S2E58 - The Dogon Sirius Mystery: Ancient Star Knowledge or Modern Myth?
Published: June 9, 2026
Duration: 1:14:24
For decades, one astonishing claim has haunted the world of ancient mysteries: the Dogon people of Mali supposedly knew about Sirius B — a tiny, dense companion star invisible to the naked eye — before modern astronomy could explain it.
Was this sacred knowledge preserved through ancient tradition? Evidence of visitors from the stars? Or did a complex Dogon cosmology become transformed through translation, colonial fieldwork, and the ancient-astronaut boom of the 1970s?
In this episode of Unexplained History, we follow the trail from the cliffs of Mali to nineteenth-century observatories, French anthropologists’ notebooks, Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery...
Was this sacred knowledge preserved through ancient tradition? Evidence of visitors from the stars? Or did a complex Dogon cosmology become transformed through translation, colonial fieldwork, and the ancient-astronaut boom of the 1970s?
In this episode of Unexplained History, we follow the trail from the cliffs of Mali to nineteenth-century observatories, French anthropologists’ notebooks, Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery...