Page 32 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 26

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THE SCIENCE OF THE DOGON

Decoding The African Mystery Tradition

Written by Scranton L, courtesy of Dr Mfuniselwa Bhengu

aird Scranton is an independent software designer, from America, who became interested in Dogon
mythology and symbolism in the early 1990’s. The Dogon are a modern-day African tribal people
Lwho live along the cliffs of the Bandiagara escarpment, south of the Sahara desert, near Timbuktu
and not far from the Niger river in Mali, West Africa. The tribe consists of approximately 100,000 people
in 700 villages.

Highly suggestive of an ancient lineage for the Dogon people are their religious rituals and practices which
in key ways mirror those of Ancient Egypt, on the one hand, and Judaism on the other. Furthermore, the
Dogon myths are expressed in words and symbols that are shared with the Amazigh, the tribes of hunters
who lived in Egypt prior to the beginning of the First Egyptian dynasty. Perhaps most significantly, Dogon
mythology is documented in tribal drawings that often take the same shape as the ancient pictograms used
in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

Prior Structures of Civilized Knowledge

Although some will think it absurd to suggest that the people of 3400 BC were learning theories of
advanced science at a time when they hardly had mastered the skills of stone masonry, what is believable,
for Scranton, is that the structures of civilized knowledge were presented to mankind in a form that would
orient us towards a larger understanding of the sciences and that generous hints about the origins of the
universe, the composition of matter, and the reproductive processes of life were incorporated into this

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