Tourists flock to Bosnian hills but experts mock amateur
archaeologist's pyramid claims
Whether ancient man-made structures or natural formations, locals cash
in
Ian Traynor in Visoko
Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian
The site in Visoko, Bosnia, which Semir Osmanagic claims is home to
Europe's only pyramids. Photograph: Hidajet Delic/AP
In Bosnia's Valley of the Pyramids, only one man is king. Semir
Osmanagic, new-age philosopher and amateur archaeologist, splits his
time between Texas and Sarajevo, but these days is mostly to be found
scraping away at a hillside 40 minutes north of the Bosnian capital.
It is here that he claims to have made the most extraordinary discovery
of the millennium: Europe's only pyramids, dating back to the late Ice
Age, exceeding in scale and perfection those of ancient Egypt or Latin
America. "This is the most magnificent construction complex built on
the face of the planet," he said. "These pyramids are so old and so
unique, it's hard to compare them to anything else in the world."
The experts strongly dispute his claims. Mr Osmanagic, 46, says they
are jealous. And at Visoko, an army of amateurs is busy digging up the
hillsides to uncover traces of man-made structures that the Houston
Bosnian insists date from a prehistoric cycle of civilisation rich in
its sophistication and washed away "in the flood".
The locals love it. Farmers are turning fields into car parks. Coach
tours are arriving from all over Bosnia and beyond. Cafes, bars, and
hotels are doing booming business in what was a severely depressed
Muslim town on the frontline of a war that ended 11 years ago.
"It's amazing, we've got 300 people here today. We've had more than
200,000 visiting in the last few months," said Haris Delibasic, a
Visoko accountant who now spends most of his time at the "pyramids"
site. "We thought these were just hills. Now we know they aren't."
Mr Osmanagic's epiphany occurred last year when he visited Visoko to
research its medieval legacy. The town was a seat of Bosnian kings in
the middle ages. Mr Osmanagic has been preoccupied with ancient
pyramids for 20 years, touring central and Latin America, the Middle
East and east Asia.
Experts say the verdant rolling valleys of central Bosnia contain
dozens of natural pyramid-shaped hills. But Mr Osmanagic is convinced
he has uncovered ancient man-made structures in the form of four
pyramids just outside Visoko. He has dubbed them pyramid of the sun,
the moon, the dragon, and love.
Sun, the first and biggest "discovery", is said to be 220 metres
(720ft) tall, considerably higher than Egypt's Great Pyramid. Mr
Osmanagic found that the four sides of the four pyramids were perfectly
aligned with the heavens, facing north, south, east, and west, while
the tips of three formed a perfect equilateral triangle. "The first
thing I noticed was the perfect geometry," he said.
Mr Osmanagic and his dozens of helpers have conducted satellite
photography of the area, thermal inertia analysis re****ted to reveal
faster heat loss than would occur with a hillside, and radar research
said to disclose the existence of straight and perpendicular tunnels
inside the "pyramids".
The excavations have turned up intriguing finds - ancient, man-made
"concrete" blocks of "exceptional quality, better than anything made
today", and weighing up to 15 tonnes. Excavations on the "pyramid of
the moon" have revealed terraces of sandstone slabs with small channels
built in at regular intervals, apparently a primitive drainage system,
as well as at least one subterranean chamber with stone-built walls.
"Our working hypothesis is that all this is before the end of the last
Ice Age," said the adventurer. "We're looking for organic material,
wood, charcoal or bones that we can carbon-date. I believe that the
world's history is much older than they teach us."
"Pyramidiots", scoff the experts, who are appalled at the leeway
granted to Mr Osmanagic to dig up the countryside. A Bosnian university
mining and geology department said the pyramids were natural geological
formations. Mark Rose of America's Archaeological Institute denounced
the Visoko amateurs as charlatans. Professor Anthony Harding of Exeter
University, who is president of the European Association of
Archaeologists, has been equally scathing. And prominent Bosnian
scholars have written to the government demanding that Mr Osmanagic be
stopped, saying he is turning Bosnia into a laughing stock.
But in a country nearly wiped off the map by Serbian and Croatian
nationalists in the war of the 1990s, Bosnians are flattered to be told
that Bosnia might just be the oldest European civilisation of all. "Let
them dig and we'll see what they find," Haris Silajdzic, a newly
elected president, said. "Besides, it's good for business."
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