The Sirius Mystery is one of the most captivating mysteries of ancient knowledge and potential alien contact. It’s set among the Dogon people of Mali, a remote tribe in West Africa whose oral traditions contain a rich knowledge of the Sirius star system, including information about Sirius B (an invisible white dwarf star).

This leaves one question hanging: How did the Dogon know about this? Some say early European astronomers handed down this information, while others say it came from an advanced civilization or even aliens. Robert Temple’s controversial book The Sirius Mystery (1976) postulated that extraterrestrials from the Sirius system visited the Dogon, and the debate has raged ever since.