 There is an African tribe near Timbuktu called the Dogans, who hold information that would be absolutely impossible to know according to today's standards. See, the Dogans have a cave on their land that stretches back into a mountain, and in this cave are drawings over 700 years old. Now, the brightest star in the sky to us is called Sirius, now called Sirius A. If you look at Orion's belt following it downwards to your left, you can see it. The information in the Dogan cave specifically showed the star Sirius. They are very specific about the star, and they have a diagram of not just Sirius rotational pattern, but a small star orbiting it. They say it's very, very old and very small, and made out of the heaviest matter in the universe. They also say that it takes close to 50 years for this small star to rotate Sirius. Astronomers were able to validate the existence of the secondary star, now called Sirius B, in 1862, and only about 30 years ago could they validate the rest of this information. The way that stars work, when they get really old they have two options, they can go supernova, or it can blow up as a red giant, cause an explosion, and slowly collapse into a white dwarf.