Dogon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dogon dance mask that is kept in a hidden place and only worn on special occasions, e.g. B. a death.
Villages like Banani or Ireli are built directly on the rock face of the Falaise de Bandiagara
Three Dogon Dancer Puppets from the Children's Museum of Indianapolis; in the middle a mask on stilts (so-called turtledove )
The Songo Rock is commonly referred to as the Rock of Circumcision . The village of Songo is completely Islamized; Occasionally, circumcision rites are held here .

The Dogon are an African ethnic group that lives in West Africa in the east of Mali and is originally from the northwest of Burkina Faso . The Dogon people currently comprise around 350,000 people. The Dogon live today at the western end of the Hombori Mountains on the rocks of Bandiagara , which were declared a World Heritage Site in 1989 . The Dogon are also known under the names Dogo, Dogom, Habbe or Habe, Kado or Kaddo, Kibisi or Tombo.

history

The Dogon immigrated to the area of ​​the Hombori Mountains apparently only a few hundred years ago, on the run from the cavalry armies of the Mossi , and in turn drove the native population of the Tellem from the steep slopes of Bandiagara, possibly with the Kurumba in Burkina Faso are identical (Laude, 1973). According to Roy (1983), the Dogon lived in northwest Burkina Faso until 1480.

society

The Dogon are a patriarchal , patrilocal and patrilineal society whose communities are headed by a village elder. Married persons live at the place of residence of the spouse's father and one person is related to the father's family members. As with some African peoples, female genital mutilation is also widespread among the Dogon .

Culture

The most important source of food for the Dogon is the cultivation of millet , the harvest of which ensures food for the whole of the coming year. Mainly goats and sheep are kept as pets.

The Dogon have a highly developed craft tradition. The masks of the Dogon in particular are known and become famous as an example of traditional African art in western art circles in the 20th century. The Dogon know about 100 different mask types. These are symbolically derived from the approximately 10-meter-long, snake-shaped mother mask (large mask) wara or dannu , which is exhibited for 6 days at special funeral ceremonies and is particularly honored at the large sigi festival, which only takes place every 60 years in honor of the ancestors. The sigi ritual is the most important ceremony of the Dogon and is intended to free people from the disorder that has arisen from ancestral violations of the prohibitions. The spectacle is understood as a festival of renewal and is reserved exclusively for men. The sirige mask , which is up to 5 meters long, is used . It is also called a multi-storey or multi-storey house mask and consists of 80 floors, which symbolize the floors of the house of the Klangründer, which in turn stand for the 80 ancestors of mankind. Despite its enormous size, the sirige mask is also used for dancing; meter high jumps are performed with it. Other common mask types are the Kanaga mask , which is reminiscent of a Lorraine cross (interpretations of the mask differ widely) and the samana mask, which originally comes from the warlike tribe of the Samo , who once defeated and enslaved the Dogon.

Like other West African peoples, the Dogon also make otherwise elaborate carvings, for example doors (for millet storage), vessels, ancestral figures and ritual sticks. Also known are the ritual troughs aduna koro ("ark of the world"), which are kept in the house of the clan elder. They are rectangular in shape, usually with an abstract horse head and tail, and relief-like carvings on the sides.

The assignment of figures that were found in the caves of Bandiagara to the pre-population of the Tellem or to the Dogon is still unclear. In any case, these sculptures are among the oldest in all of Sub-Saharan Africa . On the basis of radiocarbon dating from a Dutch research group, they can be divided into three cultural epochs: the first period extends from the 11th to the 15th century, the second from the 15th to the 18th century, and the third from the 18th century to today. The Dogon put their figures on altars dedicated to real or mythological ancestors.

The Dogon have also had a tradition of weaving cotton and wool with looms since the 11th century, in particular for the production of the typical T-shaped cut, wide shirts with a slight flare at the bottom and simple hats that cover the ears.

language

The Dogon language is also called "Dogon" and belongs to the Niger-Congo language family in the generally recognized classification of African languages ​​by the linguist Joseph Greenberg . The Dogon language consists of at least 15 strongly differing dialects, some of which are mutually incomprehensible.

religion

The majority of the Dogon practice a traditional tribal religion with pronounced ancestor worship . As the creator god, they worship a deity named Amma. A minority professes Islam or Christianity .

Speculations on the Dogon's astronomical knowledge

In the Western world's attention was drawn to the Dogon, as the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule and his student Germaine Dieterlen thought for some expeditions in the 1930s to have found evidence that the Dogon knowledge about the star Sirius B have. This very faint companion of Sirius can only be observed with modern instruments.

In the book "The Sirius Riddle", published in 1977, the author Robert Temple, based on the work of Griaule and Dieterlen, put forward the pseudoscientific hypothesis that this alleged knowledge was imparted to the Dogon a long time ago by extraterrestrial visitors. This hypothesis is one of the pillars on which pre-astronautics bases its argument that visitors from outer space visited the earth in the past and intervened in human cultural development.

However, Griaule's statements could not be confirmed by other researchers (Walter van Beek, 1991; Ortiz de Montellano, 1996). Detailed research by Markus Pössel and Klaus Richter on the Sirius riddle of the Dogon revealed that there is no Sirius riddle among the Dogon. The Belgian ethnologist Walter van Beek had found out through years of studies with the Dogon that Marcel Griaule carried out the survey of the Dogon methodically incorrectly and thus suggested information from the Dogon. Furthermore, astronomers have not been able to confirm the supposedly complex system of Sirius.

literature

  • Rogier MA Bedaux: Tellem. Een bijdrage tot de divorced van de Republiek Mali. Afrika Muséum, Berg-en-Dal 1977.
  • Walter van Beek: Dogon Restudied. A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule. In: Current Anthropology 32, 1991, 2, ISSN  0011-3204 pp. 139-167.
  • Geneviève Calame-Griaule: Ethnology et Langage. La parole chez les Dogon. Gallimard, Paris 1965, ( Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines ).
  • M. Griaule : Masques dogons. Institut d'Ethnologie - Musée de l'Homme, Paris 1938, ( Travaux et mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie 33, ISSN  0767-8703 ).
  • Marcel Griaule: Arts de l'Afrique noire. Chêne, Paris 1947.
  • Marcel Griaule: Dieu d'eau, entretiens avec Ogotêmmeli. Fayard, Paris 1966.
  • Marcel Griaule, Germaine Dieterlen: Le Renard pâle. Institut d'Ethnologie - Musée de l'Homme, Paris 1965, ( Le mythe cosmogonique 1, 1: La création du monde ), ( Travaux et mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie 72, ISSN  0767-8703 ).
  • Wolfgang Lauber (Hrsg.): Architecture of the Dogon. Traditional earth building and art in Mali. Prestel, Munich et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7913-1914-0 .
  • Jean Laude: African Art of the Dogon. The myths of the cliff dwellers. Brooklyn Museum in association with the Viking Press, New York NY 1973, ( A Studio book ).
  • Helène Leloup: Dogon: World Heritage Site from Africa . Hirmer, Munich 2011. ISBN 978-3-7774-4411-6 .
  • Paul Parin , Fritz Morgenthaler , Goldy Parin-Matthèy : The whites think too much. Psychoanalytic investigations among the Dogon in West Africa. 4th edition. Europäische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-434-46206-6 , ( eva-Taschenbuch 206).
  • Paul Parin, Fritz Morgenthaler, Goldy Parin-Matthèy: Aspects of the group ego. An ethnopsychological catamnesis among the Dogon of Sanga (Republic of Mali). In: Psychology. Swiss Journal for Psychology and its Applications 27, 1968, 2, ISSN  0033-2976 , pp. 133-154, (Repr. 1978a (WiS, 153-174)).
  • Klaus Richter : What do the Dogon know about Sirius A and B? In: MegaLithos 2, 2001, issue 3, ISSN  1439-7366 .
  • Gerald Unterberger: The Sacred Knowledge of the Dogon. Mythology of a West African people in historical-comparative analysis. AFRO-PUB, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85043-074-X , ( publications of the institutes for African studies and Egyptology at the University of Vienna 74), ( contributions to African studies 55).
  • Gerald Unterberger: The Cosmology of the Dogon. The mysticism of the heavenly support and the inverted world tree in a cultural-historical comparison. AFRO-PUB, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-85043-095-2 , ( publications of the institutes for African studies and Egyptology at the University of Vienna 95), ( contributions to African studies 70).
Illustrated books
  • Christopher D. Roy: The Dogon of Mali and Upper Volta = The Dogon of Mali and Upper Volta. Galerie Fred and Jens Jahn, Munich 1983.
  • Michel Renaudeau, Nadine Wanono: Dogon. Dances, masks, rituals. Knesebeck, Munich 1998 ISBN 3-89660-036-2 .
  • Hauke ​​Olaf Nagel: Dogon - portrait of a culture. Edition Satimbe, Hamburg / Kiel 2008.

Web links

Commons : Dogon  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Dogon  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michel Renaudeau, Nadine Wanono: Dogon. Dances, masks, rituals, p. 29
  2. ^ Walter EA van Beek: The importance of millet among the Dogon. Catalog Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg 2004
  3. ^ Walter EA van Beek: The dance of the Dogon masks. Leiden University, 1998
  4. ^ Huib Blom: Dogon Images & Traditions. Momentum Publication / Guy Van Rijn, Brussels 2010, p. 326; Note: The "voice" of the great mask generated with a buzzing device is called imina na .
  5. ↑ Michael W. Ovenden: Mustard seed of mystery. in: Nature 261, 617-618, June 17, 1976, doi : 10.1038 / 261617a0