June 22, 2012 Coast Insider Audio Velikovsky & the Dogon: Making his C2C debut on Thursday's show, author/researcher Laird Scranton discussed the controversial assertions of Velikovsky, as well as the cosmology and scientific knowledge of the Dogon tribe in West Africa. According to Velikovsky, a large body smacked into Jupiter and as a result of that impact, Venus was ejected as a brilliant comet; it then impacted Mars directly, and proceeded on to have close passes with Earth, before it moved into its current orbit. This suggests that because Earth is similar to Venus, it may have been formed the same way, Scranton said.
In ancient times, Venus was reportedly so bright it could be seen in the daytime-- it was not considered a planet, but on par with the Sun and the moon; but after 1500 BC, texts refer to cataclysmic events that could be associated with the close approach of an astronomical body, Scranton detailed. Recent space probe missions have revealed that Venus does have some comet-like properties, and could be a young planet, he continued. Interestingly, Velikovsky was good friends with Einstein, and it's been said that his Worlds in Collision was the one book found open on Einstein's desk at the time of his death.
As Robert Temple popularized in his book The Sirius Mystery, the Dogon Tribe were aware of Sirius B, a companion star that can't be seen with the naked eye. While Temple suggested aliens gave them this information, Scranton believes the Dogon were originally Egyptians, as there are striking similarities between Dogon symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Around the time of the Egyptian 1st Dynasty, he believes they received instructions from teachers (who may have been ETs, interdimensionals, or some other type of wise beings) who helped civilize humanity, moving them from a hunter-gatherer culture to an agrarian society via knowledge about calendars, and metallurgy for tools.