Has anyone seen that old In Search Of… episode called Dark Star? It ran yesterday on the History Channel. I only caught the end of it, but it was about some tribe of people in Africa that have had a bunch of accurate astronomy knowledge for hundreds or thousand of years (apparently knowledge that they had no business having.) They worship a dark star that can’t be seen, or can be every 60 years, or something like that. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? If so, what is the name of the tribe and the star? I’d like to read more about this. Thanks.
Do a search on “Dogon Star.” You’ll get a bunch of hits. I did a search on this board (suprised it hasn’t popped up before), and I got only a passing reference to a thread from January in Great Debates.
As best as I can figure, it has been 10,626 days since the last live performance of “Dark Star”. (7/31/71)
[/quote]
Shall we go, you and I while we can?
Dark star crashes
pouring its light
into ashes
Reason tatters
the forces tear loose
from the axis
Searchlight casting
for faults in the
clouds of delusion
shall we go,
you and I
While we can?
Through
the transitive nightfall
of diamonds?
That being said, I think you’ll find that the story of the tribe has been largely debunked. I will try to find a citation should no one else chime in, but here is what I recollect of the story. In the tribe’s mythology of the locus and movements of the stars, there were several glaring errors. While this alone is not enough to discount the tribe’s mythology, it just so happens that the errors were identical to those made by twentieth century astronomers. The conclusion is that the tribes knowledge of the dark star and other stellar movements came from western missionaries, not from Kang and Kodos. Fascinating story though, when I first saw the original episode on In Search Of… I was quite taken aback.
Hello again.
After a bit of searching, I was able to find this link. It almost backs up what I said above, in that it debunks the mythology. But it does it much better, and with these strange things called facts and accurate dates. I gotta figure out how to get those.
And ChiefWahoo…. Last Darkstar in '71? Hmmm… not so sure I agree with you on that one. Don’t have my copy of Deadbase handy, but some of my greatest memories are the DS teases in the summer of 90, catching wind of it being played somewhere down in VA (that was the Warlocks show I think) and then catching a piece or two of it in my own right. Get yourself a copy of Deer Creek’s '92 closing night - Terrapin - Space - Darkstar - Wheel. Mighty fine piece of work.
(apologies for the digression)
Thanks all. By the way, I agree with you on that Summer of 90 reference.
… maybe somebody taught 'em phenomonology …
Any hopes of ever witnessing the Dark Star again were crushed by Brent’s song.
I believe that “Dark Star” was brought out at the April Fools day show in Greensborough, NC, 1991.