.

foto credit: google.com

If you appreciate the interesting material that you read, give them and others a chance to enjoy it with a simple SHARE! Thanks in advance !!!

                                                            

                                                             HAVE A NICE DAY !