Why do the Dogon people think amphibious beings visited them? – The Saturday Briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
Q Why do the Dogon people of Mali believe they were visited by amphibious beings from the star Sirius 3,000 years ago? Have any planets been discovered around Sirius? DR West, Glasgow, Scotland
A The first reports of the Dogon myth came from the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule who studied them between the 1930s and 1950s.
Their apparent extraordinary knowledge of Sirius was reported in 1946 when Griaule told of their belief that it was a binary star system whose secondary star took 50 years to complete an orbit, all of which is correct but cannot have been discovered or verified without sophisticated equipment.
They also seemed to know about the rings of Saturn and moons of Jupiter.
You may choose between two explanations: the Dogon learnt it from alien visitors, presumably from Sirius itself, or they based the information on what they heard from a team of astronomers who visited Mali to see a solar eclipse in 1893.
No planet has yet been discovered orbiting Sirius but the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was reported to have said that he came from such a planet and that he was educated on Sirius itself.
He also wrote a science fiction opera called Sirius.
Q I’ve never subscribed to the theory the Moon landings were faked but I’ve always been puzzled by the shot of the capsule blasting off from the Moon as the astronauts left. Did they leave someone behind to film their departure? Eric John Exell, Havant, Hampshire
A Those pictures were taken by a camera attached to one of the Mars Rovers they left behind.
The signal to turn it on and start filming had to be sent from Earth some six seconds before lift-off to take account of the time the signal took to reach the Moon.
The pictures of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon were taken by a camera attached to an arm on the outside of the capsule.
Armstrong pulled on a string to deploy the camera as he stepped out of the module.
These Nasa chaps think of everything.
Q I was reading the inside cover of my passport and saw that “Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires... all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance”.
Will the passport still be valid when the Queen is succeeded by Prince Charles if it is still in use then or will the change of “Her Britannic Majesty” to “His Britannic Majesty” make a difference? Jenny Butler, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex
A There really isn’t a cause for concern: there was no problem when His Britannic Majesty George VI was succeeded by Her Britannic Majesty Elizabeth II.
The words “His (or Her) Britannic Majesty” are understood in international law to be an official term for the sovereign power of the United Kingdom, such power passing smoothly from one monarch to the next.
Q Can you tell me the first ever advertisement on television and when was it broadcast? David Garbutt, by email
A The first ever TV ad anywhere in the world was for Bulova watches and it was screened in the United States on July 1, 1941.
The first ad on UK television was for Gibbs SR toothpaste and was screened on September 22, 1955, ITV’s opening day.
The first colour TV commercial in the UK was for Birds Eye peas and was shown on November 15, 1969.
Q Coming from Scottish stock I have always been unclear why some Scottish family names are prefixed by “Mc” and others by “Mac” and the origin of this variation.
Is it acceptable to use either prefix for Scottish (or Irish) family names where applicable? John Laing, Ettalong Beach, Australia
A Some say “Mac” is Scottish and “Mc” Irish, some put it the other way around and others say they are exactly the same. I side strongly with the last group.
Historically Mac was the original form, meaning “son of”.
This was sometimes abbreviated to M’c or even M’ and the apostrophe in M’c later came to be commonly dropped but they all started out as Mac.
Sometimes branches of the same family adopted different variants, settling on a particular version only when spellings in English became fixed around the 18th century.
The same inconsistencies resulted in some families putting a capital letter after the Mac and others not doing so, which is why Old MacDonald had a farm, Ronald McDonald had a hamburger and Kevin Macdonald directed The Last King Of Scotland.
This has all been a pain for librarians and indexers, who tend to put all the Macs and Mcs together.
Q On a recent cooking programme I saw James Martin preparing what I know as a swede but he called it a turnip.
Is this a north-south difference in veg naming? If so, why? Terry Roper, Headington, Oxford
A There is definitely a confusion but I don’t think it is a north-south difference.
The turnip is a very ancient vegetable while the swede was created by Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin (1560-1624) by crossing a turnip with a cabbage.
You might say a swede is a type of turnip but a turnip is not a type of swede.
The issue was further complicated by the EU with a ruling in 2010 that a swede can be called a turnip when it is in a Cornish pasty but not otherwise.
Q When someone thinks they are better than anyone else it is often said that they think they’re “the bee’s knees”.
Where does this strange expression come from? C Pope, Isle of Wight
A Oddly enough the phrase “bee’s knees” was first recorded in the 18th century when it was used to refer to something small and insignificant.
The modern usage comes from a brief period around the 1920s when American slang created a number of animalbased expressions to suggest excellence.
These included “the flea’s eyebrows”, “the canary’s tusks”, “the cat’s whiskers” and “the cat’s pyjamas” as well as “the bee’s knees”.
Bees do have joints in their legs but they do not have kneecaps so it is arguable whether they have knees at all.
But then cats rarely have pyjamas either.
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