From: Mark Grant (mark@unicorn.com)
Date: Tue Sep 23 1997 - 14:59:02 MDT
On Mon, 22 Sep 1997 CALYK@aol.com wrote:
> Why
> did you say it was untrue? Just because you didnt find the proof to validate
> it you're going to say its false? The dogon story is very popular, I've
> heard it in more than one place.
However, it's probably yet another example of humanity's failure to
understand probability, and our natural desire to fit everything into
consistent models.
Let's suppose the story *is* true. There were primitive tribes all over
the world, many of whom had weird tales like the Dogon's, but most of them
were wrong; noone finds this at all strange. Then, suddenly, one of them
happens to be right, and rather than realising that sooner or later one of
these tales would be right purely by chance, we immediately get tales of
aliens landing and passing on secret knowledge about their home star.
More importantly, there's recently been a discussion of the Dogon on
Usenet; from what I gather their 'secret knowledge' about Sirius was not
reported until a century after they were first contacted, and they also
had 'secret knowledge' of various other astronomical phenomena which were
thought to be true at the time but were later disproved. Sounds a lot like
they learnt it from a visiting scientist, not aliens.
Mark
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