From the African-American Baseline Essays, a set of six essays, published by the Portland school board in 1987, that provide resource materials and references on the contributions of Africans and African-Americans for various school systems nationwide. One of the goals of this essay, by Hunter Havelin Adams, an industrial hygiene technician at the Argonne National Laboratory and high school graduate, is "mastering the basic concepts of mathematics and science." To that elusive end, Adams outlines the astronomical knowledge of the Dogon people of Mali:

They knew the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, the spiral structure of the Milky Way, where our star system lies. They claimed that billions of stars spiral in space like the circulation of blood in the human body.... Perhaps the most remarkable facet of their knowledge is their knowing intricate details of the Sirius star system, which presently can only be detected with powerful telescopes. The Dogon knew of the white dwarf companion star of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. They knew its approximate mass ("it is composed of 'sagala,' an extremely heavy, dense metal such that all the earthly beings combined cannot lift it") its orbital period (50 years) and its axial rotation period (one year). Furthermore, they knew of a third star that orbits Sirius and its planet [sic]. The X-ray telescope aboard the Einstein Orbiting Observatory recently confirmed the existence of the third star. The Dogon with no apparent instrument at their disposal appear to have known these facts for at least 500 years.

Adams offers no evidence for this claim. It should also be noted that Sirius B is rather dim, and cannot be seen with the naked eye. It is easy to miss even with the aid of a telescope.

In the same essay, Adams dwells on misunderstandings that surround Ancient Egyptians' mastery of " 'magic' (psi), precognition, psychokinesics, remote viewing and other undeveloped human capabilities":

[W]e must first know the extremely significant distinction between (non-science) "magic" and (science) psychoenergetics.... Psychoenergetics (also known in the scientific community as parapsychology and psychotronics) is the multidisciplinary study of the interface and interaction of human consciousness with energy and matter.... Psi, as a true scientific discipline, is being seriously investigated at prestigious universities all over the world (e.g., Princeton and Duke). We are concerned here only with psi in Egypt, not "magic" ... its efficacy depended on a precise sequence of actions, performed at specific times and under controlled environmental conditions, facilitated by the "hekau" (the Egyptian term for professional psi engineers).... Today in a similar manner, psi is researched and demonstrated in controlled laboratory and field experiments.

According to the essay, Egyptians diagnosed and treated "transmaterial disturbances" of the primordial life-energy known as "za" with a "therapeutic touch" procedure that is considered controversial and readily dismissed by Western scientists. For this material, Adams cites one of his own lectures.

Adams also notes that Egyptians developed a theory of species evolution at least 2000 years before Charles Darwin, and offers as evidence a quote from "The Book of Knowing and Evolutions (the becomings) of Ra (the creator sun god)":

The words of Neb-er-ter who speaks concerning his coming into existence: "I am he who evolved himself under the form of the god Khepra (scarab beetle), that was evolved at the "first time." I the evolver of evolutions, evolved myself from the primordial matter which I had made ... which has evolved multitudes of evolutions at their "first time."

The essay also claims that ancient Egyptians anticipated many of the philosophical aspects of quantum theory, that they understood the wave/particle nature of light, that they could electroplate gold, that they were able to predict pregnancy by urinating on barley seeds, and that "enclosed with the Great Pyramid are the value of pi, the principle of the golden section, the number of days in the tropical year, the relative diameters of the earth at the equator and the poles, and ratiometric distances of the planets from the sun, the approximate mean length of the earth's orbit around the sun, the 26,000-year cycle of the equinoxes, and the acceleration of gravity." A section on aeronautics claims that Egyptians produced a model of a perfectly aerodynamic glider that was then sequestered for thousands of years in a tomb near Saquara. True enough, since the "model" was a statue of a bird.

[Ed.: Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of prohibition on teaching religion as science in public schools?]

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