Je ne vais pas mettre la traduction de tout le texte, mais la partie la plus intéressante pour la discussion en cours, et je ne vais pas la traduire entièrement mais la résumer en français, faute de temps.
Marcel Griaule qui étudia les Dogons, et qui rapporta leur connaissance de l'existance de Sirius B, est remis en question par Walter Van Beek, auteur de
Dogon: Africa's people of the cliffs qui aurait interrogé les Dogons sur Sirius, (qu'ils appellent selon Griaule Sigu Tolo) et ces derniers lui auraient indiqué Vénus. D'autes Dogons lui auraient dit que Sigu Tolo était une étoile invisible qui allait apparaître pour annoncer le Sigu.
Van Beek découvre par la suite que les Dogons connaissent bien Sirius, l'étoile la plus brillante, mais ne l'appellent pas Sigu Tolo mais Dana Tolo.
Il est donc probable que Griaule ait soit malinterprété les propos des Dogons qu'il a visité, soit les auraient contaminés avec son propre savoir (sachant que lui-même était un grand amateur d'astronomie, qu'il connaissait l'existence de Sirius B et qu'il était parti sur place avec une carte du ciel).
Citer :
The biggest challenge to Griaule, however, came from anthropologist Walter Van Beek. He points out that Griaule and Dieterlen stand alone in their claims about the Dogon secret knowledge. No other anthropologist supports their opinions. In 1991, Van Beek led a team of anthropologists to Mali and declared that they found absolutely no trace of the detailed Sirius lore reported by the French anthropologists. James and Thorpe understate the problem when they say “this is very worrying.” Griaule claimed that about 15 per cent of the Dogon tribe possessed this secret
knowledge, but Van Beek could find no trace of it in the decade he spent with the Dogon. Van Beek actually spoke to some of Griaule’s original informants; he noted that “though they do speak about sigu tolo [interpreted by Griaule as their name for Sirius itself], they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some, it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule.”
Van Beek states that this creates a major problem for Griaule’s claims.
Although he was an anthropologist, Griaule was keenly interested in astronomy and had studied it in Paris. As James and Thorpe point out, he took star maps along with him on his field trips as a way of prompting his informants to divulge their knowledge of the stars. Griaule himself was aware of the discovery of Sirius B and in the 1920s – before he visited the Dogon – there were also unconfirmed sightings of Sirius C.
The Dogon were well aware of the brightest star in the sky but, as Van Beek learned, they do not call it sigu tolo, as Griaule claimed, but dana tolo. To quote James and Thorpe: “As for Sirius B, only Griaule’s informants had ever heard of it.” Was Griaule told by his informants what he wanted to believe; did he misinterpret the Dogon responses to his questions? Either way, the original purity of the Dogon-Sirius story is itself a myth as it is highly likely that Griaule contaminated their knowledge with his own.
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