Bosnian Pyramids

The discovery of massive pyramids in Bosnia was widely reported in the news last month (at which point Beasjt posted about it in the Hoax Forum). The discovery was made by a Bosnian-American businessman named Semir Osmanagic, who has been actively pursuing Chariots-of-the-Gods-style archaeology for the past fifteen years, mostly in Mexico and Central America. (He believes the Mayans were descended from Atlanteans who came from the Pleiades... you can read about it in his book, The World of the Maya, which is online.)

Osmanagic claims the supposed Bosnian pyramids were built by a Bosnian super civilization that existed 12,000 years ago. But since Osmanagic's announcement of the "discovery," mainstream archaeologists have been busy refuting his claims. Anthony Harding of the European Association of Archaeologists suggests that Osmanagic may have found "voids or something similar in the rock," but not pyramids. He also points out that 12,000 years ago "Europe was in the late Upper Paleolithic... and no one was building anything except flimsy huts."

Other archaeologists are equally skeptical. Archaeology magazine reports that: "Curtis Runnels, a specialist in the prehistory of Greece and the Balkans at Boston University, notes that 'Between 27,000 and 12,000 years ago, the Balkans were locked in the last Glacial maximum, a period of very cold and dry climate with glaciers in some of the mountain ranges. The only occupants were Upper Paleolithic hunters and gatherers who left behind open-air camp sites and traces of occupation in caves. These remains consist of simple stone tools, hearths, and remains of animals and plants that were consumed for food. These people did not have the tools or skills to engage in the construction of monumental architecture.'"

Sounds to me like Osmanagic is hoping to exploit Bosnian cultural nationalism by cooking up some farfetched story about an ancient Bosnian super civilization. It's basically the same thing Macpherson did when he wrote his Fragments of Ancient Scottish Poetry and attributed them to a 3rd century bard named Ossian (thereby suggesting that Scotland was producing great literature before England), or that the Piltdown hoaxer did when he engineered the discovery of the missing link between man and ape in England (thereby suggesting that England was the birthplace of modern man). (Thanks to everyone who emailed me about the Bosnian Pyramids.)

---