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[QUOTE]Originally posted by The Explorer: [QB] Brada, Are you then revising the "7ky ago" date you associated with the Gobekli Tepe stone structures? because even as far back as 10ky ago, evidence signals that there were agricultural groups in the Levant. On the Dogon astronomy: The denial of the Dogon sophistry in Astronomy is nothing more than the usual 'western' propensity for ascribing outside agents to any achievement of antiquity whose conception remains a mystery to 'western' researchers of today and which can only be conceived in modern times with the help of special modern equipment or machinery. The same mentality has been greeted upon the Pyramids (the world's oldest stone superstructure) for example (among many others here), as briefly noted above, wherein from the construction plan right to any accommodating tools that may have been used, remains shrouded in mystery just as it did in the 19th century. The main difference here being, the grand pyramids have not been reproduced by 'westerners' today, while the rediscoveries of Sirius and its companion stars on the other hand, have been made possible with the development of modern instruments. Now of course, in the case of African achievements, mystery need not be required to drive doubt; without it, racist prejudice would have been incentive enough to doubt and dismiss Dogon ingenuity. For what it's worth, here's my quick take on the matter, as posted on my blog: [i]As one can see, the news of Dogon astronomy by two "Western" researchers was first followed up with goofy explanations of how they might have attained this, starting with Robert Temple. After all, how could a "primitive" bunch, with no "Western"-verified documentation of special instruments, be able to come to such advance understanding about a certain element of the universe? As the Wikipedia posting notes, not even Griaule or Dieterlen, the news-bearers of the Dogon understanding, were bold enough to openly come to such conclusions, as that of the extraterrestrial education of the Dogon. Walter van Beek on the other hand pays some community of Dogons a visit, presumably for the sole purpose of verifying Griaule's and Dieterlen's news of Dogon Sirius revelations. An interesting feature of van Beek's findings though, is that it seems to suggest that Dogon only learned of the stars from Griaule himself, some 60 years apart the time van Beek made his visit, which would mean and in contradiction to Griaule's and Dieterlen's revelations of Dogon understanding, that Dogon supposedly had no prior knowledge of Sirius or likely, the other celestial bodies. Yet, this was at a time when even "Westerners" [b]could not[/b] figure out the "precise cosmological facts" that Griaule had obtained from the Dogons, having made four separate visits to the latter, followed by a decades long annual visit! One would think that for one, if Griaule had made such a scientific breakthrough, that he would be scrambling to get recognition for it himself, and not some unknown "rural" Africans, about whom they held steadfast prejudices in Europe that very few [Europeans] would have been willing to break away from. And then there is the matter of great detail that Griaule notes of local [b]Dogon lexical[/b] names for the stars; did Griaule come up with those names and teach the Dogons said lexicon as well? Going by van Beek, one would have to assume so. The van Beek piece noticeably speaks of only Sigu tolo, which according to Griaule's report, identifies Sirius; yet, Griaule's clearly details not one, but multiple different stars by their Dogon names, none of which can be found in the van Beek piece. These are namely [b]Sigu tolo[/b] [Sirius], and its two companions stars: [b]Po tolo[/b] [Digitaria star] and [b]Emmę ya tolo[/b] [the female Sorghum star]. The van Beek piece does not tell the reader what was to made be of these companion stars. Furthermore, van Beek's finding has a curious feature: he tells us that Sigu tolo appeared to have varying identities among the Dogon, and yet, proceeds to tell us that they supposedly claimed to have gotten this information from a single individual, Griaule himself! Conventional wisdom should tell us that if that were so, shouldn't the likelihood of the stories being consistent with one another be just as great. If a single source tells two individuals the same story, should the stories of those two individuals therefore not be expected to be that very same story? At very least, what Griaule's daughter, Genevieve Calame-Griaule, said in response to van Beek's charges is likely what is at work here, that "van Beek [b]did not go "through the appropriate steps for acquiring knowledge.[/b]"" Griaule's visits to the Dogons was extensive. Was the same true for van Beek? Then there is that issue of trust, in acquiring information from Dogon, that James Clifford makes a note of. Clifford informs us that Griaule was very selective about whom he was acquiring information from, perhaps just as careful as the Dogons were likely to be, in sharing their secrets to outsiders; to repeat: Griaule [b]sought informants best qualified[/b] to speak of traditional lore, and [b]deeply mistrusted converts to Christianity, Islam, or people with too much contact with whites.[/b] In closing this case study, we are also informed that as superb and as advanced as the Dogon astronomical observations were, they still had a few shortcomings worth pointing out; to reiterate info already cited above, according to James Oberg, whom while not going as far as Temple with the "extraterrestrial" thing, explains off the Dogon intellectual ingenuity as information supposedly "generously" donated by "Western explorers, travelers and missionaries as well as members of the French Army", the number of moons that the Dogons associated with Jupiter were off or erroneous, and so was their estimation of the distance of Saturn from the sun and its description as the lone planet with rings. The funny thing though about James Oberg's explaining away off Dogon knowledge, is that it comes back to full circle with the fact that this was information that the general European public was supposed to have been ignorant of at the time of Griaule's visit; so, how can the [b]ordinary[/b] European public [as explorers, missioners or foot-soldiers], whom one would expect to have been in an even worse off intellectual position than European professional astronomers, be expected to teach the Dogon something that they themselves were clueless of? In the end, what does all this tell us? The commotion following Griaule and Dieterlein's reports about Dogon knowledge simply highlights the rigidly held prejudices that Europeans have had about these Africans. "Primitive" people are not supposed to outdo the "advanced" Europeans, or beat them to something as complex as the astronomical specifics described here. The commotion and the [b]conflicting[/b] rationalizations of how the Dogon could have attained this impressive knowledge goes to show that European folks have not been able to shake off these long held prejudices. The "anomalous" Dogon intuition simply [b]upsets[/b] these prejudices and European-created sense of "racial" stratigraphy. Then there is another ideological element which sought to answer the Dogon question, as we shall see with other such examples pertaining to Malians, by placing their origins in the Nile Valley, in historic times. All of these rationalizations wittingly or unwittingly converge on a common theme: that "true" western Africans are simply incapable of intellectual creativeness by themselves. It has to be taught to them, or people simply invaded the region en mass with said creativeness.[/i]- Source: [URL=http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/2010/03/timbuktu-stripping-has-began.html]Link[/URL] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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