The Sirius Mystery is a book written by Robert K. G. Temple. It presents the ancient astronauts hypothesis, which suggests that intelligent beings from other planets visited Earth and interacted with humans in ancient and prehistoric times. The book was first published by St. Martin's Press in 1976. A second edition was released in 1998 and is titled The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago.

Overview

The book suggests that the Dogon people of Mali, in West Africa, may have inherited traditions about contact with intelligent beings from the Sirius star system. These beings are said to have taught early humans important skills and knowledge, including ideas that influenced ancient Egyptian rulers, Greek myths, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The book’s author, Temple, based his ideas on the research of ethnographers Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. Much of the book includes comparisons of languages and myths from the Dogon, Yoruba, Egyptian, and Sumerian cultures, showing similarities among their beliefs and symbols. Greek and Arab myths and words are also discussed, though less thoroughly.

A major question in the book is how the Dogon people might have learned about Sirius B, a small, dim star that orbits Sirius A and cannot be seen without special tools. Sirius B was first observed in 1862 and predicted earlier in 1844. Temple considered other possibilities besides alien contact, such as a very old, advanced civilization that may have influenced ancient Egypt and Sumer. However, he personally believed the alien contact idea was more likely.

Some people have questioned the accuracy of Griaule and Dieterlen’s work, which the book relies on. Noah Brosch, in his book Sirius Matters, suggested that French astronomers who visited Mali in 1893 might have shared modern astronomical knowledge with the Dogon during an expedition led by Henri Deslandres. This could explain the Dogon’s knowledge about Sirius B. However, other researchers, like anthropologist Walter Van Beek, found no evidence that the Dogon believed Sirius was a double star or that astronomy was central to their beliefs. Critics of Van Beek, including Marcel Griaule’s daughter Geneviève Calame-Griaule and anthropologist Luc de Heusch, argued that his conclusions ignored important aspects of Dogon traditions.

Reviews of claims

In 1978, astronomer Ian Ridpath wrote in an article for the Skeptical Inquirer that the Dogon people’s stories about Sirius and its companion stars contain many unclear parts, contradictions, and mistakes if taken literally. Ridpath explained that while some details about Sirius in Dogon stories match real scientific facts, these details were likely learned from Europeans, not from original Dogon knowledge. He concluded that any correct information in the Dogon stories probably came from contact with Europeans. More recent research suggests that the European contact may have been through the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule.

Astronomer Carl Sagan discussed this topic in his 1979 book Broca's Brain. He questioned the idea that the Dogon had knowledge from an extraterrestrial source. For example, Sagan noted that the Dogon do not seem to know about a planet beyond Saturn that has rings, which makes it more likely that their knowledge came from Europeans, not aliens.

In his 1982 book UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries, journalist and skeptic James Oberg studied claims about Dogon myths. He argued that the Dogon’s descriptions of Sirius match ideas from Europe in the late 1920s, suggesting that Europeans may have influenced the Dogon before their stories were recorded in the 1930s. Oberg also pointed out that the Dogon were not completely isolated and that one person might have learned about Sirius B while traveling abroad and later shared that knowledge with the tribe. He added that there is no strong archaeological evidence that the Dogon’s stories about Sirius’s hidden companions are very old. He also noted that symbols used in Dogon stories about Sirius are also used in other traditions, such as ceremonies for coming of age.

Skeptic Jason Colavito says that The Sirius Mystery is part of a group of books that promote ancient astronaut theories. He believes these ideas were influenced by the fictional universe created by writer H.P. Lovecraft, known as the Cthulhu Mythos.

Unproven claims

One unproven part of the Dogon tribe's knowledge about the Sirius system is their claim that they knew about another star in the system called Emme Ya, which they described as "larger than Sirius B but lighter and dimmer." A study published in 1995 looked at unusual movements in Sirius B, which suggested that another object might be influencing it through gravity. This study said it was possible that a third star could be orbiting Sirius, but it could not be confirmed. Observations from the 1920s that seemed to show a "third star" have since been proven to be a background object, as suggested earlier by Holberg in 2007.

Benest and Duvent found that stable orbits around Sirius A could last up to six years. However, stable orbits around Sirius B, which is less massive, cannot last longer than three years. This means that if a third star, called Sirius C, exists, it would have to orbit Sirius A. It is also unlikely that such a star could explain the sightings from the 1920s, as it would be too faint and too close to Sirius A to be seen by visual observers.

The earlier study concluded that while a three-star system for Sirius could not be completely ruled out, the chance of it existing was low.

Temple's book and the debates that followed its release made the Dogon tribe well-known among many people who follow New Age beliefs and theories about ancient astronauts. Now, websites often mix facts about the Dogon with incorrect information, leading to confusion about their myths. Temple later said in the 1999 reprint of his book, The Sirius Mystery, that he does not support groups he calls "sinister cults" that were inspired by his work, such as the Typhonian OTO. He also used the second edition of his book to express frustration about what he described as "extreme and strong hostility" from some security agencies, especially American ones.