Alien Abduction in Pop Culture

(Blogger’s Note: Since there has been some discussion of the elements contained in this partial chapter from The Abduction Enigma, I thought I would reprint it here. It addresses the issue of the cultural elements that have found their way into abduction reports and it mentions some of the early work done by some others. Christopher Allen wanted to address Martin Kottmeyer’s essays on pop cultural influences, suggesting, I guess, that the theory was somehow original to Kottmeyer and none of the rest of us had realized it until he thought of it. As you’ll see, these arguments pre-date some of Kottmeyer’s work ((the witness whose abduction matched Killers from Space so closely was regressed in 1976, for example and I realized the moment I heard it where it originated)), and you’ll see that reference is made to Kottmeyer’s articles. The bibliography for The Abduction Enigma contains five articles and papers published by Kottmeyer.)

David Jacobs has argued that the UFO phenomenon sprang into existence in 1947. Thomas Bullard suggested that the Barney and Betty Hill abduction of 1961 had no cultural sources from which to draw. And Budd Hopkins has claimed that the beings reported by abductees are like no "traditional sci-fi gods and devils." In other words, each is arguing that UFOs and abductions must be real because there are no cultural sources from which the witnesses could draw the material. Without those sources of material, the witnesses must be relating real events rather than some sort of folklore history even though the airship scare of the late nineteenth century demonstrates that the fundamental assumptions by each are inaccurate.

It seems ridiculous to suggest that a phenomenon that has no substantial evidence of its existence other than witness testimony must be real because there is nothing in the past that relates to it. Because there are no past traditions, how did each of these witnesses, who have never communicated, relate similar events if not reporting, accurately, something they have witnessed? This is the question posed by many UFO investigators and abduction researchers.

The answer is, of course, that the cultural precedents demanded by Hopkins, Jacobs and Bullard do exist. Pop culture from the beginning of the twentieth century is filled with examples of alien beings and alien spacecraft that match, to an astonishing degree, the beings and craft being reported today by the abductees.

To completely understand the cultural influences we must examine the pop cultural world. At the turn of the last century information moved at a slower pace, but it still had the impact it does today. For example, there were no radio stations that played the latest music. Instead, sheet music was sold. To sell it, without radio to play the songs, music stores hired piano players and singers. The music circulated through the culture much more slowly, but no less completely. A hit, on sheet music, might take weeks or months to move from one coast to the other, but the point is, it could and frequently did.

Think about that. Music would move from coast to coast. Musicians would hear it in one city and play it in the next. Vaudeville performers used the same popular music in their acts. Player pianos played it to audiences in all sorts of environments. Before long everyone in the country was singing the song, or playing it at home, all without records, radio, national broadcasts or MTV and before Ipods and YouTube.

This demonstrates just how information can be passed from person to person without the modern technology. It also suggest that arguments claiming that one person could not have heard a specific story because it had no national forum is wrong. The information, whether it is music at the turn of the century or information about abductions, can enter into a "collective consciousness." Simply, it moves from person to person until all have been exposed to it.

The introduction of movies, radio, and other mass media, however, have made it even easier to spread data, and provides more opportunities for all of us to be exposed to it. An abductee might claim no interest in science fiction, but that doesn't mean that he or she has not been exposed to the elements of science fiction.

One of the first movies made was the 1902 version of Jules Verne's First Men in the Moon. Walt Disney used parts of it on his old Sunday night show and while science fiction might not have been the theme that night, millions saw it. Since that time, Verne's work has been translated into dozens of films in dozens of versions. They have been broadcast on television for more than fifty years.

H.G. Wells was responsible for more than just adding science fiction to pop culture. His War of the Worlds, first published before the turn of the last century was responsible for one of the great "hoaxes" in American history. In 1938, Orson Welles, in a radio program broadcast nationally, reported on an alien invasion launched by beings from the planet Mars. The panic that developed during that broadcast has been studied for years afterwards.

Even those who hadn't heard the original radio broadcast learned about the after effects. Sociological studies have been done on the mob psychology that produced the panic. But more importantly, it brought the concept of alien invasion into the homes of average American before the 1940s. They might not be reading science fiction, but they were seeing the results of science fiction spread across the front pages of their newspapers.

Science fiction has been an important part of pop culture since Hugo Grensback introduced it to American society in the 1920s. Grensback's idea was to sugarcoat science so that the young would be interested in it. He envisioned it as a way of teaching science to those who weren't interested in learning science. He wanted it to bubble through society, through our collective conscious.

In the 1930s and 1940s there were many science fiction magazines. The covers of them featured full color art designed to catch the eye. Scientists, looking like all-American heroes, monsters of all kinds, and women in scanty clothes and in peril, were the themes on many. At the time, these were the pulp magazines, filled with action stories and exciting tales. Each month the newsstands had new covers, all crying out for attention to convince us to buy the magazine.

One particular cover, from Astounding Stories (seen here), published in June 1935, is particularly important. It shows two alien beings with no hair, no nose, a slit-like mouth and large eyes. Through a door, one of the strange creatures is looking at a woman on an examination table. Her eyes are closed and she is covered by a sheet (a convention of the time), but it is clear that she is naked under the cloth. In the foreground another creature is restraining a man trying to break through to the woman.

This cover predicts many elements of the abduction phenomenon of forty years later. Although, the alien beings have pupils in large whites of the eyes, the similarities to the modern abductions is striking. To suggest that abductees of today could not have seen the cover of a science fiction magazine published decades years earlier is to miss the point. It demonstrates that the idea of alien abduction is not something that developed in a vacuum recently, as aliens began abducting humans, but in fact, had been announced in public long before anyone had heard of flying saucers and alien abduction.

The idea that the aliens are from a dying planet have been played out in everything from Not of this Earth first released in 1956 to many of the most recent science fiction movies, including a 1994 remake of Not of This Earth. Interestingly, the alien is collecting blood in an aluminum briefcase and he always wears dark glasses to hide his eyes. Although not collecting genetic material in the way sometimes suggested by abductees, he is required to send humans to his home world as they attempt to end the plague destroying them. The obvious purpose is to gather human genetic material.

But that very problem is discussed in The Night Caller made in 1965. In that movie the alien is sent to Earth to provide women for "genetic experiments" on his home world. The women are, of course, abducted by that alien.

Films, such as This Island Earth contain alien scientists eventually abducting Earth scientists to help them defeat their enemies on their home world. The 27th Day, features potential alien invaders who provide several people with the power to destroy all human life on Earth so that the aliens can inherit it.

And each of these films suggest human abduction somewhere in the storyline. The 27th Day, begins with five people abducted onto an alien ship where time slows almost to a standstill. The abductees are returned quickly, after being given their mission, and the weapons to wipe out the human race.

Peter Graves, a scientist working on atomic energy, is abducted from his jet as it crashes in Killers from Space. He returns to the base, confused, with a period of missing time and a huge scar on his chest. The one thing that stands out in the film is the huge eyes of the aliens. Although not the jet black orbs of the modern abduction tales, these eyes haunt Graves as he tries to remember exactly what has happened to him. And Graves remembers nothing of the encounter until he undergoes a chemical regression aided by sodium amytal.

To take the Killers from Space (aliens from that movie seen here) theme even a step further, in 1975 I attended a UFO conference in Fort Smith, Arkansas. A man there claimed to have been abducted while waiting in his car at a railroad crossing. Under hypnosis, arranged by the conference organizer Bill Pitts, he told a story of being subjected to a medical examination of some kind. He said that while lying on the table, surrounded by aliens, he could see a huge screen near him. It was a display of his internal organs including his beating heart. And it is a scene right out of Killers from Space. I recognized the scene as soon as I heard it.

The implants claimed by some as proof that abductions are real have also been featured in science fiction movies. Tiny probes, pushed into the back of the neck to monitor the victims, are found in 1953's Invader's from Mars. In fact, there are several scenes in the movie that mirror the stories told by modern abductees.

And for those who find these examples interesting, but not persuasive there is Mars Needs Women. Overlooking the obvious which is, of course, the abduction of women for reproductive purposes, there are the costumes worn by the Martians. These include a tight fitting helmet, not unlike those worn by skindivers. Over the ear was a small, round radio with a short antenna sticking up. This exact costume was reproduced by Herbert Schirmer after his abduction was reported to the Condon Committee in 1968. The contamination by the movie is unmistakable.

What we find, by searching the science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s, are dozens of examples of aliens invading from a dying planet, abducting people for reproductive purposes, and implanting small devices into them for a variety of reasons. To suggest, as Budd Hopkins has, that there is no similarity to the "traditional sci-fi gods and devils," is ridiculous. The similarity to many of the alien beings and abduction situations in science fiction is overwhelming.

What we have demonstrated here is that all the elements of the abduction phenomenon have been used in dozens of science fiction stories. These films might have been poorly attended when first released to the theaters, but have been replayed time and again on late night television. Even those who claim no interest in science fiction movies have had the opportunity to see them on the late shows. It cannot be suggested that these films have had no influence on the abduction phenomenon for even if a specific witness could prove he or she had never seen any of these movies, there are dozens of others who have. There is no denying that this aspect of pop culture has had an influence of our view of the aliens and their motivations, and therefore on the reporting of stories of alien abduction.

And even if the witness could somehow prove that he or she had not watched the films on late night television, there would be other arenas for exposure. Again, we slip into a look at pop culture in the 1950s and 1960s. While a specific abductee might have avoided films with flying saucers and aliens in them, he or she would have attended movies. We all did, whether it was the Friday night date, or the kid's matinee on Saturday afternoon. One of the many features of the theater presentation was the trailers, or the previews of coming attractions. So even if the abductee didn't go to the science fiction movies of the era, he or she would have seen the previews for them. The abductee might have avoided seeing the whole film, but would have seen pieces of it while at another movie.

Or, to take it a step further. How many families made it an outing to attend the drive-in theater on a Friday or Saturday night? It didn't matter so much which films were showing, but that the family was going out together. Many of the drive-in movies were the "B" films, those made to support the main attraction. These were black and white science fiction films made cheaply. Many of them were of alien invasions, monsters from outer space, and as we have noted, included many of the elements of the abduction phenomenon of today.

And often, at those Friday night movies, or Saturday matinees, a chapter of a serial was shown. These films featured everything from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to Superman and tales of the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Robots, spaceships and evil aliens were the norm. Trips through the Solar System and to planets far away were taken. Many times the main film program was what people attended to see, but the "boring" shorts were shown first, including a serial.

In today's environment, the influence is even more obvious. NBC broadcast the story of Barney and Betty Hill to a national audience in October, 1975. If nothing else, it focused the alien abduction in the minds of so many of the viewers. After that, millions knew that the aliens were smaller than humans and they had big eyes.

Bullard opens his massive study of the abduction phenomenon by reporting on the Hill case. Prior to the release in 1966 of The Interrupted Journey, John Fuller's book about the Hills, there had been no discussion, in this country, of alien abduction. The Antonio Villas-Boas case, known to few even inside the UFO community, would not be known to Betty Hill. Yet, without that prompting, Betty Hill tells a tale of alien abduction that is similar to that related by Villas-Boas. The question that plagues the researchers, including Bullard, is, where did she get the idea?

Bullard believes that the Hills didn't possess the knowledge to construct the nightmare of alien abduction. And, he might be right. We have, however, just been provided with a clue about how the idea originated. The question is, are there other facts that add to this? Barney Hill's hysterical reaction certainly isn't enough to add the details of small alien creatures. The answer to this can be found in Keyhoe's The Flying Saucer Conspiracy.

At the time of the Hill abduction, there were few public reports of alien creatures. It was not a topic discussed much in UFO circles. Keyhoe cites a dozen of so of these cases, ignoring the majority of them. He does, however, treat the case of pilot in Hawaii who claimed, "I actually saw him," meaning the creature from the craft, with respect. Keyhoe seems to be suggesting that the story, while wildly extreme, at that time, has an undercurrent of authenticity.

More importantly, however, Keyhoe writes of UFO reports from Venezuela that seem to have contributed to Betty Hill's nightmare. In his book, Keyhoe reports on two men who sight a bright light on a nearby road. Hovering over the ground is a round craft with a brilliant glow on the underside. According to Keyhoe, four little men came from it and tried to drag Jesus Gomez to it. An apparent abduction that failed.

Betty wrote to Keyhoe, "At this time we are searching for any clue that might be helpful to my husband, in recalling whatever it was he saw that caused him to panic. His mind has completely blacked out at this point. Every attempt to recall, leaves him very frightened."

All of this, from Keyhoe's writings about nasty, hairy dwarfs who are attempting to kidnap humans, to the idea that the aliens are conducting some kind of experimentation, were introduced prior to 1961. The elements for the abduction scenario as outlined by the Hills were abundant throughout the media. If Bullard wonders where Betty Hill got the idea, a study of the case will provide an answer for it. There is no denying that pop culture could have supplied the various elements. Betty Hill may have pulled them together into a single, neat package. Please note here that I said, "May have..."

Martin S. Kottmeyer, writing in Magonia, presents a good argument for the introduction of elements from pop culture. For example, Barney Hill talked of "wraparound eyes" when he described the aliens to his psychiatrist, an element of extreme rarity in science fiction films. But Kottmeyer found the exception. He wrote, "They appeared on the alien episode of an old TV series, 'The Outer Limits' entitled the 'The Bellero Shield.' A person familiar with Barney's sketch in The Interrupted Journey and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Bakerwill find a 'frisson' of 'dejavu' creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. 'The Bellero Shield' was first broadcast 10 February 1964. Only twelve days separated the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wrap around eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces."

Betty Hill was eventually asked about this by UFO researchers. She claimed that neither she nor Barney ever watched the Outer Limits. It seems ridiculous to believe that she would be able to recall if her husband watched a television show some thirty years earlier. It could simply have been the only time that he ever watched it. The coincidence between the airing of The Bellero Shield and Barney's description some twelve days later is interesting. (See also my discussion of the Twilight Zone episode about an alien abduction called "Hocus Pocus and Frisby" that follows this. Alien from that broadcast shown here.)

The situation of April 1961 is slightly different than we have been lead to believe. The Hill abduction didn't spring into existence in a cultural vacuum, but in a society where information was shared nationally on television and by the movies, not to mention magazines and books. Betty's interest in UFOs predated her experience because of her sister's UFO sighting, and Barney's fear of capture while driving on a lonely stretch of highway in New Hampshire, created the scenario. As the days passed, Betty Hill dreamed of the incident, writing about them in her diary. When interviewed by interested UFO researchers, she always told about her dreams, with Barney sitting in the room with her. The rest of it came together almost naturally.

It is important to note that the Hills' psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, never believed the story told under hypnosis. He didn't accept the abduction as real. He believed it to be a confabulation, a fact often forgotten by UFO researchers.

What we have then, is a well ingrained theory, that is, that aliens are abducting humans, fueled by speculation from science fiction movies and the popular press. All the ideas have been discussed, in the movies, on the radio, on television and in books. All elements of the abduction phenomenon have been well publicized long before the first of the abductions was reported. Contrary to what the UFO researchers might want to believe, we can find all the elements of abduction in pop culture. We may have to search several sources, but there is no denying that the elements were all present before Betty Hill made her astonishing report.

If alien abductions are real, and even if we find precedents in pop culture and in folklore traditions, the abduction experience itself should be unique. We should find nothing similar to it in our society. It turns out that such is not the case. Alien abduction is not unique. There is another phenomenon that has grown out of pop culture, whose traditions and traits mimic UFO abduction almost step for step. It is a phenomenon reported, essentially by the same kinds of people, investigated by the same kinds of people, and it provides us with clues about the reality of claims of alien abduction.

Betty Hill and The Twilight Zone

Recently, on UFO UpDates, there has been some discussion about the Barney and Betty Hill abduction and a few of the claims made by researchers about what Betty Hill might have seen at the movies or on television. The problem arose when one of the list members wrote about that Science Fiction classic, Killers from Space.

This is a really awful 1954 movie in which Peter Graves plays a scientist working around nuclear weapons. He experiences an episode of missing time, has an unexplained scar on his chest, is haunted by aliens with large eyes who come from a dying planet and who are hiding in an underground base. Nearly all the elements of the modern abduction phenomenon are covered in this film and there are those who believe that it was a government plot to ridicule the abduction phenomenon to keep it hidden from the public. This about a decade before anyone heard of an abduction.

I suppose it’s time to stir the controversy pot again and point out that in The Abduction Engima, published about ten years ago, we, meaning Russ Estes, Bill Cone, and I, discuss all the pop cultural references to alien abduction starting with a 1908 silent movie, the pulp era of science fiction meaning the 1930s and 40s, and the movies that mirror the abduction phenomenon long before anyone in the UFO field was talking about it. Does this mean that all the abductees were exposed to this material? Well, the opportunity was certainly there.

Now there is the suggestion that the Pentagon might have engineered this, meaning producing the movies so that the general population wouldn’t take abduction reports seriously. But, much of this came long before there was a Pentagon (though there certainly was an Army)... and we really don’t need to postulate about disinformers in the military or in the government because we have enough home grown ones that no program needs to exist to make the topic ridiculous.

Yes, we can say today that neither Barney nor Betty enjoyed science fiction and that they were uninterested in it. But we must also remember that in the 1960s there were three television networks, Public Television and few independent stations. You were stuck with what they broadcast and in the era before the remote control, you even tended to watch the commercials. So, who can say that late one sleepless night that Betty didn’t see one of these movies (Killers from Space, This Island Earth, Invaders from Mars, etc.)... or an trailer for it...?

And let’s not forget that on page 144 of Fuller’s hardback, The Interrupted Journey, the book about the Hill aabduction published in 1966, Betty said, "And I laughed at him[Barney when he suggested they might be captured] and asked him if he had watched the Twilight Zone recently on TV..."

Now, to be fair, Dr. Simon asks if there had been anything like this on the Twilight Zone and Betty said, "I don’t know. I never see the Twilight Zone. But I had heard people talk about this program, and I always was under the impression that it was a way-out type thing."

But, to answer Simon’s question, "Yes, there had been." Broadcast on April 4, 1962, was an episode called "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" in which Andy Devine is abducted by aliens, taken onto their ship where they are finally revealed as gray-faced creatures with no nose and small, tear-drop shaped eyes without pupils.

(For those interested, Devine is a well-known liar, claiming all sorts of extraordinary things, which is why the aliens have searched him out. They believe he is a brilliant scientist and want to tap into his brain... which means, I suppose, interrogate him. When he pulls out his harmonic, the vibrations of the music cause the alien human appearance to shatter and we see the aliens for what they are. Devine escapes, tells his friends what happened, but, of course, they don’t believe him.)

Take a look at the picture (seen below) and see if it doesn’t bear a striking resemblance to the pictures we see of the "grays." Yes, the eyes are smaller and there are those folds in the face, but this is a interesting match. Of course there are those who will say that the designer working on the show had been abducted at some point and used his or her own subconscious memories to create the alien face. Just as there are those who claim that the writers and producers of Killers from Space had some sort of abduction experience... or that those in the Pentagon influenced the production to make claims of abduction seem ridiculous and causing the rest of us to reject such stories.

There is no amount of twisting and turning that the true believers will reject to keep their beliefs intact... which explains why even with the admission of the participants that the Alien Autopsy film is a fake and here’s who we created it, there are those who reject the proof... Or those who believe in the Allende Letters even with the confession by Allende (aka Carl Allen) that he faked the whole thing... Or those who think Maury Island was anything but a hoax... but I digress once again.

So, did Barney or Betty see this Twilight Zone episode? Did they see a preview for it? Or did they never see it and had no knowledge that it even existed? If I had to guess, I’d pick door number three, but I can’t know and neither can anyone else. To reject this possible contamination out of hand is typical of those true believers. Don’t bother me with evidence because I know the truth... I am enlightened and you are not.

What we can see here, and which I’m sure will now result in a loud chorus of "Betty Hill never watched these sci-fi programs," and "Kevin Randle is an anti-abduction propagandist," is the fact that these sorts of stories were in the public arena long before any of them reached into the UFO field. What we don’t have is an answer about the possible cultural influence of them on Barney and Betty Hill. I’m not saying that Betty Hill was affected by any of this, only that we cannot eliminate the possibility that she was...

And for a simple personal anecdote, let me say this. I don’t watch King of the Hill, but on Who Wants to be a Millionaire they asked what Hank Hill did for a living. I knew it had to do with propane. Had they not given four choices, I might not have been able to come up with the answer, but the point is, I did and I don’t watch the show. I picked it up because it was out there in the pop cultural world and we are foolish if we dismiss the possibility that someone uninterested in science fiction might not have stumbled across one of these references as she made her way around.

UN Meeting on UFOs?

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a controversy raging inside the UFO community about a meeting held at the United Nations in which UFOs figured prominently. According to the exopolitics web site and Dr. Michael Salla, a confidential source had come forward to talk of this meeting and to tell us of the importance of it as we, allegedly, move toward full disclosure in 2013 or maybe 2017, depending on the mood of the reliable, but confidential source. Clearly, this meeting proved that UFOs were important and that the United Nations was aware of that importance.

According to Salla, who has been one of the leaders of exopolitics for years, "There are dozens of extraterrestrials races with a variety of motivations that are interacting with global humanity..."

He knows this because other people he believes, such as former U.S. Army sergeant Cliff Stone told him so. Stone has said that he knows, based on his service with super secret military organizations that there are 57 known alien races... just as there were 57 card carrying members of the communist party in the State Department and there are 57 varieties of Heinz products. For more on Stone and some of the other leading stars in the exopolitics heaven see the November 2005 blog. But I digress.

Anyway, this unidentified but highly qualified and reliable source said that the secret meetings were attended by the U.S. Air Force, the National Guard (the National Guard... what in the hell for?), the Vatican, representatives from 27 countries (where in the hell was the rest of the world?) and three U.S. senators. This meeting came up with such astonishing findings as that the UN is an international organization... "Therefore the briefing has do with other nation-states in context to sightings,"... whatever in the hell this means.

I could go on, but there is just too much that seems to be ridiculous in this. This inside source said "Although incidents are occurring around the world, these are NOT ‘Independence Day’ types. In fact, our source stated that the ships are not as big as the ones protrayed [sic] in the film."

And the ever popular, "You’ll know things are heating up when suicides dramatically increase."

Well, all this circulated around the Internet until it was learned from the UN that no such meeting had taken place, inside sources aside. Bernard Thouanel wrote on March 12, "It is obvious these so-called UFO Meetings at the UN never happened... and are pure hoax."

Thouanel’s information came from the UN Public Affairs Unit (at inquiries2@un.org) which wrote to him on March 11, "Greetings from the UN Public Inquiries Team. As far as we are aware there was no meeting concerning UFO’s at the United Nations." They attached copies of the journals for those days that showed all the meetings that took place, and they ran to more than forty pages.

Of course the "true believers" know this is all part of the cover-up and of course the United Nations would not admit to such meetings even if photographs and the agenda were published by this inside source. To prove what they said, Salla and the exopolitics crowd eventually identified the important inside source as Gilles Lorant who was further identified as a member of the French Institute of Advanced Studies for National Defense (IHEDN).

Well, that seemed to put a lie to the UN denial, which in the world of UFOs and conspiracies, and even Washington Post journalism (sorry, but I wanted to identify the source of the creation of the term) was a non-denial denial.

And then, as happens in the world of UFOs, the IHEDN denied that Lorant had ever had a role in its program. In fact, according the Gildas Bourdais (a reliable French UFO researcher and a decent fellow) reported that IHEDN was going to sue Lorant for "usurpation of title", which was going to get pricey for Lorant. He retracted his claim and confirmed that he "is not and has never been an auditor at IHEDN."

Worse still, Bourdais reports, "Michel Ribardiere, of the French group FEA (Federation Europeenne Airplane) has authorized me to reveal publicly that Gilles Lorant told him that he had not met with the two UN diplomats in charge of the UFO question!"

This, of course, didn’t mean that the meeting hadn’t taken place and we shouldn’t reject the claim just because the inside source turned out to be unreliable and the UN denied that it happened. Where would Ufology be if it wasn’t for those who claimed inside knowledge and who were eventually shown to have been less than honest in some of their claims? We listen to men (well, one man) who was thrown in jail for child molestation, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth about his inside knowledge. We listen to those who claim high military rank only to learn that they hadn’t served in the military, or in the grade claimed, only to be told their records have been changed to make them look bad. How much of this crap are we supposed to swallow?

In the end, we’re left with another black eye for Ufology. It’ll be said that this whole sorry episode was another of the brilliant disinformation campaigns that the government has engineered to keep the truth buried when, in reality, it is just one more case of someone inventing a story to propel himself into the UFO spotlight. The landscape is littered with many examples from Cliff Stone and his 57 variety of aliens, to Gerald Anderson who injected himself into the Roswell UFO crash only to be caught in various lies, to George Adamski (or a couple of dozen other contactees) who claimed to have ridden on flying saucers with the benevolent space brothers to the nonsense of MJ-12.

The only thing to remember from this is that it was members of the UFO community who investigated the claims and revealed them for what they were. I know that the skeptics and debunkers will get the credit, but it really belongs to those who did the work, some of them cited here.

Oh, yeah... and we never learn. Tomorrow will have another story like this and in the end, it’s about the only thing people will remember... that some guy claimed to know a lot about UFOs but really didn’t.

UFO at Trindade Island

(Blogger’s Note: When people suggest there is no evidence of alien visitation, one of the first things pointed to are the photographs taken in 1958. Skeptics have said that only the photographer saw the object, that he was a note "trick" photographer, and that these pictures have been proven to be a hoax. Now, thanks to friends in Brazil, we have a witness who was there and who can shed some light on the topic. My thanks to A. J. Gevaerd, Alexandre de Carvalho Borges and Eduardo Rado for their work and the permission to reprint the article.)

Interview with Amilar Vieira Filho After 50 years a witness to a UFO at Trindade Island talks about criticism over the case.

By Alexandre de Carvalho Borges,

consultant of the Brazilian UFO Magazinee-mail address:

unificatordigitalis@yahoo.com.br

Translated by Eduardo Radovolunteer translator of the Brazilian UFO Magazinee-mail address:

eduardoradotradutor@yahoo.com.br

Amilar Viera Filho, now 82, was a witness to the famous UFO case occurred in 1958 which became worldly known as Trindade Island Case. Amilar lives with his wife in Icarai Beach, Niteroi (RJ),and was the president of Icarai Underwater Fishing Club at the time. He was a lawyer and worked for Banco do Brasil.

The Trindade Island Case is a classic in Ufology mentioned by ufologists as one of the greatest evidence of the UFO phenomenon on Earth. This case should be only one among many others in the archives of ufology if there were not four impressive pictures of the UFO taken by a professional photographer called Almiro Barauna. Those pictures were shown worldwide and are contained in several specialized books being continuously debated and discussed even 50 years after the case.

From the time of the occurrence opinions were divided with some publications attacking the photographer by accusing him of fraud and manipulation of the pictures. Others defend their authenticity because they know Barauna's reputation and also because the sighting is supported by testimonials from many other people that were aboard the ship Almirante Saldanha, stage to the sighting. Witnesses observed the UFO hovering over the sea and the island while only Barauna was ready to use his camera to register the object in the sky.

The sighting was very quick. According to calculations from the Brazilian Navy it took no more than 14 seconds. Despite the short duration, some reports and articles on the case tell that many people were at the deck of the ship and could witness the UFO. At the time reporters could interview some of them while others gave their testimonials in anonymity. However, only a few from those eyewitnesses had their names disclosed for posterity. This turns difficult the attempt to list all those eyewitnesses in order to rewrite that fact with a new look. We know that most of them are dead now and some others could not be reached. Amilar would be the only witness alive that had the name disclosed by newspapers and articles were written over these years.

Some witnesses who were in the ship at the moment of the encounter are known by name to date: the photographer, Almiro Barauna; Amilar Vieira Filho, president of Icarai Underwater Fishing Club; Jose Teobaldo Viegas, Brazilian Air Force Reserve Captain; Homero Ribeiro, 1st Lieutenant; Paulo Moreira da Silva, Commander; Mauro Andrade, employee at Bank of London; Aloisio Araujo, no reference to his occupation; Jose Saldanha da Gama, Captain; Carlos Ferreira Bacellar, Lieutenant-Commander; Farias de Azevedo, photographer; Fernando, geologist.

Despite being on board, not all of them were eyewitnesses to the UFO. Moreover, the presence of the geologist Fernando is not verified, since reports say he must have left the ship before in the island. Names of other witnesses were not disclosed, however, newspapers and Barauna say that some military were interviewed at that time but preferred anonymity. There is also reference to sailors and sergeants who would have seen everything, but unfortunately their names are not known nowadays.The following interview was taken by phone and focused on questions prepared based on current criticism and old ones being revived nowadays.

After so many years, Amilar restates that he really saw the UFO and the occurrence was real. Years after his sighting at Trindade Island he had another visual contact together with his wife. This time it was a USO over Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. What we could learn from this is that the episode gets reinforced despite some inconsistencies here and there when we join together all documents related to the case. Such inconsistencies may arise from witnesses particular points of view subject to the observation of an unknown phenomenon without any previous parameters. One can not rule out that many inconsistencies may arise from totally wrong sources.

Finally, if there was any photographic fraud performed by Barauna this was never confirmed despite all analyses conducted. As the interviewee say, if there was any fraud in the pictures it was made from the real UFO observation at Trindade Island.

Alexandre de Carvalho Borges: Do you have the names of the 48 people that witnessed the UFO?

Amilar Vieira Filho: No... I don't... not even the names of the crew.

Who mentioned the number of 48?

I haven't heard that, not about 48 people seeing the object. I have no information on that.

Alexandre: So there were not so many people seeing the object?

Amilar: Everybody was at the deck, everybody looked at it, but I don't know if there were 48 people looking at the object.

Alexandre: Was there any confusion on board at the moment of the sighting?

Amilar: Yes, there was a lot of noise and confusion.

Alexandre: Don't you have the name of any military officer?

Amilar: No, I don't. I met Bacellar in that ship [Lieutenant-commander Carlos Alberto Bacellar] and Captain Saldanha da Gama [Jose Santos de Saldanha da Gama].

Alexandre: Did Bacellar saw the UFO?

Amilar: No, he didn't; nor Captain Saldanha da Gama. It was a very quick sighting, didn't take long.

Alexandre: Before that event did you have any information on other sightings at the island before the arrival of your group from Icarai?

Amilar: We heard about objects appearing over the island only after that occurrence and the pictures taken by Barauna. Bacellar had no authorization to disclose information on UFO sightings occurred in that island.

Alexandre: But didn't you hear anything, Weren't there any comments from the crew about objects being seen in that island?

Amilar: No, I had never heard that kind of story. Also, we stayed there only for two days. The ship was there to deliver supplies and we went on diving for two days only.

Alexandre: Testimonials say that you were the first one to spot the UFO and then called Jose Viegas [Jose Teobaldo Viegas, then Brazilian Air Force Reserve Captain] who, in turn, called Almiro Barauna. Is that true?

Amilar: Viegas must have seen it first and then called Barauna, because I saw it afterwards, when the object was already beside Desejado Peak.

Alexandre: So Jose Viegas was the first one to see the UFO?

Amilar: Yes, Viegas was the first. He said he saw a door, a window, etc. I haven't seen any of these. He gave an interview about it, which I avoided because I thought it would be kind of ridiculous. I don't like to talk about it, never wanted to get involved. That time I gave only one interview to O Globo newspaper with my little daughter in my arms and asked the reporter to write exactly what I had said, not to increase anything.

Alexandre: Was that an event that influenced your life or was that irrelevant?

Amilar: No big influence, I just skipped a few days of work at the bank. The Brazilian Navy also asked us not to disclose anything. We spent one month without talking about the event. Barauna had an agreement with Diarios Associados newspaper in order to publish the story as soon as the Navy granted the authorization. However, a director from Correio da Manha newspaper saw the pictures held by president Kubitschek and was to publish that on Monday. Then, Diarios Associados decided to publish too in that same morning.

Alexandre: Where are the other members of Icarai Underwater Fishing Club?

Amilar: We were five. Almiro Barauna passed away, Mauro Andrade [employee at the Bank of London], Aloisio Araujo, and Jose Viegas passed away too. I'm the only one remaining.

Alexandre: How about Farias de Azevedo?

Amilar: Yes... the photographer. He worked for Jornal do Brasil. He passed away too.

Alexandre: And where are the negatives today?

Amilar: I don't know! Barauna is dead and I don't know what happened with them. [Note: It is known today that Barauna's widow is in possession of the negatives of pictures obtained by him.]

Alexandre: Did you see them on board?

Amilar: Yes, I have the pictures here with me, the positives.

Alexandre: Skeptics ask how could you see the shape of the UFO in the negatives after the development on board, once it was very tiny in that negative.

Amilar: I'll tell you one thing, I didn't see it. The negative was held by the Brazilian Navy.

Alexandre: Reports from that time say that Barauna showed the negatives to all military as soon as he left the development chamber on board.

Amilar: But I wasn't there at the moment of the development of the pictures. I was at the quarter deck. That was in 1958, I was the president of Icarai Underwater Fishing Club, now I'm 82. I don't have further details to give. What I saw was only a bright object which showed a grayish light when stopped.

Alexandre: So it changed colors?

Amilar: Yes, it did. It was bright when I saw it beside Desejado Peak. After that he was hovering over the island and got brighter then went away to disappear on the horizon.

Alexandre: Which color was it when it came from the sea?Amilar: When I saw the object it was already beside Desejado Peak. When I was called, it was already there. When hovering it increased speed and brightness and went away until it disappear at the sea. This is my observation. I saw a bright object without any details in surface, no more than this.

Alexandre: Did it show any rotation movement?

Amilar: No, I saw just a gray object which turned bright then went away slowly then increased speed until it disappear on the horizon of the sea.

Alexandre: When it turned bright, what color it had?

Amilar: It was something like a fluorescent light. The object was gray, but I didn't see any details on the surface. As it became brighter, it started to move slowly. After that, the light got brighter and it went over the island until disappear. That was my observation. I didn't see when it arrived at the Peak.

Alexandre: Did the ship radar spot any UFO before the sighting?

Amilar: I don't know about this. I have no idea.

Alexandre: Were you called by the Navy to testify?

Amilar: No, I was called only once by a reporter from O Globo newspaper.

Alexandre: So you have never told this story in other places?

Amilar: No, I try to avoid it. I went to the bank to work and people use to laugh at me, they used to toss a coin saying it was a flying saucer. I avoided the subject because of this.

Alexandre: What do you think about the criticism over Barauna when even friends say he did some photographic tricks to mock a UFO?

Amilar: This is because Barauna was always a very capable photographer. He pictured everything! An article says that he pictured the Rio de Janeiro Fleet. [Note: Published in Mundo Ilustrado magazine, in 1954, before the sighting at the island]. But what made me believe even more is the fact that the negatives were taken from the camera on board. He didn't touch anything. The negatives were impounded by the Navy.

Alexandre: Some current criticism say that Barauna was together with Jose Viegas at the moment of the development of the pictures and they might have arranged some fraud at the occasion.

Amilar: I believe that the pictures were developed in the presence of authorities of the ship together with them. It was not the case of Barauna and Viegas developing the pictures without anyone else awareness.

Alexandre: But reports from that time say that the military stayed outside the chamber waiting for the development of the pictures. Captain Bacellar was outside waiting for the development.

Amilar: Well, I don't know about that because at that moment I was at the quarter deck. I can not guarantee anything.

Alexandre: Another remark says that one of the pictures show the object in an inverted position compared to others. The second picture showing the object over Crista do Galo Mount would be similar to the first picture when the UFO was still arriving at the island, however, this second picture shows the UFO in an inverted position compared to the first one.

Amilar: I am not an expert, I have nothing to say.

Alexandre: Such remark says that Barauna would have created a fraud. In summary, Barauna would have inverted and manipulated the object in that picture...

Amilar: It could be, but that object was really in the sky. I can assure that because I saw it and I'm saying that I'm sure!

Alexandre: What do you mean with "it could be"?Do you mean he could have played any tricks?

Amilar: No, I don't know! I don't know if he played some kind of trick as you say, what I'm saying is that the object was really in the sky. If he did anything it was from what was seen in the sky. But as everyone else are dead, I'm the only one to tell the story and I'm telling what I saw. I have no doubt that what I saw was not any illusion.

Alexandre: OK! I'm asking you about this because the possibility of a fraud was very much commented even among photographers that were his friends at that time.

Amilar: I have never taken part in UFO subjects, but it was not that I am a skeptic. My wife, for example, believes in UFOs. I saw a very strange object with her in Niteroi, but I'm not going to say that it was a flying saucer, I can only say that was an unidentified flying object. I don't like to talk about it, but since you called me I'm being kind to tell you what I saw. I've already told what I saw, an object did appear in the sky. Barauna was a photographer and had a collection of cameras. Maybe he even got some prize taking pictures of the object, who knows? You might have testimonials of people saying he mocked the pictures, etc, but even authorities sent the negatives for analysis at the Cruzeiro do Sul Air Photogrametrics Service and the conclusion was that they "could not say that was a hoax". So, it could have been a fraud, but it could be such a well done... But the object was really in the sky, nobody can deny it. I saw that, then went to my cabin because it is very annoying having people asking about that, I never liked it. I have no interest in discussing if there was a fraud or not. I'm just saying that this was my observation, I saw the object and I will never deny it!

[At this point the interview with Amilar is over and he passes the phone on to his wife who didn't want to tell her name, so that she could tell us the sighting of a USO in the municipality of Niteroi (Amilar was there too). Below is the wife's brief testimonial.]

Alexandre: This other sighting happened after of before the sighting at Trindade Island?

Amilar's Wife (AW): It was much after that, I believe it was in 1963. I had never thought about that before, never had any interest.

Alexandre: Did you take any pictures?

AW: No.

Alexandre: And how did it happen?

AW: I was in a village, in Niteroi, and as in that time there weren't many buildings, we could observe a lot. It was around 5:30-6:00 PM in a place with many people and, strangely enough, I didn't see anyone commenting after that. The object that I was had lights around it like a car lantern, but it has many colors with no colors in the middle of it. I saw it together with Amilar, with my daughter and an aunt of mine. Everyone saw it at the same time.

Alexandre: Did it look like the UFO pictured at Trindade Island?

AW: No.

Alexandre: How long did that observation took?

AW: It took very long. We sat on a bench at the beach and observed its whole travel. It took more than half an hour. When I first saw it was very low, then went higher but still relatively low. Then he stood still showing those colorful lights, after that it went higher and the colors disappeared leaving only a bright light like a full moon. Then it went left, then right and stood between the Pao de Acucar and Galeao in a swinging up and down movement. At that moment we could see a light that disappear afterwards. Then, when it was a little closer to Rio de Janeiro than Niteroi, it descended and dived in the sea making no bubbles or reflection.

Alexandre: Getting back to the sighting from 1958 in Trindade Island, what did you think when Amilar arrived home telling the story?

AW: He arrived telling he saw a very strange object with no defined shape and odd movements. When he saw this other object he realized that the movement was the same and was also silent.

Alexandre: Did you meet Almiro Barauna?

AW: Yes, I thought he was a very serious man. A very closed person and not any exhibitionist.

A. J. Gevaerd,

Editor, Brazilian UFO Magazine

http://www.ufo.com/.

brgevaerd@ufo.com.

braj@gevaerd.com

Flushing Queens, New York June 21, 1968

On The witness, a president of an advertizing agency, told Air Force investigators that he, and others were traveling from New York to Washington, D.C. Because the sky was beautiful, with the sun setting, he decided to take several pictures. Holding the camera outside the car window, as they traveled at sixty-five miles an hour. The witness told the Air Force that his vision was limited because they were in a sports car, and that he didn’t see anything strange in the sky. The objects were seen when the slide film was developed.

After they returned to New York, and with the film being projected, for the first time, they saw the objects near the bridge. The witness had the pictures blown up so that the objects were about a foot in diameter. He said that they were domed discs, with indentations on the dome. He believed they were metallic, and that they were reflecting the light of the sun. According to him, based on their position at the bridge, the objects were moving to the south, following the river.

The witness knew that the Air Force had been investigating UFOs and thought they would be best qualified to analyze the photographs. An Air Force officer, Lieutenant Conaway, from the Information Office at Suffolk County Air Force Base, reported to Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla, of Project Blue Book, investigated. He assured the witness that his original photographs would be returned, but that the Air Force couldn’t properly analyze anything other than the original negatives. Since these were color slides, the Air Force officer wanted the original transparencies.

Conaway was concerned because the man told him that the photographs were valuable. According to the report, in a sentense that was underlined, Conaway noted that the man had said he "had numerous money offers from magazines."

Conaway was told by Quintanilla that Air Force regulations demanded that he sent the original negatives and that the forms be completed properly. Quintanilla then told Conaway that the witness was probably trying to get the "Air Force to say that his photographs are authentic. Well, all photographs were authentic, but UFOs aren’t."

Although the photographs were provided to the Air Force, apparently the paperwork, that is the report by the witness, was not completed quickly enough. The Air Force returned the photographs before they received the report. Therefore, according to the Air Force, the case was labeled as "insufficient data for a scientific analysis." In this case, it meant that the witness had not complied with Air Force requests to complete their rather lengthy forms.

One of the Air Force forms, in which the officer asked specific questions, ended with a summary. It directed that the investigator "State your own personal evaluation of the report. What do you think the object was? Do you think something other than the sighting motivated the caller? Include anything which may add to the objectivity of the report. Include your evaluation of the caller’s reliability."

Sergeant Robert Becker filled out the form and wrote, "According to the caller’s description, he did photograph some type of object, rather than an optical illusion. I would not however, exclude the possibility of uncommonly shaped high or middle clouds. I did not form any opinion of some motivation for calling. I did not[e] one apparent contradiction; he said he was just photographing a beutiful (sic) sunset, yet his discription (sic) of the photos sounds to me like he might have, in fact, been shooting at the objects."

The problem here is that the witness had, quite clearly, studied the photographs for a long period before alerting the Air Force. He told Air Force investigators that they had studied the photographs. That study certainly could have contributed to the witnesses telling of the story, suggesting that the witness had actually tried to photograph the objects rather than just a beautiful sky.

The Air Force attitude here is also of interest. Their bias, that photographs are real, but UFOs are not is interesting. He suggests that by this point, June 1968, they were just attempting to explain rather than investigate.

CNCNews Doesn't Get It, Either

(Blogger’s Note: I asked Billy Cox for permission to reprint his column here, not because of the political aspects of it, but because it suggests something a little deeper about UFOs and who is interested in them. We have people with piles of money using their power to talk with other powerful, political people, to learn more about UFOs. While much of the media still delivers UFO stories with a sneer and a snicker, there are some educated and connected people who wish to learn more.

Although scientists will lecture us about the lack of evidence, those same scientists wouldn’t be caught dead actually reviewing the evidence. In some cases, such as that of Dr. Donald Menzel, they will invent answers just so that they can label cases without bothering to really understand or investigate them. Menzel, for example, labeled the photographs taken of the Lubbock Lights as a hoax for no reason except no other explanation could be offered. In my investigations of the Lubbock Lights, I interviewed the photographer some fifty years after the event and he still doesn’t know what he photographed.

So, I thought the following would be illustrative of things in the world today. It provides some insight into UFOs, who thinks what about them, and who just doesn’t seem to understand anything other than their own agendas.)

CNSNews Doesn't Get It, Either

By Billy Cox

billy.cox@heraldtribune.com

Let's run through it again, s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y, for this annoying Internet pest called CNSNews.com:

Once upon a time, there was this guy named Laurance Rockefeller. Rocky was a billionaire. Rocky wanted the feds to declassify their UFO files. So in the 1990s, Rocky started this thing called the UFO Disclosure Initiative. He sent briefing papers to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He met with them at his Wyoming ranch in 1995. There are photos.

Additional details continue to dribble out of the Clinton Presidential Library via the National Archives. That's largely because of the Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Canadian researcher Grant Cameron.

CNSNews.com threw another hissy fit on Monday, complaining about how the archivists are responding to the UFO stuff more quickly than FOIAs about "the 1993 health care task force headed by then-first lady Hillary Clinton, the Marc Rich pardon and the Clinton administration's tracking of Osama bin Laden." Yes, CNS is holding its breath and turning blue.

CNSNews.com is an outgrowth of the right-wing Media Research Center, founded in 1987 by Brent Bozell III. The prospect of a second Clinton administration is giving him the willies, so he understandably wants as much official-document ammo as possible to sling at Hillary.

But if execs at CNSNews.com had the agility to move off their stale talking points, they would understand that UFOs are already Cameron's gift to that effort. No one in the MSM has asked Senator Clinton about what happened at those meetings. Documents indicate she received Rocky's briefing papers.

UFOs are the kiss of death to a presidential campaign. Most of this year's contenders have the luxury of laughing this stuff off. But not the senator. She's got a paper trail. Why? What exactly did she discuss with Rockefeller? Her husband's curiosity about UFOs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7X8HK-3iWM

is a matter of public record. Does she share her spouse's position on disclosure?

Imagine the sound bite bonanza for adversaries in both parties if someone confronted Senator Clinton with sharp and focused questions on UFOs in a public venue. Sadly for the outfit that bills itself as a paragon of investigative journalism, when it comes to this stuff, CNSNews.com is as worthless as the liberal-media titans it regularly demonizes.

The Dogon Mystery - Introduction and Section 1

(Blogger's Note: Issac Koi published the following on UFO UpDates. I read it over and liked the format and the information. I thought it was something that should see a wider circulation, which is not to say that all that many read this blob. However, it provides some interesting information and follows in a tradition that I have attempted to start here. I believe he provides reference to the articles on the positive side of the debate so that those interested might access them as well.

The only changes I made were correcting some spelling errors I noticed and an attempt to format the article in a way that made it easier to follow.

Here then is Issac Koi's Dogon article)

I thought some of you might be interested in my article Dogon Alien 'Mystery' Demystified, which can be found (with proper formatting and various hyperlinks) at the link below:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread326227/pg1

I was provoked into writing about this subject by an article promoting the Dogon mystery which was distributed by abovetopsecret.com (ATS) via its email newsletter to its 60,000 members.

Since I thought that the relevant article only gave one side of the story (a point which the author of that article has since accepted), I drafted a fairly lengthy article in response.

My article (Dogon Alien 'Mystery' Demystified) was not accepted for distribution via the abovetopsecret.com email newsletter, so I simply posted it on their forum at the link above.

I'm happy for my article to be displayed elsewhere (although, for formatting reasons, some hyperlinks may disappear if displayed other than on the ATS forums).

Kind Regards,
Isaac

Dogon Alien 'Mystery' Demystified
By Isaac Koi.
Copyright 2008.


Synopsis

On 12 October 2007, the ATS email newsletter contained a provocative article by NGC2736 entitled How Could They Know That? The Dogon Mystery at the link below:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread308383/pg1

'That article related to astronomical knowledge (particularly relating to the Sirius solar system) attributed to the Dogon people of the Republic of Mali in Western Africa.

By the time the Dogon people were questioned by two French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, between 1931 and 1950, the Dogon supposedly had knowledge of various astronomical matters (particularly relating to the Sirius solar system) that could not have been discovered using the technology available to them.

Various researchers have stated, or implied, that the relative knowledge derived from alien visitors to the Earth.

The article by NGC2736 claimed that the things told [by the Dogon] to these two outsiders back in the 1930s were astounding, especially for that day and age, and from that remote a people. Their oral history told of the correct motion of the near planets, and of the moons of Jupiter. They spoke of the rings of Saturn, and of the star Sirius. How could they know that it had an invisible companion, a fact scarcely known to most Europeans even then? How could they know its true orbital length of 50 years? And how could they have all this in their thousands year old oral history?NGC2736's article is a concise and well-written account of one side of the debate regarding the Dogon. But it only presented one side.This article seeks to present some of the alternative answers to the question raised by NGC2736, i.e. How Could They Know That?Numerous sceptics, notably popular astronomer Carl Sagan, have suggested that the knowledge attributed to the Dogon may have been obtained from Europeans prior to questioning by Griaule and Dieterlen.This article is split into the following sections:

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: Alleged Knowledge

Section 3: ContaminationSection 4: Out-dated Knowledge

Section 5: What about Sirius C?

Section 6: Did the Dogon even say anything about Sirius Band Sirius C?

Section 7: Conclusion

Section 8: References

I shall discuss the claim by the leading proponent of the The Sirius Mystery that the alleged discovery in 1995 of a third star in the Sirius solar system has rendered most criticism obsolete, and give several compelling reasons for considering that claim to be severely flawed. (See Section 5: What about Sirius C?).

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

Although not mentioned in NGC2736's article, the Dogon mystery gained widespread publicity when Robert Temple wrote a book in 1976 entitled The Sirius Mystery. Since 1976, numerous researchers have pointed out serious problems with the content of that book. Indeed, the Sirius Mystery has probably received more detailed attention from scientists than almost any story relating to UFOs and alien visitors.

The claims made in Temple's book about the content of the Dogon myths are based on work by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, two French anthropologists. They published an article in French about their research in 1950. The research was carried out in the 1930s and 1940s.

Erich Von Daniken, the famous (infamous?) author of several popular books on ancient astronauts has written that Robert Temple's book confirmed my theories (Von Daniken, 1977, pages 81-82).

Several more recent authors have given relatively uncritical presentations of Temple's views (e.g. Coomer, 1999, pages 13-14) and/or of Temple's suggestions that his theories have resulted in the CIA showing an interest in him (e.g. Hansen, 2000, pages 191-192).

Books by several popular scientists have included lengthy discussions of Robert Temple's claims about the Dogon, including Carl Sagan (a 16 page discussion) and James Oberg (an 11 page discussion).

The Dogon mystery's claims to fame include the following:

*Carl Sagan has commented that at first glance the Sirius legend of the Dogon seems to be the best candidate evidence available today for past contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization (Sagan, 1979, page 87).

* Ian Ridpath (a British author and broadcaster on astronomy and space) has suggested that the Dogon claims are perhaps the most puzzling of all ancient astronaut stories (Ridpath, 1978a, page 189).

* E C Krupp has said taken at face value the Dogon beliefs are quite amazing (Krupp, 1981, page 291).

* The Dogon mystery is one of the few stories relating to alien visitors that has been discusesd in the prestigious science journal Nature, in an article by Michael Ovenden in 1976 (Ovenden, 1976, pages 617-618).

* Respected ufologist Thomas E Bullard has written in relation to the Dogon people's lore that here alone is anything close to evidence that some external source may have provided people of earth with advanced knowledge (Bullard, 1998, page 135).

* In relation to the Dogon's alleged knowledge of Sirius B, famous British astronomer Patrick Moore commented It seems surprising (Moore, 1976, page 115).

The Sirius mystery has been the subject of severalprevious threads on the ATS forums, including the following:

* The Dogon Tribe Research Project:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread26808/pg1

* The Sirius Mystery - book by Robert Temple claims aquatic aliens have been to Earth and will return:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread306088/pg1

*ATS Premium: How Could They Know That? The Dogon Mystery.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread308383/pg1

* The Dogon People and the Sirius Mystery:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread10246/pg1

* The Dogon tribe...

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread68396/pg1

For additional information (particularly photographs)relating to the Dogon, see a relevant entry on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon

For example, Ashpole has suggested that the Sirius star system is not a likely home for life (Ashpole, 1989, page 151) while Ian Ridpath has referred to its extreme unlikelihood of supporting life (Ridpath, 1978a, page 199).

There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, the stars in Sirius solar system are relatively young. In relation to Sirius A, Ashpole, 1989, page 152 Sirius A is a very young star: only about 500 million years old. This star will end its life-cycle long before advanced life could evolve on any suitable planet there (Ashpole, 1989, page 152). Similarly, Ian Ridpath has suggested that Sirius B has a life-span of no more than about 1000 million years, which does not seem to be long enough for advanced life to develop (Ridpath, 1978a, page 191).

Secondly, Robert S. Harrington of the U.S. Naval Observatory published information indicating that planetary orbits in the habitable zone around Sirius, defined as the region in which water would be liquid, are unstable (Ridpath, 1978a, page 193).

Ian Ridpath has concluded astronomical evidence argues strongly against Temple's ancient astronaut theory (Ridpath, 1978a, page 193).

However, the force of these arguments is considerably undermined by the fact that the relevant planet supposedly orbits Sirius C, not Sirius A or Sirius B.On the other hand, it is possible to come up with one or two arguments supporting the plausibility of alien visitors coming from Sirius. In particular, Sirius is (in astronomical terms) basically a near neighbour. It is barely 8 light-years from Earth. This is only twice as far away as the nearest solar system to our own.So, no clear prove emerges from these points. It is therefore necessary to consider the evidence as to:

(a) What the Dogon allegedly knew about the Sirius system;

(b) How the Dogon could have gained that knowledge.

I shall also give below details of an article written by an anthropologist in 1991 which casts considerable doubt upon the entire basis upon which the debate about The Sirius Mystery had proceeded during the previous couple of decades. (See the discussion in Section 3 (Contamination) and Section 6 (Did the Dogon even say anything about Sirius B and Sirius C?) of the article written in 1991 by Walter E. A. Van Beek).

Sections 2 and 3

SECTION 2: ALLEGED KNOWLEDGE

What did the Dogon allegedly know about the Sirius system?

Alleged Knowledge: Sirius B and its period of rotation

Sirius A is the brightest star in the sky. Sirius B, on the other hand, much dimmer. It is not visible to the naked eye. Yet the Dogon reportedly discussed Sirius B with Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen between 1931 and 1950. Not only that, but Robert Temple claims the Dogon know the actual orbital period of this invisible star, which is fifty years.

The statement actually attributed to the Dogon is slightly more ambiguous: The period of the orbit is counted double, that is, one hundred years, because the Siguis are convened in pairs of 'twins', so as to insist on the principle of twin-ness (Temple, 1976, page 24;Temple, 1998, page 100).

However, the Dogon statements about the existence of Sirius B and its orbital period reflected information known in the West for nearly a century prior to the visits by Griaule and Dieterlen. The German astronomer F W Bessel suggested that long-term motion of Sirius A was affected by the gravitational influence of a dark companion with a fifty-year period (Bessel, 1844). Sirius B was discovered by a direct visual observation eighteen years later by Alvan G Clark (Flammarion, 1877; Sagan, 1979, pages 90-91).

Could some early visitor to the Dogon people have been aware of that information? Yes. MIT physicist Dr Kenneth Brecher wrote an article in 1977 that reported that Sirius B was important and widely disseminated news in the 1920s and stated that he had found references in the 1920s to Sirius B in 'Le Monde', 'The New York Times', and 'Scientific American' (Story, 1980, page 119).

Robert Temple's own book mentions in passing an article by a Dr P. Baize which appeared in the September 1931 issue of Astronomie concerned the discovery, orbit, period and density of Sirius B (Temple, 1976, page 27; Temple, 1998, page 103).

Alleged Knowledge: Density of Sirius B

One of the most remarkable facts the Dogon are supposed to have known relates to the density of Sirius B.

Sirius B is a white dwarf star. White dwarfs have mass comparable to that of the Sun, but a relatively small volume - comparable to that of something only the size of the Earth (see the Wikipedia page relating to white dwarfs at the link below).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf

Robert Temple quotes Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen as reporting the following about the Dogon's views: the star which is considered to be the smallest thing in the sky is also the heaviest: 'Digitaria is the smallest thing there is. It is the heaviest star:' It consists of a metal called sagala, which is a little brighter than iron and so heavy 'that all earthly beings combined cannot lift it'. In effect the star weighs the equivalent of 480 donkey-loads (about 38,000 kg. = 85,000 lb.), the equivalent of all seeds, or of all the iron on earth,' although, in theory, it is the size of a stretched ox-skin or a mortar. (Griaule and Dieterlen, 1950, at Temple, 1976, page 42-44; Temple, 1998, page 492).

Temple suggests that the statement that The star which is considered to be the smallest thing in the sky is also the heaviest is the most amazing of all the Dogon statements (Temple, 1976, page 24; Temple, 1998, pages 100 and 102).

While the Dogon did not have the technology to find out for themselves that Sirius B had a high density, they could have learnt this from others (not necessarily aliens) prior to the 1930s.

Europeans had thought that Sirius B had a high density since the late nineteenth century, i.e. long before Griaule visited the Dogon. Knowledge of the relative motion of Sirius A and Sirius B permitted estimates of their masses. Both Sirius A and Sirius B have masses about the same as the Sun. But Sirius B is about ten thousand times fainter. Either it is much smaller or has a much lower temperature. But in the late nineteenth century it was believed that stars of the same mass had approximately the same temperature. Carl Sagan has stated, therefore, by the turn of the [nineteenth] century it was widely held that the temperature of Sirius B was not remarkably low. Accordingly, the concept of Sirius B as an extremely dense star was widely held in the first few decades of this century (Sagan, 1979, page 91).

Indeed, while Temple suggests that the Dogon knowledge of Sirius B's high density was amazing, even the background information of his book indicates that this knowledge was available to humans prior to the 1930s. Somewhat buried in a footnote in Temple's book is the following information: In 1915 Dr W. S. Adams of Mt Wilson Observatory made the necessary observations to learn the temperature of Sirius B, which is 80000, half as much again as our sun's. It then began to be realized that Sirius B was an intensely hot star which radiated three to four times more heat and light per square foot than our sun. It then became possible to calculate the size of Sirius B, which is only three times the radius of the Earth, yet its mass was just a little less than that of our sun. A theory of white dwarfs then developed to account for Sirius B, and other white dwarfs were later discovered (Temple, 1976, pages 33-34, footnote 4; Temple, 1998, page 115, footnote 4).

Was information about Sirius B's high density only reported in some obscure technical journal, unlikely to be conveyed to the Dogon by any Western visitors? No, it wasn't limited in this way. Carl Sagan has reported that the peculiar nature of the companion of Sirius was extensively reported in books and in the press (Sagan, 1979, page 91). He quotes a discussion of white dwarfs, including the Companion of Sirius, in Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington's book The Nature of the Physical World. That book was published in 1928 and was translated into many languages, including French (Sagan, 1979, page 92).

So, the Dogon's knowledge was not that amazing. It was already information known to those in the West (and, according to various skeptics, the Dogon may have got thatinformation from the West).

SECTION 3: CONTAMINATION

Contamination: Introduction As discussed in more detail below, numerous sceptics (including Carl Sagan) have suggested that the astronomical knowledge attributed to the Dogon may have been obtained from Europeans prior to questioning by Griaule and Dieterlen.

Sirius A is the brightest star in the sky. It's appearance in the dawn sky marked the beginning of the Egyptian calendar - and warned of the impending summer's heat and Nile floods (Oberg, 1982, page 122). Thus, it is not improbable that the Dogon already had some myths about that star and/or may have wished to discuss Sirius with any Western contacts.

Carl Sagan is one of many skeptical researchers that have suggested that the Dogon may have regaled a visitor with their Sirius lore and asks a Western visitor what his Sirius myths may be (Sagan, 1979, page 92).

Many of the discussions of the Dogon mystery give examples of the problems that can arise in anthropological investigations as a consequence of prior contact between the subjects of the study and other cultures. The subjects of the study may be contaminated by such prior contact.

One rather extreme and amusing example is given by Carl Sagan. He recounts a tale about an (apocryphal?) anthropologist that visited an elderly member of a tribe of Native Americans in the first decade of the twentieth century. After each question, the old man retreated into the darkened depths of the hogan. In each case, he emerged quarter of an hour later with a rich set of answers. Eventually the anthropologist asked his informant what he did each time he retreated into the Hogan. The old man smiled, withdrew, and returned with a well-thumbed copy of the Dictionary of American Ethnography, compiled by anthropologists in the previous decade (Sagan, 1979, pages 92-93).

Carl Sagan also recounts two stories which show how such contamination can arise. Both were told by the physician Dr D Carleton Gajdusek. In the more amusing of those stories, Dr Gajdusek visited a village in New Guinea in which there remained a tradition of cannibalism. While they, the visitors sang several Russian songs, including Otchi chornye. Some years later, Dr Gajdusek discussed traditional songs with young men elsewhere in the same region. They produced a clearly recognizable version of Otchi chornye. Many of the singers apparently thought the song traditional (Sagan, 1979, pages 94-96).

What about the Dogon themselves? Has such contamination occurred with them in relation to matters other than Sirius? Yes, it has. Van Beek has referred to many instances in which foreign elements (including Christian and Muslim traditions) were adopted and in a single generation became 'traditional' . [The Dogon] see no particular reason for any fundamental distinction between things learned from their Dogon forefathers and from newcomers (van Beek, 1991, pages 152-153).

Contamination: Relevant dates

The Dogon people were questioned Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen between 1931 and 1950.

Thus, the issue of potential contamination of the information by Western sources of astronomical knowledge have focused on possible contamination prior to 1931.

However, it should not be assumed that all the relevant information was obtained in 1931. Some of the information may only have been obtained much later. Indeed, Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen themselves stated that the main investigation was carried out among the Dogon between 1946 and 1950 (Griaule and Dieterlen, 1950, at Temple, 1976, page 35; Temple, 1998, pages 476-477).

More fundamental is the issue of whether there is any evidence that the knowledge attributed to the Dogon had been held by them prior to its communication to Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen between 1931 and 1950. Some of the proponents of the Sirius Mystery claim there is such evidence. For example, in response to criticisms of his theory by Carl Sagan, Robert Temple has suggested that the Dogon have had the relevant knowledge for hundreds of years, referring hundreds or thousands of objects, symbols, woven blankets, carved statues, etc., etc., which exist in those cultures relating to the 'Sirius Mystery' and stated that he is baffled by how these hundreds or thousands of objects are meant to have been expertly fabricated fakes purporting to be centuries old, fooling all dating experts (Temple, 1981).

However, few details of such hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence have been supplied by Robert Temple or anyone else.

Obvious questions about the hundreds or thousands pieces of evidence mentioned by Robert Temple are:

(1) What specific objects are relied upon?

(2) How do those specific objects prove that the alleged knowledge of the Dogon is centuries old?

If such objects and symbols did indeed exist, then the alternative explanation put forward by sceptics (i.e. contamination with Western knowledge) would be completely undermined.

Temple has written a lengthy book on the Sirius Mystery. He also substantially added to that book, after two decades of attacks by skeptics largely based upon the theory that the relevant knowledge is the result of recent contamination. So, why hasn't Temple answered the two basic questions posed above about the hundreds or thousands of objects and symbols?

The obvious inference is that he is unable to providecompelling answers to these questions.

Contamination - Possible Routes

How could astronomical knowledge from the West have beencommunicated to the Dogon people prior to them beingquestioned by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen between1931 and 1950?

What possible routes of contamination existed?

Well, there are quite a few.

It is important to realise at the outset that the Dogon were not extremely isolated. Supporters of the mystery have sometimes implied that this is the case. For example, Temple has referred to the implausibility of supposing a group of Western amateur astronomers had rushed out to the desolate hinterland of Mali to implant this knowledge in the presumably pliant minds of the Dogon priests (Temple, 1981).

However, the truth is somewhat different.

In fact, the Dogon were not isolated (Oberg, 1982, page 124). Ian Ridpath has pointed out that the Dogon live near an overland trade route, as well as close to the southern banks of the Niger river, which is another channel of trade (Ridpath, 1978a, page 199). More details has been provided by E C Krupp: The Dogon have, in fact, long been a relatively cosmopolitan, adaptive people. They live in the general vicinity of Timbuctu, which for centuries has been a major market city and a center for schools and scholars in west Africa. The Dogon have enjoyed regular communication with other cultures because they live so near a major trade route linking North Africa and Egypt with the sub-Sahara. In fact, French schools existed in the Dogon territory as early as 1907 and well before the 1920s, when there was considerable European interest in Sirius and research on its companion (Krupp, 1981, page 292)

Carl Sagan summarised the position by stating Perhaps the Western contact came from a European visitor to Africa, or from the local French schools, or perhaps from contacts in Europe by West Africans inducted to fight for the French in World War I (Sagan, 1979, page 90).

When looked at in detail, it is clear that there were several possible routes of contamination. I outline some of the evidence in relation to such routes below.Routes of contamination - White Fathers MissionariesOne of the various specific routes of contamination been suggested by various sceptics relates to missionaries (e.g. by Sagan and Ridpath). James Oberg has suggested that many missionaries are avid astronomers (Oberg, 1982, page 124).

In an apparent attempt to rebut this criticism of the Dogon mystery, in a revised edition of his book published in 1998, Robert Temple has stated that the White Fathers, a group of missionaries, confirmed to him in correspondence that none of their missionaries visited the Dogon until after 1931 (Temple, 1998, page 97). On his website, Mr Temple gives the following additional details: I wrote to the Father Superior of the White Fathers Mission in Mali and asked when the first missionaries were sent to the Dogon areas. He replied that the earliest missionaries arrived in 1949. By that time anthropologists had already obtained theDogon Sirius information. See:

http://www.robert-temple.com/papers/Sirius-AnswerCritics.html

Ignoring for the moment the fact that Temple's assertion only relates to missionaries related to the White Fathers' organisation (i.e. not all sources of potential missionaries to the Dogon), it is noteworthy that apparently conflicting statements have been made by various researchers on this point. Science journalist Ian Ridpath has written that I confirmed with the London headquarters of the White Fathers, a Catholic group who have been very active in this part of Africa, that missionaries from their sect had made contact with the Dogon in the 1920s. (Ridpath, 1978a, page 200).

So, Robert Temple claims the White Fathers have confirmed their first visit to the Dogon areas was in 1949 (and this claim is repeated on several websites), while Ian Ridpath claims to have been told by the White Fathers that first contact had been made in the 1920s.

Neither researcher mentions the apparent conflict of evidence on this point.As part of the process of drafting this article, during October 2007, I sent various queries to the White Fathers after obtaining contact details from the UK website of the White Fathers and from the international website of the White Fathers.

My queries were forwarded to Father Ivan Page, the Archivist for the White Fathers. He kindly took the time to respond on 29 October 2007 (Page, 2007). While he modestly stated that unfortunately he could not help very much, stating that a quick look in published sources does not answer my question.

Father Page was, however, able to provide some information on relevant ecclesiastical administration. He stated that the Dogon country originally came under the Apostolic Prefecture of Gao, a post founded in 1945. The name, and the residence of the superior, were changed to Mopti - now a diocese - when that post was founded in 1953. The three missions in the Dogon country proper were founded:

Pel in 1953,

Bandiagara in 1954,

and Barapirelli in 1947 (Page, 2007).

Father Page ventured the opinion that almost certainly there would have been some contact between our missionaries and the Dogons long before that.

However, to find traces of this contact would involve spending of much time trawling through unpublished sources, namely the correspondance of missionaries in what was originally called 'le Soudan français' before being narrowed down to Mali, and the reports of regional superiors and Vicars Apostolic (Page, 2007).

Perfectly understandably, Father Page did not have time to do this for me, nor did I ask him to do so - I am sure that the White Fathers have higher priorities than resolving apparent conflicts of evidence on such points. (I note that the relevant archive is in Rome if any other researcher has a desire to follow this point up).

Fortunately, during further research I think I found the answer in a book published during 1961. Mud and Mosaics by Father Gerard Rathe gives details of a journey across parts of Africa from 1957. In Chapter 7 of that book, Father Rathe gives detailed information about contact between the White Fathers and the Dogon people. The information below appears in that chapter 7 and is attributed by Father Rathe to a Monsignor Landru during discussions at Mopti:

The first news the White Fathers had about the Dogon people came to them at Bamako, two hundred miles away, when, in 1927, a French Administrator at Bandiagara wrote to the Bishop telling him that he had discovered a people, pagan and fetishist, who seemed a promising field for the sowing of the Gospel. Nothing could be done at that time from Bamako, and it was not until 1945 that the first direct contact was made with the Dogons.

Prima facie, this account is credible and consistent with the limited information supplied to me by the White Fathers. The level of detail in the account is impressive and difficult to reconcile with mere misunderstanding. It also possibly explains a considerable amount of the apparent conflict between the dates given by Ian Ridpath and Robert Temple respectively, with there being reference to the Dogon in records of the White Fathers from the 1920s but with no direct contact until the 1940s.

I raised the conflict in evidence with Ian Ridpath, who helpfully replied with several comments. He indicated that he could not throw any light on the first contact between the White Fathers and the Dogon, commenting that I simply reported what I was told (Ridpath, 2007). He further commented: As you point out, first contact would occur long before the setting up of any official missions in the area so the dates quoted by Robert Temple and myself could both be right, in their own way (Ridpath, 2007).

While the above information may seem to cast considerable doubt on suggestions that information about Sirius B was obtained from missionaries prior to the visits of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, it is vital to note that:

(a) Missionaries are merely one category of Westeners that may have been the source of contamination;

(b) The White Fathers are merely one group of missionaries.

Routes of contamination - Other missionariesMost discussions of the Sirius Mystery refer to missionaries in passing (if at all), with few specificsbeing given. Robert Temple and Ian Ridpath are exceptions, since they have discussed missionaries belonging to theWhite Fathers in some detail. However, even these two researchers have not referred to any other specific group of missionaries that was, or may have been, active in the area.Various websites paraphrase Robert Temple's information about the White Fathers in ways which imply (or expressly state) that the Dogon had no contact with any missionaries at all until the 1940s.

However, the White Fathers did not have a monopoly on sending missionaries to Africa prior to the 1940s.The White Fathers are a Catholic group of missionaries - what about other Catholic group, or groups representingother denominations?Given that the burden of proof lies upon Robert Temple and his supporters to provide evidence to support their claims, the failure to provide any information about the dates upon which other missionary groups became active in the area in itself is a significant failure. In my view, sceptics areentitled to point to the mere possibility that other missionary groups may have been active in the region.

However, there is actually evidence on this point which supports the contamination theory.In an article written in 1991 by van Beek (considered in more detail below), there is mention in passing of the fact that one individual (named Ambara) had frequented the Protestant mission (Sudan Evangelical Mission, predominantly Baptist) since his early youth (van Beek, 1991, page 157).

The article does not give details of the Sudan Evangelical Mission that Ambara allegedly frequented, e.g. the article does not expressly state where the mission was located or when it opened. However, the contents of the article strongly imply that the mission was frequented by members of the Dogon (or at least one member, Ambara) prior to the visits of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen.

How is this date implied?Well, according to van Beek, Ambara was first recruited to work with Griaule in 1931 (van Beek, 1991, page 155 citing page 209 of Griaule's Le Renard Pale) and in the period 1950-1955 Ambara was established as a mature Dogon elder (van Beek, 1991, page 155).

Thus, it appears that not only did at least one of the Dogon have contact with a mission prior to the visits of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen but further that individual subsequently had direct contact with Marcel Griaule.Routes of contamination - French schoolsMissionaries are not the only route by which information from Western scientists may have reached the Dogon. All the talk about missionaries risks reinforcing the few of the Dogon as some remote jungle tribe, only visited by the occasional brace white man on a mission from God.

In fact, there were French schools in the area prior to the visits of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen.

Peter and Roland Pesch of the Warner and Swasey Observatory have referred to the existence of French schools in the Dogon area since 1907 - see Pesch and Pesch , page 27 - citing M P Marti's book Les Dogon (1957) at page 92). Pesch and Pesch also mention Islamic schools in the area (Pesch and Pesch, page 27 - again citing M P Marti's book Les Dogon (1957) at page 92).

Temple has clearly read the article by Peter and Roland Pesch. He has discussed it in an article on his website entitled Distorted Evidence From E C Krupp (1977). Somewhat disingenuously, Temple points to one (irrelevant) error in a footnote to the Pesch article to supposedly demonstrate the superficial nature of their familiarity with the subject. He completely fails to acknowledge, or attempt to address, the substantive points made by Pesch and Pesch and the sources they cite. In particular, Temple has ignored the evidence of existence of French schools in the Dogon area since 1907.

Thus, Temple's discussion about the alleged lack of White Father missionaries in the area until the 1940s must be viewed, at the very least, as rather disingenuous and potentially misleading.

But is there any evidence that those interviewed by MarcelGriaule and Germaine Dieterlen had been to one of the French (or Islamic) schools in the region? Two points arise:

(1) The question is strictly irrelevant. The information may have been communicated to other members of the Dogon, and then been passed on to Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen.

(2) In fact, there is evidence that at least one of those interviewed by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen had been to a French school. The details of the relevant individual provide yet further indication of the contact between the Dogon and the Western world prior to the visits of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. The relevant individual is, once again, Ambara (referred to above in the context of the presence of other missionaries in the region). The article written by van Beek in 1991 refers to Ambara having spent considerable time outside Dogon country and to Ambara's French education - his study abroad as well as his schooling in Sanga (van Beek, 1991, page 156).

Routes of contamination - World War I

One of the specific means by which it has been suggested by sceptics that the relevant astronomical knowledge may have been obtained was from contacts in Europe by West Africans inducted to fight for the French in World War I (by Carl Sagan in his Broca's Brain (1979) at page 90 (in Chapter 6) of the Coronet paperback edition). Various other sceptics have referred to the participation of Dogon tribesmen in World War I, particularly in the French army. For example, James Oberg has stated that many [Dogon] served in the French army in World War I (Oberg, 1982, page 124).

However, Robert Temple states on his website that: I do not believe it is true that any Dogon tribesmen fought in any trenches in Europe in the First World War.

In an attempt to resolve this issue, I attempted to find an embassy of the Republic of Mali in England. Unfortunately, it does not have one here. I therefore contacted the Washington embassy of the Republic of Mali. I also contacted a university in the Republic of Mali. Unfortunately, I did not receive any response from the embassy or from that university.

Routes of contamination - Griaule himself

It appears that certain aspects of the Dogon culture render it particularly susceptible to cultural contamination.

It further appears that Griaule's personality and techniques were particularly prone to obtaining results that had been contaminated by his own knowledge and views.

Taking the Dogon culture first, Van Beek has reported that Dogon culture is oriented towards overt harmony and are very slow to correct each other, more senior individuals are the ones who know and consequently should not be contradicted (van Beek, 1991, page 152).Similar comments are made in a passage provided by Father Page of the White Fathers. Father Page helpfully provided an extract from the book Le Mali by his confrere [fellow-member], Joseph Roger de Benoist. That book is in French (see Endnote 1 for relevant original text), but the gist of the passage is that:

(1) the Dogon did not say no to Europeans, which they viewed as sent by God.

(2) If it was felt that the European came with an obsession and that the European wanted to find something, one helped the European to find what he came to seek. One invents ananswer, one improvises a legend.Turning next to Griaule's personality and techniques, it can be seen (in the light of knowledge of the Dogon culture) that the risks of obtained contaminated data were particularly high.

Van Beek reports that Griaule confronted his informants with items, be they artifacts, plants, animals, or stars, and expected them to provide adequate information immediately. Van Beek quotes one of Griaule's informants as saying Griaule thought each keke (cricket) had its own Dogon name, and he did not stop (van Beek, 1991, page 154).

Van Beek pokes fun of Griaule's belief that the Dogon had names for 24 different species of dung beetles, including a beetle wallowing only in the dung of grey horses, referring to an inability to take no for an answer and an unwillingness on the part of the informants to disappoint the researcher. Van Beek suggests the Dogon engaged in harmless games in which information was produced that did not exist beforehand, all the while clearly conforming to the white man's wishes.

Van Beek suggests many Dogon see Griaule even now as a forceful personality, in a situation of undisputed power, with a clearly expressed preference for specific information and his own ways of getting at it (van Beek, 1991, page 153). The Dogon reportedly viewed Griaule as the white man, endowed with power and prestige, ranked high in Dogon eyes, and Griaule allegedly capitalized on it. Van Beek has suggested that Griaule asked leading questions and that Dogon that worked with him (or should one say 'for' him?) still comment on his impatience.

When considering the Sirius Mystery it is significant to note that Van Beek specifically states that Griaule had studied astronomy in Paris and that Griaule deployed star maps to investigate Dogon knowledge about astronomy (van Beek, 1991, page 154). While these specific allegations appear as statements of fact on several websites on the Internet, they are in fact somewhat controversial. Griaule's daughter, GeneviPve Calame-Griaule, has responded to some of these allegations.

She has further denied that her father studied astronomy, writing that "As for his alleged training in astronomy, I can report that his training was in literature; he had no notion at all of astronomy." (Calame-Griaule, 1991, page 577). Unfortunately, van Beek failed to provide any supporting reference for his allegation that Griaule studied astronomy, so it is not easy to resolve this dispute. I note, however, that Calame-Griaule may have had in mind only his latter education. In the 1920s, Griaule had studied a languages degree. However, prior to World War I (in which Griaule served as a pilot), Griaule had been preparing to become an engineer. I wonder whether van Beek's reference to Griaule studying astronomy relates to that earlier period of his education.

Indeed, GeneviPve Calame-Griaule has written that Griaule was completely ignorant of existence of the satellite of Sirius until the Dogon told him of a companion (Calame-Griaule, 1991, page 577).

In relation to the use of star-maps, however, there is no outright denial. She has merely written that If he later displayed charts of the heavens, it was for his own use and not to instruct the Dogon (Calame-Griaule, 1991, page 577). The purpose of displaying star-charts is irrelevant - the concern relates to the effects of his alleged display of star-charts.