Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. A sublime cosmic mystery unfolds on a mild summer afternoon in Palo Alto, California, where I’ve come to talk with the visionary physicist Andrei Linde. The day seems ordinary enough. Cyclists maneuver through traffic, and orange poppies bloom on dry brown hills near Linde’s office on the Stanford University campus. But everything here, right down to the photons lighting the scene after an eight-minute jaunt from the sun, bears witness to an extraordinary fact about the universe: Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the laws of physics in just about any way and—in this universe, anyway—life as we know it would not exist.
Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.
“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says.
Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.
Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.
The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.
Physical laws clamor for life: the universe knew we were coming.
“For me the reality of many universes is a logical possibility,” Linde says. “You might say, ‘Maybe this is some mysterious coincidence. Maybe God created the universe for our benefit.’ Well, I don’t know about God, but the universe itself might reproduce itself eternally in all its possible manifestations.”
Taking on Copernicus
Linde is lying in bed, recovering from a bad fall off a bicycle that broke his left wrist. His left hand, bound in a cast, rests on a pillow. Linde is sturdily built, with thick gray hair that flops down over his forehead; you wouldn’t necessarily pick him out as a man who spends much of his time lost in thought about the distant universe. Right now he is ignoring his injury, reciting a long list of some of the cosmic coincidences that make life possible.
“And if we double the mass of the electron, life as we know it will disappear. If we change the strength of the interaction between protons and electrons, life will disappear. Why are there three space dimensions and one time dimension? If we had four space dimensions and one time dimension, then planetary systems would be unstable and our version of life would be impossible. If we had two space dimensions and one time dimension, we would not exist,” he says.
The idea that the universe was made just for us—known as the anthropic principle—debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter, then a physicist at Cambridge University, spoke at a conference in Poland honoring Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer who said that the sun, not Earth, was the hub of the universe. Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. By placing life in the cosmic spotlight—at a meeting dedicated to Copernicus, no less—Carter was flying in the face of a scientific worldview that began nearly 500 years ago when the Polish astronomer dislodged Earth and humanity from center stage in the grand scheme of things.
Carter proposed two interpretations of the anthropic principle. The “weak” anthropic principle simply says that we are living in a special time and place in the universe where life is possible. Life couldn’t have survived in the very early universe before stars formed, so the universe had to have reached a certain age and stage of evolution before life could arise.
The “strong” anthropic principle makes a much bolder statement. It asserts that the laws of physics themselves are biased toward life. To quote Freeman Dyson, a renowned physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the strong anthropic principle implies that “the universe knew we were coming.”
A Wild Profusion
The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years. Physicists regarded it as an interesting idea, but the real action in the field lay elsewhere. And in the late 1970s, Linde, then a professor at the prestigious Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, was in the thick of that action. At the time, he wasn’t interested in the anthropic principle at all; he was trying to understand the physics of the Big Bang. Linde and other researchers knew that something was missing from the conventional theory of the Big Bang, because it couldn’t explain a key puzzling fact about the universe: its remarkable uniformity.
Strikingly, the temperature of space is everywhere the same, just 2.7 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. How could different regions of the universe, separated by such enormous distances, all have the same temperature?
In the standard version of the Big Bang, they couldn’t. The universe as a whole has been cooling ever since it emerged from the fireball of the Big Bang. But there’s a problem: For all of it to reach the same temperature, different regions of the universe would have to exchange heat, just as ice cubes and hot tea have to meet to reach the uniform temperature of iced tea. But as Einstein proved, nothing—including heat—can travel faster than the speed of light. In the conventional theory of the Big Bang, there simply hasn’t been enough time since the universe was born for every part of the cosmos to have connected with every other part and cooled to the same temperature.
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generated sequence of a universeIn this computer generated sequence, the universe evolves, inflating and expanding its terrain. The gentle valleys represent quiescent cosmic zones where all is stable. The jutting hills and soaring peaks symbolize the inflationary engine of universe creation, where new cosmic realms embody alternate physics and strange life — or none at all.
Courtesy Andre Linde
MIT physicist Alan Guth found a viable, but flawed, solution to the puzzle in 1981. Linde shored up that work shortly thereafter, making improvements to overcome those flaws. In a nutshell, Guth and Linde proposed that the universe underwent a colossal growth spasm in the first instants of its existence, a phenomenon called inflation. Today widely accepted as the standard version of the Big Bang theory, inflation holds that regions of the universe that are currently separated by many billions of light-years were once close enough to each other that they could exchange heat and reach the same temperature before they were wildly super-sized. Problem solved.
By the mid-1980s Linde and Tufts University physicist Alex Vilenkin had come up with a dramatic new twist that remains nearly as controversial now as it was then. They argued that inflation was not a one-off event but an ongoing process throughout the universe, where even now different regions of the cosmos are budding off, undergoing inflation, and evolving into essentially separate universes. The same process will occur in each of those new universes in turn, a process Linde calls eternal chaotic inflation.
Linde has spent much of the past 20 years refining that idea, showing that each new universe is likely to have laws of physics that are completely different from our own. The latest iteration of his theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, by pure odds at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things.
“In some other universe, people there will see different laws of physics,” Linde says. “They will not see our universe. They will see only theirs. They will look around and say, ‘Here is our universe, and we must construct a theory that uniquely predicts that our universe must be the way we see it, because otherwise it is not a complete physics.’ Well, this would be a wrong track because they are in that universe by chance.”
Most physicists demurred. There wasn’t any good reason to believe in the reality of other universes—at least not until near the beginning of the new millennium, when astronomers made one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of science.
The Accelerating Universe
In 1998 two teams of researchers observing distant supernovas—exploding stars—found that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The discovery was baffling. Just about everyone had expected that the cosmic expansion, which started with the Big Bang, must be gradually slowing down, braked by the collective gravitational pull of all the galaxies and other matter out there. But built into the very fabric of space, it seems, is some unknown form of energy—physicists call it simply dark energy—that is pushing everything apart. Many cosmologists were skeptical at first, but follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, along with independent studies of radiation left over from the time of the Big Bang, have powerfully confirmed the reality of dark energy.
Dark energy appears calibrated for stars, galaxies, and us.
The idea that empty space might contain energy was not the part that surprised physicists. Ever since the birth of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, they have known that innumerable “virtual” particles pop into and out of existence all around us, a sort of quantum white noise, always there but forever beneath our notice. What astonished them was the peculiar specificity of the amount: exactly enough to accelerate expansion, yet not so much that the universe would rapidly rip itself apart. The observable amount of dark energy appears to be another one of those strange anthropic properties, calibrated to allow planets, stars, and us.
“If [dark energy] had been any bigger, there would have been enough repulsion from it to overwhelm the gravity that drew the galaxies together, drew the stars together, and drew Earth together,” Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind says. “It’s one of the greatest mysteries in physics. All we know is that if it were much bigger we wouldn’t be here to ask about it.”
Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the University of Texas, agrees. “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident,” he says. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The Multiverse on a String
Dark energy makes it impossible to ignore the multiverse theory.Another branch of physics—string theory—lends support as well. Although experimental evidence for string theory is still lacking, many physicists believe it to be their best candidate for a theory of everything, a comprehensive description of the universe, from quarks to quasars. According to string theory, the ultimate constituents of physical reality are not particles but minuscule vibrating strings whose different oscillations give rise to all the particles and forces in the universe. Although string theory is enormously complex, requiring a total of 11 dimensions to work correctly, it is a mathematically convincing way to knit together all the known laws of physics.
In 2000, however, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory. Joe Polchinski at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Raphael Bousso at the University of California at Berkeley calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000*. Each solution represents a unique way to describe the universe. This meant that almost any experimental result would be consistent with string theory; the theory could never be proved right or wrong.
Some critics say this realization dooms string theory as a scientific enterprise. Others insist it is yet another clue that the multiverse is real. Susskind, a leading proponent of that interpretation, thinks the various versions of string theory may describe different universes that are all real. He believes the anthropic principle, the multiverse, and string theory are converging to produce a coherent, if exceedingly strange, new view in which our universe is just one of a multitude—one that happened to be born with the right kind of physics for our kind of life.
“Some people would call this the great disaster of string theory, that instead of giving rise to a single theory, it gave rise to something that is so diverse we can never make any sense out of it,” Susskind says. “Others would say, ‘Ah, this is exactly what we need for eternal inflation, for the multiverse, for anthropic thinking, and so forth.’”
* Correction: Due to a formatting error, this number was originally rendered as “101,000.” Return to the corrected sentence.
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Prove It
Linde’s recent research has helped solidify the connection between string theory and the multiverse. Some physicists have long embraced the notion that the extra dimensions of string theory play a key role in shaping the properties of new universes spawned during eternal chaotic inflation. When a new universe sprouts from its parent, the concept goes, only three of the dimensions of space predicted by string theory will inflate into large, full-blown, inhabitable spaces. The other dimensions of space will remain essentially invisible—but nonetheless will influence the form the universe takes. Linde and his colleagues figured out how the invisible dimensions stayed compact and went on to propose billions of permutations, each giving rise to a unique universe.
Linde’s ideas may make the notion of a multiverse more plausible, but they do not prove that other universes are really out there. The staggering challenge is to think of a way to confirm the existence of other universes when every conceivable experiment or observation must be confined to our own. Does it make sense to talk about other universes if they can never be detected?
I put that question to Cambridge University astrophysicist Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal. We meet at his residence at Trinity College, in rooms on the west side of a meticulously groomed courtyard, directly across from an office once occupied by Isaac Newton.
Rees, an early supporter of Linde’s ideas, agrees that it may never be possible to observe other universes directly, but he argues that scientists may still be able to make a convincing case for their existence. To do that, he says, physicists will need a theory of the multiverse that makes new but testable predictions about properties of our own universe. If experiments confirmed such a theory’s predictions about the universe we can see, Rees believes, they would also make a strong case for the reality of those we cannot. String theory is still very much a work in progress, but it could form the basis for the sort of theory that Rees has in mind.
“If a theory did gain credibility by explaining previously unexplained features of the physical world, then we should take seriously its further predictions, even if those predictions aren’t directly testable,” he says. “Fifty years ago we all thought of the Big Bang as very speculative. Now the Big Bang from one millisecond onward is as well established as anything about the early history of Earth.”
The credibility of string theory and the multiverse may get a boost within the next year or two, once physicists start analyzing results from the Large Hadron Collider, the new, $8 billion particle accelerator built on the Swiss-French border. If string theory is right, the collider should produce a host of new particles. There is even a small chance that it may find evidence for the mysterious extra dimensions of string theory. “If you measure something which confirms certain elaborations of string theory, then you’ve got indirect evidence for the multiverse,” says Bernard Carr, a cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Support for the multiverse might also come from some upcoming space missions. Susskind says there is a chance that the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, scheduled for launch early next year, could lend a hand. Some multiverse models predict that our universe must have a specific geometry that would bend the path of light rays in specific ways that might be detectable by Planck, which will analyze radiation left from the Big Bang. If Planck’s observations match the predictions, it would suggest the existence of the multiverse.
When I ask Linde whether physicists will ever be able to prove that the multiverse is real, he has a simple answer. “Nothing else fits the data,” he tells me. “We don’t have any alternative explanation for the dark energy; we don’t have any alternative explanation for the smallness of the mass of the electron; we don’t have any alternative explanation for many properties of particles.
“What I am saying is, look at it with open eyes. These are experimental facts, and these facts fit one theory: the multiverse theory. They do not fit any other theory so far. I’m not saying these properties necessarily imply the multiverse theory is right, but you asked me if there is any experimental evidence, and the answer is yes. It was Arthur Conan Doyle who said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
What About God?
For many physicists, the multiverse remains a desperate measure, ruled out by the impossibility of confirmation. Critics see the anthropic principle as a step backward, a return to a human-centered way of looking at the universe that Copernicus discredited five centuries ago. They complain that using the anthropic principle to explain the properties of the universe is like saying that ships were created so that barnacles could stick to them.
“If you allow yourself to hypothesize an almost unlimited portfolio of different worlds, you can explain anything,” says John Polkinghorne, formerly a theoretical particle physicist at Cambridge University and, for the past 26 years, an ordained Anglican priest. If a theory allows anything to be possible, it explains nothing; a theory of anything is not the same as a theory of everything, he adds.
If the Planck satellite detects bending light, that would be evidence for the multiverse.
Supporters of the multiverse theory say that critics are on the wrong side of history. “Throughout the history of science, the universe has always gotten bigger,” Carr says. “We’ve gone from geocentric to heliocentric to galactocentric. Then in the 1920s there was this huge shift when we realized that our galaxy wasn’t the universe. I just see this as one more step in the progression. Every time this expansion has occurred, the more conservative scientists have said, ‘This isn’t science.’ This is just the same process repeating itself.”
If the multiverse is the final stage of the Copernican revolution, with our universe but a speck in an infinite megacosmos, where does humanity fit in? If the life-friendly fine-tuning of our universe is just a chance occurrence, something that inevitably arises in an endless array of universes, is there any need for a fine-tuner—for a god?
“I don’t think that the multiverse idea destroys the possibility of an intelligent, benevolent creator,” Weinberg says. “What it does is remove one of the arguments for it, just as Darwin’s theory of evolution made it unnecessary to appeal to a benevolent designer to understand how life developed with such remarkable abilities to survive and breed.”
On the other hand, if there is no multiverse, where does that leave physicists? “If there is only one universe,” Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”
As for Linde, he is especially interested in the mystery of consciousness and has speculated that consciousness may be a fundamental component of the universe, much like space and time. He wonders whether the physical universe, its laws, and conscious observers might form an integrated whole. A complete description of reality, he says, could require all three of those components, which he posits emerged simultaneously. “Without someone observing the universe,” he says, “the universe is actually dead.”
Yet for all of his boldness, Linde hesitates when I ask whether he truly believes that the multiverse idea will one day be as well established as Newton’s law of gravity and the Big Bang. “I do not want to predict the future,” he answers. “I once predicted my own future. I had a very firm prediction. I knew that I was going to die in the hospital at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow near where I worked. I would go there for all my physical examinations. Once, when I had an ulcer, I was lying there in bed, thinking I knew this was the place where I was going to die. Why? Because I knew I would always be living in Russia. Moscow was the only place in Russia where I could do physics. This was the only hospital for the Academy of Sciences, and so on. It was quite completely predictable. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
“Then I ended up in the United States. On one of my returns to Moscow, I looked at this hospital at the Academy of Sciences, and it was in ruins. There was a tree growing from the roof. And I looked at it and I thought, What can you predict? What can you know about the future?” Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
dogon 44.dog.1110 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The Dogon are a group of people living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. They number just under 800,000.[citation needed] The Dogon are best known for their mythology, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and their architecture. The past century has seen significant changes in the social organization, material culture and beliefs of the Dogon, partly because Dogon country is one of Mali's major tourist attractions.
Geography and history
The Bandiagara Cliffs
The principal Dogon area is bisected by the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone cliff of up to 500m (1,640 ft) high, stretching for about 150km (almost 100 miles). To the southeast of the cliff, the sandy Séno-Gondo Plains are found, and northwest of the cliff are the Bandiagara Highlands. The current population is at least 450,000. Historically, Dogon villages have frequently fallen victim to Islamic slave raiders.[1] Neighboring Islamic tribal groups acted as slave merchants,[2] as the growth of cities increased the demand for slaves across the region of West Africa. The historical pattern has included murder of indignenous males by Islamic jihadists and enslavement of women and children.[1] As early as the 12th century the Dogon people fled west to avoid conversion to Islam and enslavement. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
At the end of the eighteenth century, the jihads that were triggered by the resurgence of Islam caused slaves to be sought for warfare. Dogon insecurity in the face of these historical pressures caused them to locate their villages in defensible positions along the walls of the escarpment. The other factor influencing their choice of settlement location is water. The Niger River is nearby and in the sandstone rock, a rivulet runs at the foot of the cliff at the lowest point of the area during the wet season.
Dogon art
Dogon wood sculpture, probably an ancestor figure, 17th-18th century
Dogon art is primarily sculpture. Dogon art revolves around religious values, ideals, and freedoms (Laude, 19). Dogon sculptures are not made to be seen publicly, and are commonly hidden from the public eye within the houses of families, sanctuaries, or kept with the Hogon (Laude, 20). The importance of secrecy is due to the symbolic meaning behind the pieces and the process by which they are made.
Themes found throughout Dogon sculpture consist of figures with raised arms, superimposed bearded figures, horsemen, stools with caryatids, women with children, figures covering their faces, women grinding pearl millet, women bearing vessels on their heads, donkeys bearing cups, musicians, dogs, quadruped-shaped troughs or benches, figures bending from the waist, mirror-images, aproned figures, and standing figures (Laude, 46-52). Signs of other contacts and origins are evident in Dogon art. The Dogon people were not the first inhabitants of the cliffs of Bandiagara. Influence from Tellem art is evident in Dogon art because of its rectilinear designs (Laude, 24).
Culture and religion
The majority of Dogon practice an animist religion, including the ancestral spirit Nommo, with its festivals and Sirian mythology. A significant minority of the Dogon practice Islam, and some have been converted by missionaries to Christianity.
The Dogon record their ancestry through a patrilineal system. Each Dogon community, or enlarged family, is headed by one male elder. This chief head is the oldest living son of the ancestor of the local branch of the family. According to the NECEP database, within this patrilineal system polygynic marriages, with up to four spouses can occur.
Hogon
Most men, however, have only one wife; and it is rare for a man to have more than two wives. Formally, wives only join their husband's residence unit after the birth of their first child. Women may leave their husbands early in their marriage, before the birth of their first child. After having children, divorce is a rare and serious matter, and it requires the participation of the whole village. An enlarged family can count up to hundred persons and is called guinna.
The Dogon are strongly oriented toward harmony, and this harmony is reflected in many of their rituals. For instance, in one of their most important rituals, the women praise the men, the men thank the women, the young express appreciation for the old, and the old recognize the contributions of the young. Another example is the custom of elaborate greetings whenever one Dogon meets another. This custom is repeated over and over, throughout a Dogon village, all day. During a greeting ritual, the person who has entered the contact answers a series of questions about his or her whole family, from the person who was already there. Invariably, the answer is sewa, which means that everything is fine. Then the Dogon who has entered the contact repeats the ritual, asking the resident how his or her whole family is. Because of the word sewa is so commonly repeated throughout a Dogon village, neighboring peoples have dubbed the Dogon the sewa people.
Hogon House
The Hogon is the spiritual leader of the village. He is elected between the oldest men of the enlarged families of the village. After his election he has to follow a six-month initiation period, during which he is not allowed to shave or wash. He wears white cloths and nobody is allowed to touch him. A young virgin that has not yet had her period takes care of him, cleans the house and prepares his meals. She returns to her home during the night. After his initiation, he will wear a red bonnet. He has an armband with a sacred pearl that symbolises his function. The virgin is replaced by one of his wives, but she also returns to her home at night. The Hogon has to live alone in his house. During the night, the sacred snake Lébé comes to clean him and to transfer wisdom.
The Dogon maintain an agricultural mode of subsistence, and cultivate pearl millet, sorghum and rice, as well as onions, tobacco, peanuts, and some other vegetables. Marcel Griaule stimulated the construction of a dam near Sangha and incited the Dogon to cultivate onions. The economy of the Sangha region doubled since then and onions are sold as far as on the market of Bamako or even in Ivory Coast. They also raise sheep, goats and chickens. Grain is stored in granaries.
Circumcision
Circumcision Cave Painting
Boys are circumcised in age groups of three years, counting for example all boys between 9 and 12 years old. This marks the end of their youth, and they are now initiated. The blacksmith performs the circumcision. Afterwards, they stay for a few days in a hut separated from the rest of the village people, until the wound has healed. The circumcision is a reason for celebration and the initiated boys go around and receive presents. They make music on a special instrument that is made of a rod of wood and calabashes that makes the sound of a rattle. The village of Songho has a circumcision cave ornamented with red and white rock paintings of animals and plants. Nearby is a cave where music instruments are stored. The newly circumcized men must walk around naked for a moon after the procedure so that their achievement in age can be admired by the citizens of the tribe. This practice has been passed down for generations and is always followed, even during winter.
They are one of several African ethnic groups which practice excision of the female genitalia; see female genital cutting. According to Sékou Ogobara Dolo, at least in the Sangha region, the milder form is practiced. This means that only the clitoral hood is removed, which is similar to male circumcision. Girls are circumsized around the age of 7 or 8 years, sometimes younger. Circumcision for both male and female is seen as necessary for the individual to gain gender. Before circumcision they are seen as 'neuter'.LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Funeral Masquerade
Due to the expense, their traditional funeral rituals or “damas” are becoming very rare. They may be performed years after the death. Damas that are still performed today are not usually performed for their original intent, but instead are done as a source of entertainment for tourists interested in the Dogon way of life. The Dogon use this entertainment to gain profit by charging the tourists money for what masks they want to see and the ritual itself (Davis, 68). The traditional dama consists of a masquerade that essentially leads the souls of the departed to their final resting places through a series of ritual dances and rites. Dogon damas include the use of many masks and statuettes. Each Dogon village may differ in the designs of the masks used in the dama ritual. Every village may have their own way of performing the dama rituals. The dama consists of an event, known as the Halic, immediately after the death of a person and lasts for one day (Davis, 68). According to Shawn R. Davis, this particular ritual incorporates the elements of the yingim and the danyim. During the yincomoli ceremony, a gourd is smashed over the deceased’s wooden bowl, hoe, and bundukamba, (burial blanket), which announces the entrance of the masks used in this ceremony while the deceased entrance to their home in the family compound is decorated with ritual elements (Davis, 72-73). Masks used during the yincomoli ceremony include the Yana Gulay mask, the Satimbe mask, the Sirigie mask, and the Kanaga mask. The Yana Gulay mask’s purpose is to impersonate a Fulani woman and is made from cotton cloth and cowell shells. The Satimbe mask represents the women ancestors who are said to have discovered the purpose of the masks by guiding the spirits of the deceased into the afterlife. (Davis, 74) The Sirigie mask is a tall mask that is only used in funerals for the men that were alive during the holding of the Sigui ceremony (see below) (Davis, 68). The Kanaga masqueraders, at one point, dance and sit next to the bundkamba which represents the deceased.
The yingim and the danyim rituals each last a few days. These events are held annually to honor the elders that have died since the last Dama. The yingim consists of the sacrifice of cows, or other valuable animals, and large mock battles performed in order to help chase the spirit, known as the nyama, from the deceased body and village and towards the path to the afterlife (Davis, 68). The danyim then takes place a couple of months later. During the danyim, masqueraders perform dances every morning and evening for anytime up to six days depending on how that village performs this ritual. The masqueraders dance on the deceased’s rooftops, throughout the village, and the area of fields around the village (Davis, 68). Until the masqueraders have completed their dances and every ritual has been performed, it is said that any misfortune can be blamed on the remaining spirits of the dead (Davis, 68).
Cults
The Dogon know different cults:
* Sigui: the most important ceremony of the Dogon. It takes place every 65 years and can take several years. The last one started in 1967 and ended in 1973, the next one will start in 2032. The Sigui ceremony symbolises the dead of the first ancestor (not to be confounded with Lébé) till the moment that humanity acquired the use of the spoken word. The Sigui is a long procession that starts and ends in the village of Youga Dogorou and goes from one village to the other during several months or years. All men wear masks and dance in long processions. The Sigui has a secret language that women are not allowed to learn. The secret Society of Sigui plays a central role in the ceremony. They prepare the ceremonies a long time in advance, and they live for three months hidden outside of the villages while nobody is allowed to see them. The men from the Society of Sigui are called the Oloubarou. The villagers are afraid of them and fear is cultivated by a prohibition to go out at night, when sounds warn that the Oloubarou are out. The most important mask that plays a major role in the Sigui rituals is the Great Mask or the Mother of Masks. It is several meters long and is just held up by hand and not used to hide a face. This mask is newly created every 65 years.
* The Amma cult: worships the main, creator god Amma. The celebration is once a year and consists of offering boiled millet on the conical altar of Amma, colouring it white.
Crocodile Totem
* The Lébé cult: worships the sacred snake Lébé, who was the first mortal human being. Lébé was transformed into a snake. The celebration is once a year and takes three days. The altar is a pointed conic structure on which the Hogon offers boiled millet while mentioning in his benediction eight grains plus one. Afterwards, the Hogon performs some rituals in his house that is also the home of Lébé. The last day, all the village men visit all the Binou altars and dance three times around the Lébé altar. The Hogon invites everybody that assisted to drink the millet beer.
* The Binou cult: uses totems, common ones for the entire village and individual ones for totem priests. A totem animal is worshipped on a Binou altar. Totems are for example the buffalo for Ogol-du-Haut, and the panther for Ogol-du-Bas. Normally, nobody will ever be harmed by its own totem animal, even if this is a crocodile as for the village of Amani. Here is a large pool of crocodiles that do not harm any villager. However, a totem animal might exceptionally harm if one has done something wrong. A worshipper is not allowed to eat his totem. For example, an individual with a buffalo as totem is not allowed to eat buffalo meat, but also not to use leather from its skin and even not to see a buffalo die. If this happens by accident he has to organise a purification sacrifice at the Binou altar. Boiled millet is offered and goats and chickens are sacrificed on a Binou altar. This colours the altar both white and red. Binou altars look like little houses with a door. They are bigger when the altar is for an entire village. A village altar has also the ‘cloud hook’, that will catch clouds and make it rain.
* The twin cult: the birth of twins is a sign of good luck. The enlarged Dogon families have cult rituals during which they evoke all their ancestors till their origin, the ancient pair of twins from the creation of the world myth.
* The Mono cult: the Mono altar is at the entry of every village. Unmarried young men celebrate the Mono cult once a year in January or February. They spend the night around the altar, singing and screaming and waving with fire torches. They hunt for mice that will be sacrificed on the altar at dawn.
Dogon villages
Dogon villages have different buildings:
* Male granary: storage place for pearl millet and other grains. Building with a pointed roof. This building is well protected from mice. The amount of filled male granaries is an indication for the size and the richness of a guinna.
A Dogon's male granary
* Female granary: storage place for a woman's things, her husband has no access. Building with a pointed roof. It looks like a male granary but is less protected against mice. Here, she stores her personal belongings such as clothes, jewelry, money and some food. A woman is economically independent and earnings and things related to her merchandise are stored in her personal granary. She can for example make cotton or pottery. The amount of female granaries is an indication for the amount of women living in the guinna.
* Toguna (also called case à palabres): building only for men. They rest, discuss and take important decisions in the toguna. The roof of a toguna is made by 8 layers of millet stalks. It is a low building in which one cannot stand upright. This helps avoiding violence when discussions get heated.
A Toguna
* House for women that have their period: this house is on the outside of the village. It is constructed by women and is of lower quality than the other village buildings. Women having their period are considered to be unclean and have to leave their family house to live during five days in this house. They use kitchen equipment only to be used here. They bring with them their youngest children. This house is a gathering place for women during the evening.
A typical Dogon Village
Languages
Main article: Dogon languages
Dogon has been frequently referred to as a single language. In reality, there are at least five distinct groups of dialects[5] The Dogon language family is internally highly diverse, and many varieties are not mutually intelligible, actually 12 dialects and 50 variations. There is also a secret language Sigui So, which is used by the Society of the Masks during the Sigui ceremonies. Women have no right to learn Sigui So.
It is generally accepted that the Dogon languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family, but there is less certainty about their place within this family. The Dogon group has been linked to the Mande subfamily but also to Gur. In a recent overview of the Niger-Congo phylum, Dogon is treated as an independent branch before Volta-Congo. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The Dogon languages show few remnants of a noun class system (one example is that human nouns take a distinct plural suffix), leading linguists to conclude that Dogon is likely to have diverged from Niger-Congo very early. Another indication of this is the Subject Object Verb basic word order, which Dogon shares with such early Niger-Congo branches as Ijoid and Mande.
Dogon and Sirius
Certain researchers investigating the Dogon have reported that they seem to possess advanced astronomical knowledge, the nature and source of which has subsequently become embroiled in controversy. From 1931 to 1956, two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, spent 25 years with the Dogon, during which time they were initiated into the tribe. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Griaule and Dieterlen reported that the Dogon appeared to know that the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, has a faint companion, Sirius B, which requires a fairly large telescope to be seen. They also claimed that the Dogon appeared to know of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Neither Griaule nor Dieterlen ever presented any verifiable evidence for any of these claims.
The idea was made widespread when author Robert K. G. Temple wrote a book suggesting an extra-terrestrial source for the Dogon's knowledge. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET No additional verifiable evidence was presented. Previously, Griaule and Dieterlen had made no claims on the source of the Dogon's knowledge.
More recently, doubts have been raised about the validity of Griaule and Dieterlein's work. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The anthropologist Walter van Beek concluded after his research among the Dogon that,
"though they do speak about sigu tolo [which is what Griaule claimed the Dogon called Sirius] they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule". Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Griaule's daughter, Genevieve Calame-Griaule, has retorted that criticisms of her father's findings are mostly rooted in speculation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire An independent assessment is given by Andrew Apter of the University of California. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
[edit]
Geography and history
The Bandiagara Cliffs
The principal Dogon area is bisected by the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone cliff of up to 500m (1,640 ft) high, stretching for about 150km (almost 100 miles). To the southeast of the cliff, the sandy Séno-Gondo Plains are found, and northwest of the cliff are the Bandiagara Highlands. The current population is at least 450,000. Historically, Dogon villages have frequently fallen victim to Islamic slave raiders.[1] Neighboring Islamic tribal groups acted as slave merchants,[2] as the growth of cities increased the demand for slaves across the region of West Africa. The historical pattern has included murder of indignenous males by Islamic jihadists and enslavement of women and children.[1] As early as the 12th century the Dogon people fled west to avoid conversion to Islam and enslavement. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
At the end of the eighteenth century, the jihads that were triggered by the resurgence of Islam caused slaves to be sought for warfare. Dogon insecurity in the face of these historical pressures caused them to locate their villages in defensible positions along the walls of the escarpment. The other factor influencing their choice of settlement location is water. The Niger River is nearby and in the sandstone rock, a rivulet runs at the foot of the cliff at the lowest point of the area during the wet season.
Dogon art
Dogon wood sculpture, probably an ancestor figure, 17th-18th century
Dogon art is primarily sculpture. Dogon art revolves around religious values, ideals, and freedoms (Laude, 19). Dogon sculptures are not made to be seen publicly, and are commonly hidden from the public eye within the houses of families, sanctuaries, or kept with the Hogon (Laude, 20). The importance of secrecy is due to the symbolic meaning behind the pieces and the process by which they are made.
Themes found throughout Dogon sculpture consist of figures with raised arms, superimposed bearded figures, horsemen, stools with caryatids, women with children, figures covering their faces, women grinding pearl millet, women bearing vessels on their heads, donkeys bearing cups, musicians, dogs, quadruped-shaped troughs or benches, figures bending from the waist, mirror-images, aproned figures, and standing figures (Laude, 46-52). Signs of other contacts and origins are evident in Dogon art. The Dogon people were not the first inhabitants of the cliffs of Bandiagara. Influence from Tellem art is evident in Dogon art because of its rectilinear designs (Laude, 24).
Culture and religion
The majority of Dogon practice an animist religion, including the ancestral spirit Nommo, with its festivals and Sirian mythology. A significant minority of the Dogon practice Islam, and some have been converted by missionaries to Christianity.
The Dogon record their ancestry through a patrilineal system. Each Dogon community, or enlarged family, is headed by one male elder. This chief head is the oldest living son of the ancestor of the local branch of the family. According to the NECEP database, within this patrilineal system polygynic marriages, with up to four spouses can occur.
Hogon
Most men, however, have only one wife; and it is rare for a man to have more than two wives. Formally, wives only join their husband's residence unit after the birth of their first child. Women may leave their husbands early in their marriage, before the birth of their first child. After having children, divorce is a rare and serious matter, and it requires the participation of the whole village. An enlarged family can count up to hundred persons and is called guinna.
The Dogon are strongly oriented toward harmony, and this harmony is reflected in many of their rituals. For instance, in one of their most important rituals, the women praise the men, the men thank the women, the young express appreciation for the old, and the old recognize the contributions of the young. Another example is the custom of elaborate greetings whenever one Dogon meets another. This custom is repeated over and over, throughout a Dogon village, all day. During a greeting ritual, the person who has entered the contact answers a series of questions about his or her whole family, from the person who was already there. Invariably, the answer is sewa, which means that everything is fine. Then the Dogon who has entered the contact repeats the ritual, asking the resident how his or her whole family is. Because of the word sewa is so commonly repeated throughout a Dogon village, neighboring peoples have dubbed the Dogon the sewa people.
Hogon House
The Hogon is the spiritual leader of the village. He is elected between the oldest men of the enlarged families of the village. After his election he has to follow a six-month initiation period, during which he is not allowed to shave or wash. He wears white cloths and nobody is allowed to touch him. A young virgin that has not yet had her period takes care of him, cleans the house and prepares his meals. She returns to her home during the night. After his initiation, he will wear a red bonnet. He has an armband with a sacred pearl that symbolises his function. The virgin is replaced by one of his wives, but she also returns to her home at night. The Hogon has to live alone in his house. During the night, the sacred snake Lébé comes to clean him and to transfer wisdom.
The Dogon maintain an agricultural mode of subsistence, and cultivate pearl millet, sorghum and rice, as well as onions, tobacco, peanuts, and some other vegetables. Marcel Griaule stimulated the construction of a dam near Sangha and incited the Dogon to cultivate onions. The economy of the Sangha region doubled since then and onions are sold as far as on the market of Bamako or even in Ivory Coast. They also raise sheep, goats and chickens. Grain is stored in granaries.
Circumcision
Circumcision Cave Painting
Boys are circumcised in age groups of three years, counting for example all boys between 9 and 12 years old. This marks the end of their youth, and they are now initiated. The blacksmith performs the circumcision. Afterwards, they stay for a few days in a hut separated from the rest of the village people, until the wound has healed. The circumcision is a reason for celebration and the initiated boys go around and receive presents. They make music on a special instrument that is made of a rod of wood and calabashes that makes the sound of a rattle. The village of Songho has a circumcision cave ornamented with red and white rock paintings of animals and plants. Nearby is a cave where music instruments are stored. The newly circumcized men must walk around naked for a moon after the procedure so that their achievement in age can be admired by the citizens of the tribe. This practice has been passed down for generations and is always followed, even during winter.
They are one of several African ethnic groups which practice excision of the female genitalia; see female genital cutting. According to Sékou Ogobara Dolo, at least in the Sangha region, the milder form is practiced. This means that only the clitoral hood is removed, which is similar to male circumcision. Girls are circumsized around the age of 7 or 8 years, sometimes younger. Circumcision for both male and female is seen as necessary for the individual to gain gender. Before circumcision they are seen as 'neuter'.LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Funeral Masquerade
Due to the expense, their traditional funeral rituals or “damas” are becoming very rare. They may be performed years after the death. Damas that are still performed today are not usually performed for their original intent, but instead are done as a source of entertainment for tourists interested in the Dogon way of life. The Dogon use this entertainment to gain profit by charging the tourists money for what masks they want to see and the ritual itself (Davis, 68). The traditional dama consists of a masquerade that essentially leads the souls of the departed to their final resting places through a series of ritual dances and rites. Dogon damas include the use of many masks and statuettes. Each Dogon village may differ in the designs of the masks used in the dama ritual. Every village may have their own way of performing the dama rituals. The dama consists of an event, known as the Halic, immediately after the death of a person and lasts for one day (Davis, 68). According to Shawn R. Davis, this particular ritual incorporates the elements of the yingim and the danyim. During the yincomoli ceremony, a gourd is smashed over the deceased’s wooden bowl, hoe, and bundukamba, (burial blanket), which announces the entrance of the masks used in this ceremony while the deceased entrance to their home in the family compound is decorated with ritual elements (Davis, 72-73). Masks used during the yincomoli ceremony include the Yana Gulay mask, the Satimbe mask, the Sirigie mask, and the Kanaga mask. The Yana Gulay mask’s purpose is to impersonate a Fulani woman and is made from cotton cloth and cowell shells. The Satimbe mask represents the women ancestors who are said to have discovered the purpose of the masks by guiding the spirits of the deceased into the afterlife. (Davis, 74) The Sirigie mask is a tall mask that is only used in funerals for the men that were alive during the holding of the Sigui ceremony (see below) (Davis, 68). The Kanaga masqueraders, at one point, dance and sit next to the bundkamba which represents the deceased.
The yingim and the danyim rituals each last a few days. These events are held annually to honor the elders that have died since the last Dama. The yingim consists of the sacrifice of cows, or other valuable animals, and large mock battles performed in order to help chase the spirit, known as the nyama, from the deceased body and village and towards the path to the afterlife (Davis, 68). The danyim then takes place a couple of months later. During the danyim, masqueraders perform dances every morning and evening for anytime up to six days depending on how that village performs this ritual. The masqueraders dance on the deceased’s rooftops, throughout the village, and the area of fields around the village (Davis, 68). Until the masqueraders have completed their dances and every ritual has been performed, it is said that any misfortune can be blamed on the remaining spirits of the dead (Davis, 68).
Cults
The Dogon know different cults:
* Sigui: the most important ceremony of the Dogon. It takes place every 65 years and can take several years. The last one started in 1967 and ended in 1973, the next one will start in 2032. The Sigui ceremony symbolises the dead of the first ancestor (not to be confounded with Lébé) till the moment that humanity acquired the use of the spoken word. The Sigui is a long procession that starts and ends in the village of Youga Dogorou and goes from one village to the other during several months or years. All men wear masks and dance in long processions. The Sigui has a secret language that women are not allowed to learn. The secret Society of Sigui plays a central role in the ceremony. They prepare the ceremonies a long time in advance, and they live for three months hidden outside of the villages while nobody is allowed to see them. The men from the Society of Sigui are called the Oloubarou. The villagers are afraid of them and fear is cultivated by a prohibition to go out at night, when sounds warn that the Oloubarou are out. The most important mask that plays a major role in the Sigui rituals is the Great Mask or the Mother of Masks. It is several meters long and is just held up by hand and not used to hide a face. This mask is newly created every 65 years.
* The Amma cult: worships the main, creator god Amma. The celebration is once a year and consists of offering boiled millet on the conical altar of Amma, colouring it white.
Crocodile Totem
* The Lébé cult: worships the sacred snake Lébé, who was the first mortal human being. Lébé was transformed into a snake. The celebration is once a year and takes three days. The altar is a pointed conic structure on which the Hogon offers boiled millet while mentioning in his benediction eight grains plus one. Afterwards, the Hogon performs some rituals in his house that is also the home of Lébé. The last day, all the village men visit all the Binou altars and dance three times around the Lébé altar. The Hogon invites everybody that assisted to drink the millet beer.
* The Binou cult: uses totems, common ones for the entire village and individual ones for totem priests. A totem animal is worshipped on a Binou altar. Totems are for example the buffalo for Ogol-du-Haut, and the panther for Ogol-du-Bas. Normally, nobody will ever be harmed by its own totem animal, even if this is a crocodile as for the village of Amani. Here is a large pool of crocodiles that do not harm any villager. However, a totem animal might exceptionally harm if one has done something wrong. A worshipper is not allowed to eat his totem. For example, an individual with a buffalo as totem is not allowed to eat buffalo meat, but also not to use leather from its skin and even not to see a buffalo die. If this happens by accident he has to organise a purification sacrifice at the Binou altar. Boiled millet is offered and goats and chickens are sacrificed on a Binou altar. This colours the altar both white and red. Binou altars look like little houses with a door. They are bigger when the altar is for an entire village. A village altar has also the ‘cloud hook’, that will catch clouds and make it rain.
* The twin cult: the birth of twins is a sign of good luck. The enlarged Dogon families have cult rituals during which they evoke all their ancestors till their origin, the ancient pair of twins from the creation of the world myth.
* The Mono cult: the Mono altar is at the entry of every village. Unmarried young men celebrate the Mono cult once a year in January or February. They spend the night around the altar, singing and screaming and waving with fire torches. They hunt for mice that will be sacrificed on the altar at dawn.
Dogon villages
Dogon villages have different buildings:
* Male granary: storage place for pearl millet and other grains. Building with a pointed roof. This building is well protected from mice. The amount of filled male granaries is an indication for the size and the richness of a guinna.
A Dogon's male granary
* Female granary: storage place for a woman's things, her husband has no access. Building with a pointed roof. It looks like a male granary but is less protected against mice. Here, she stores her personal belongings such as clothes, jewelry, money and some food. A woman is economically independent and earnings and things related to her merchandise are stored in her personal granary. She can for example make cotton or pottery. The amount of female granaries is an indication for the amount of women living in the guinna.
* Toguna (also called case à palabres): building only for men. They rest, discuss and take important decisions in the toguna. The roof of a toguna is made by 8 layers of millet stalks. It is a low building in which one cannot stand upright. This helps avoiding violence when discussions get heated.
A Toguna
* House for women that have their period: this house is on the outside of the village. It is constructed by women and is of lower quality than the other village buildings. Women having their period are considered to be unclean and have to leave their family house to live during five days in this house. They use kitchen equipment only to be used here. They bring with them their youngest children. This house is a gathering place for women during the evening.
A typical Dogon Village
Languages
Main article: Dogon languages
Dogon has been frequently referred to as a single language. In reality, there are at least five distinct groups of dialects[5] The Dogon language family is internally highly diverse, and many varieties are not mutually intelligible, actually 12 dialects and 50 variations. There is also a secret language Sigui So, which is used by the Society of the Masks during the Sigui ceremonies. Women have no right to learn Sigui So.
It is generally accepted that the Dogon languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family, but there is less certainty about their place within this family. The Dogon group has been linked to the Mande subfamily but also to Gur. In a recent overview of the Niger-Congo phylum, Dogon is treated as an independent branch before Volta-Congo. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The Dogon languages show few remnants of a noun class system (one example is that human nouns take a distinct plural suffix), leading linguists to conclude that Dogon is likely to have diverged from Niger-Congo very early. Another indication of this is the Subject Object Verb basic word order, which Dogon shares with such early Niger-Congo branches as Ijoid and Mande.
Dogon and Sirius
Certain researchers investigating the Dogon have reported that they seem to possess advanced astronomical knowledge, the nature and source of which has subsequently become embroiled in controversy. From 1931 to 1956, two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, spent 25 years with the Dogon, during which time they were initiated into the tribe. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Griaule and Dieterlen reported that the Dogon appeared to know that the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, has a faint companion, Sirius B, which requires a fairly large telescope to be seen. They also claimed that the Dogon appeared to know of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Neither Griaule nor Dieterlen ever presented any verifiable evidence for any of these claims.
The idea was made widespread when author Robert K. G. Temple wrote a book suggesting an extra-terrestrial source for the Dogon's knowledge. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET No additional verifiable evidence was presented. Previously, Griaule and Dieterlen had made no claims on the source of the Dogon's knowledge.
More recently, doubts have been raised about the validity of Griaule and Dieterlein's work. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The anthropologist Walter van Beek concluded after his research among the Dogon that,
"though they do speak about sigu tolo [which is what Griaule claimed the Dogon called Sirius] they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule". Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Griaule's daughter, Genevieve Calame-Griaule, has retorted that criticisms of her father's findings are mostly rooted in speculation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire An independent assessment is given by Andrew Apter of the University of California. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
[edit]
Sunday, November 16, 2008
attachment 773.att.3 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Children who spend their first few years in institutions without affectionate care, sensory stimulation, or other bare necessities often can't form close relationships. Known as attachment disorder, this condition has attracted intense interest as more people adopt institutionalized youngsters from around the world.
Despite some highly publicized cases in which violent acts were attributed to attachment disorder, its features and causes remain controversial.
An ongoing study of children adopted from Romanian orphanages by British parents outlines a set of behaviors typical of the disorder. Neither defiance nor violence characterizes the group. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG The work confirms that severe deprivation lies at the core of attachment disorder but doesn't inevitably undermine social functioning, reports a team headed by psychologist Thomas G. O'Connor of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Kids between ages 4 and 6 who have attachment disorder disregard their adoptive parents and eagerly approach strangers, and they don't look for their parents in new or scary situations. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG Such kids also often misinterpret social cues and find it difficult to generate more than superficial interest in others. Published diagnostic criteria for attachment disorder only partially describe this overall clinical picture, O'Connor's group says.
"Our observations of children [with attachment disorder] and interviews with parents attest to the clinical concerns raised about the children's safety and difficulties in establishing relationships with others," the researchers conclude in the June Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
However, nobody knows whether the youngsters' condition will improve as they spend more time in adoptive families, the scientists say. No established treatment exists for attachment disorder.
The researchers conducted home evaluations on 111 Romanian children at ages 4 and 6 who were adopted by 2 years of age and 52 British children adopted by 6 months of age.
Another 48 Romanian children who entered adoptive families between ages 2 and 3½ were evaluated at age 6. At the time of adoption, the Romanian kids had shown malnourishment and other physical signs of severe deprivation. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Children exposed to the most deprivation had the highest rates of attachment disorder. O'Connor's team diagnosed the condition in 4 percent of the British children, 7 percent of Romanian kids adopted by age 6 months, 21 percent of Romanian youngsters adopted between ages 6 months and 2 years, and 31 percent of Romanian children adopted between ages 2 and 3½ years. Attachment disorder, or its absence, usually stayed stable from ages 4 to 6. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Other data suggest that indiscriminate friendliness is the most persistent symptom linked to attachment disorder, remarks psychiatrist Charles H. Zeanah of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. His research indicates that among formerly deprived children, unchecked sociability can still affect those who manage to develop close relationships.
Despite some highly publicized cases in which violent acts were attributed to attachment disorder, its features and causes remain controversial.
An ongoing study of children adopted from Romanian orphanages by British parents outlines a set of behaviors typical of the disorder. Neither defiance nor violence characterizes the group. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG The work confirms that severe deprivation lies at the core of attachment disorder but doesn't inevitably undermine social functioning, reports a team headed by psychologist Thomas G. O'Connor of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Kids between ages 4 and 6 who have attachment disorder disregard their adoptive parents and eagerly approach strangers, and they don't look for their parents in new or scary situations. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG Such kids also often misinterpret social cues and find it difficult to generate more than superficial interest in others. Published diagnostic criteria for attachment disorder only partially describe this overall clinical picture, O'Connor's group says.
"Our observations of children [with attachment disorder] and interviews with parents attest to the clinical concerns raised about the children's safety and difficulties in establishing relationships with others," the researchers conclude in the June Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
However, nobody knows whether the youngsters' condition will improve as they spend more time in adoptive families, the scientists say. No established treatment exists for attachment disorder.
The researchers conducted home evaluations on 111 Romanian children at ages 4 and 6 who were adopted by 2 years of age and 52 British children adopted by 6 months of age.
Another 48 Romanian children who entered adoptive families between ages 2 and 3½ were evaluated at age 6. At the time of adoption, the Romanian kids had shown malnourishment and other physical signs of severe deprivation. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Children exposed to the most deprivation had the highest rates of attachment disorder. O'Connor's team diagnosed the condition in 4 percent of the British children, 7 percent of Romanian kids adopted by age 6 months, 21 percent of Romanian youngsters adopted between ages 6 months and 2 years, and 31 percent of Romanian children adopted between ages 2 and 3½ years. Attachment disorder, or its absence, usually stayed stable from ages 4 to 6. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Other data suggest that indiscriminate friendliness is the most persistent symptom linked to attachment disorder, remarks psychiatrist Charles H. Zeanah of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. His research indicates that among formerly deprived children, unchecked sociability can still affect those who manage to develop close relationships.
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