The Dogon tell the legend of the Nommos, awful-looking beings who arrived in a vessel along with fire and thunder. The Nommos, who could live on land but dwelled mostly in the sea, were part fish, like merfolk (mermaids and mermen). Similar creatures have been noted in other ancient civilizations -- Babylonia’s Oannes, Acadia’s Ea, Sumer’s Enki, and Egypt’s goddess Isis. It was from the Nommos that the Dogon claimed their knowledge of the heavens.
The Dogons have a unique distinction. Supposedly when they left Egypt and migrated to Mali where they brought with them sacred knowledge in the form of oral traditions - perhaps handed down by the ancient priests of Egypt. There are oral tradition about interaction with Amphibious Gods who came to Earth from the star Sirius (now called Sirius A). The Dogons knew about Sirius long before modern man discovered the star system. Their religious tradition, dating back to their Egyptian roots, was later imparted through Greek migratory patterns. The name Sirius was given by the ancient Greeks. Even if these people had somehow seen Western astronomy textbooks, they could not have known about Sirius B. Also puzzling was their knowledge of the rotations and orbits of planets in our solar system and of the four major moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. How did they learn all this? Dogon folklore says that this knowledge came from unearthly sources.
In the late 1930s, four Dogon priests shared their most important secret tradition with two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen after they had spent an apprenticeship of fifteen years living with the tribe. These were secret myths about the star Sirius, which is 8.6 light years from the Earth.
The priests said that Sirius had a companion star that was invisible to the human eye. They also stated that the star moved in a 50-year elliptical orbit around Sirius, that it was small and incredibly heavy, and that it rotated on its axis.
Initially the anthropologists wrote it off publishing the information in an obscure anthropological journal, because they didn't appreciate the astronomical importance of the information. What they didn't know was that since 1844, astronomers had suspected that Sirius A had a companion star. This was in part determined when it was observed that the path of the star wobbled. In 1862 Alvan Clark discovered the second star making Sirius a binary star system (two stars).
In the 1920's it was determined that Sirius B, the companion of Sirius, was a white dwarf star. White dwarfs are small, dense stars that burn dimly. The pull of its gravity causes Sirius' wavy movement. Sirius B is smaller than planet Earth. The Dogon name for Sirius B is Po Tolo. It means star - tolo and smallest seed - po. Seed refers to creation. In this case - human creation. By this name they describe the star's smallness. It is, they say, the smallest thing there is. They also claim that it is the heaviest star and is white in color. The Dogon thus attribute to Sirius B its three principal properties as a white dwarf: small, heavy, white.
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