Final thoughts on the Bosnian pyramid
As it turned out this was a dreadful title as it just ran and ran and ran…
Possibly not my last ever thoughts, but the only reason I wrote my first post on the subject was that I found the mass acceptance of what is easily checked nonsense mildly amusing. If something endearingly barking comes out of Visoko then I may laugh again but my in depth analysis (The similarity between the Pyramids of the Sun is that the pointy bit is at the top, see below also) is about as excited I can get about it. There is a dark irony to that a country whose heritage sites were targeted in an ethnic cleansing campaign has decided to finish off the job with one of their major sites, but it’s not that amusing. On the whole it’s rather dull and I’m sorry to disappoint Billy Rae but I’m not filled with enthusiasm to write a comprehensive debunking of the site, taking each fact line by line because it’s obvious that Osmanagić isn’t interested in facts. Here are a collection of thoughts which might explain why I’m not moved to keep more of an eye on the topic.
Osmanagić is making claims which he has no evidence for
I was going to talk about the alignments of Mayan pyramids. This was because one of the reasons we ‘know’ the Bosnian pyramid is a pyramid is because it’s aligned in the cardinal directions. The reason it’s called the Pyramid of the Sun is that it looks like the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan. So I fired up Google Earth to take a look at Teotihuacan.
Well that’s not cardinally aligned.
You can check for yourself by downloading Google Earth and then examining opening this KMZ bookmark with it (alas I lost the bookmark when I switched the host). How ever you twist that pyramid you won’t get it to align north-south or east-west. In fact if Osmanagić did have a passing familiarity with Mayan pyramids he’d know the most astronomically interesting one is famous for not being aligned to the cardinal points.
I’m not being facetious when I say the common feature of the pyramids in Mexico, Egypt (and Bosnia) all have the pointy bit at the top. Now people like Osmanagić think that to the pyramids all have to be built by the same people. Why else would you see pyramids in two completely different places? There are three reasons:
1] Some rulers have big egos.
An easy way to show off your ego is to build something massive. There might be great skill in building something small and intricate but your basic self-centred maniac likes something big and impressive. Julius Caesar didn’t celebrate gaining control over Rome by building himself a small but elegant shed in his garden.
2] The People building the Impressive Thing decreed by the Emperor, King or Generalissimo aren’t stupid.
If you’re given the job of building the Impressive Thing you learn pretty quickly how big and wide a wall has to be to avoid toppling, which leads to -
3] The Laws of Physics are the Same for Everyone
Big is impressive and the easiest way to build big is a cone or, if you want the cone to be built with tessalating blocks (a good idea if you want a stable stone structure) a cone with a square base — which is a pyramid. A cone or pyramid allows you to reach greater height for any given number of blocks without sacrificing stability. The mystery isn’t why some cultures built pyramids, it’s why more cultures didn’t. As building techniques improve you’d expect Pyramids to become pointier, and if you look at the Nubian pyramids built 1,500 years after the Egyptian pyramids you notice they are pointier.
So if people are going to build pyramids because they’re working with the same Laws of Physics under the same gravity we’d expect some similarities. A closer look would reveal differences. The Egyptian pyramids had a point at the top. The Mayan pyramids had a temple because it was expected that people would go up to the top. I haven’t the faintest idea if the Bosnian pyramid is pointy or flat. Osmanagić says it’s flat, but there was medieval settlement, so could the hill have been levelled in the mediveval period? If the top of the hill is bulldozed away, and there are plans to clear the stand of trees at the top, we’ll never know.
In fact this whole being buried thing is a bit of a problem in archaeology, which is why we have to excavate a lot of the time. Without excavation we can’t say a lot. Yet Osmanagić seems to have radar vision and has already measured the base of the pyramid.
Osmanagić has already been contradicted by archaeologists like… Osmanagić
Bosnian explorer Semir Osmanagić, who discovered the pyramidal structure in Bosnia believes that all three pyramids were constructed during the same period, with the Bosnian pyramid the last to be built.
Semir Osmanagić on Bosnianpyramid.com
“The pyramids in Peru, Mexico and Egypt raise the same questions. Who built the pyramids and how, where did it all start, which pyramid is the ‘mother’ of all pyramids. I dare to say that the very Bosnian pyramid of the Sun is one of the main candidates for the “mother” of all pyramids”, deems Osmanagic.
Semir Osmanagić on Fena News
To be fair it’s not just Osmanagić who is inconsistent.
Three pyramids make an isosceles triangle making this complex unique in the world.Semir Osmanagić on bosnianpyramids.org
The teams measured the sides of the pyramids and the results show equal side triangular shape with each side measuring 365 meters in length and a 60% angle (this is a characteristic of an equal side triangle).
News report from bosnianpyramids.org
I don’t know if Osmanagić has announced conclusively that the pyramid was made of jam, but if he has I can tell you what next week’s headline from the site will be.
To be honest you’d expect some contradiction as a dig progressed because you find new evidence that forces you to change your mind. And often in digs that’s what you’ll hear “We now think it’s a temple because we’ve found…” Yet with this there’s no because. It just is. There’s no reason to suppose anything, so there’s no problem with changing your mind as often as your underwear. But then it makes engaging with the topic boring. Why should I care that he’s found alignments on the rising sun or whatever. Next week it’ll be something else.
Unfortunately because evidence is optional Bosnia won’t have a unique pyramid for long.
Osmanagić has proved Europe’s oldest/biggest pyramid is in Serbia or Croatia
It will be true. Do you seriously think that some intense Serbian or Croation nationalist won’t be poring over maps looking for their own pyramid? And you can bet when they find it it will be bigger and/or older. I know it will be bigger or older because Osmanagić has picked his hill. All the next alternative historian has to do is pick a bigger hill.
Speculators might want to buy property near Jabuka which was previously thought to be a volcanic island. A lot of it’s underwater, but that’s no problem if it was built in the last Ice Age. It would just prove that it’s older than the Bosnia pyramid. Dredge the sea bed around it and you will find archaeological artefacts*. There is the problem of a complete lack of evidence to support the pyramid idea, but Osmanagić has shown you don’t need evidence, just pictures of bedrock. The world’s media are alert to the possibilities of pyramids in the Balkans and where would tourists rather go: The bare bedrock in Bosnia or the Croatian pyramid near the beach.
I’ll be depressed if anyone actually runs with the Jabuka pyramid scheme, but if I were mayor of a town on the Croatian or Montenegrin coast I’d be looking very hard at the local hill and phoning landscaping companies for estimates. And when the counter-claim comes the Bosnian team will have no defence because they haven’t used evidence to support their claim. It will just be their word against the Croats, Serbians and Montenegrins — and the Croats and Montenegrins will have a beach.
Osmanagić could have made this work
The idea of an ancient pyramid in Bosnia is not totally absurd. It would be a deeply weird thing to find, but the Stone Age peoples were very good at doing deeply weird things. Here’s an example.
Silbury Hill by PhillipC.
This is Silbury Hill a mound made of earth in the Neolithic period before there were any cities in the British Isles. Neolithic people could organise and if it was done once then why not many times? So why aren’t archaeologists impressed? It is a matter of closing ranks. Perhaps it’s an idea to think about how research funding works.
If you don’t get research funding you risk losing your job. In the UK a major source of funds is the AHRC which funds all the Arts and Humanities including a lot of archaeology. There are not really fixed quotas, so if more archaeologists come in with more exciting projects then they get a bigger slice of the funding pie. In the past prehistoric archaeology did well, but in recent years historical archaeology has done better and some departments are feeling the pinch. Funding doesn’t necessarily go to what is good. Research on research councils has shown that they often fund things simply because they’re sexy or in the news.
So if this pyramid was plausible then archaeologists would be putting in funding proposals faster than you could say “parasite”. You wouldn’t have to agree with it. There’s plenty of research money in examining things from a critical perspective. All it has to be is plausible enough to be worth examining. A prehistoric pyramid in Bosnia would be immensely sexy. In my case I have an MPhil specialising in prehistoric south-east Europe and I’m an archaeoastronomer. If there was anything in this I’d be able to put in a grant application and add in the cost of a wheelbarrow to carry all the money to the bank+. Other European countries have their own systems but they all like to fund exciting stuff. Stone Age archaeologists would love this to be true.
Initially it looked like a very good site to pick. The presence of a whole load of important archaeology meant that there was years and years of potentially lucrative work for everyone to do. Osmanagić could have got a lot of people fund raising for him and experts in to provide regular news stories and tourist attractions. Archaeologists do work with the fringe on occasion, especially if they’re occasions with money. If NYU is willing to take money from Shelby White then dozens would be happy to get money with an amiable eccentric. Osmanagić could have been Mr Bosnia were it not for his outright hostility to archaeological remains because scraping to bedrock with a bulldozer really isn’t a substitute for painstakingly brushing dirt of human remains. Now no credible archaeologist will want to associated with him.
It’s not the bizarre pyramid theories that’s the major problem. It’s simply the ignorant destruction of Bosnian heritage that bothers academics.
The Pyramids have really bad names
You would have thought someone with an Indiana Jones fixation would have spotted this, but the pyramids are really stupidly named. Search for Pyramid of the Sun and you’ll find a pyramid in Mexico. If I were naming the pyramid I would have looked at its brooding shape and named it the Pyramid of Doom, inventing a myth explaining the name if I had to. You’d make exposing the secrets of the Pyramid of Doom a spiritual journey which is the sort of market Osmanagić is trying to appeal to. The next pyramid would be the Pyramid of Life and the third pyramid, when the market is getting fatigued would the Pyramid of Gold which is said** to guard an ancient treasure from beyond the dawn of time.
Naming a site is a skill. I know of one Inca site named something like Qebinhirca. I don’t remember the exact name but I remember the translation is “Kevin’s fort”. You can work out the first name of one of the directors. Around the same time I was looking at megalithic tombs, but people don’t tend to appreciate having a tomb named after them. It’s not the sort of thing you can sell to help fund research. The “Buy a star for your loved one” scam is kind of romantic. “Buy a tomb for your wife/husband” is just sinister.
Perhaps when I finally buy Why Truth Matters I’ll be inspired to take it more seriously. It’s in my Amazon basket, but I don’t have anything to add to it to get the free deilvery.
* Dredge almost anywhere in the Mediterranean and you’ll eventually find archaeological artefacts.
+ Slight exaggeration.
** Said by me just now.
Google+
I’d say AHRC is a major source of research funding for archaeology in the UK, as developer funded excavation supplies a bit of money..
http://www.archaeologists.net/modules/icontent/inPages/docs/prof/profiling.pdf
Have you got Schopenhauer’s ‘the art of always being right’ ?
Re: “If NYU is willing to take money from Shelby White then dozens would be happy to get money with an amiable eccentric.”
NY TIMES EDITORIAL DESK
Published: April 5, 2006
To the Editor:
Re ”$200 Million Gift Prompts a Debate Over Antiquities” (front page, April 1):
The ill grace with which some archaeologists have greeted the magnificent Leon Levy and Shelby White gift to their discipline comes as no surprise.
For the past few decades archaeologists have increasingly adopted postures that assume their own virtue and deny that of others. They do not seem to understand that acquisitors (museums, collectors and the art and antiquities trade) also have valid interests and important roles to play in our nation’s cultural life.
The interests of acquisitors and those of the general public sometimes conflict with those of archaeologists. But that does not prove that acquisitors and the public are iniquitously wrong.
Archaeology is an important profession, and archaeologists do important work. They do not, however, inhabit a higher moral universe than acquisitors or the general public. Their growing habit of character assassination of acquisitors is unattractive and unwarranted, and should cease.
Archaeologists should accept the fact that there can be legitimate differences between them and acquisitors, and adjust to those differences and build on what they have in common.
John Henry Merryman
Stanford, Calif., April 1, 2006
The writer is emeritus professor of law and affiliated professor of art at Stanford.
A board-member of the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications has referred to those who think buying unprovenanced antiquities is a bad idea as “jihadists”. Would you really like to go down this road?
Now I don’t believe for one second that Shelby White would knowingly fund drug smugglers or less savoury criminals — but if you have a policy of purchasing illicit antiquities then how would you know that you’re not doing that?
Strange they should speculate the pyramidal differences relating to different peoples building them.….when the pyramids were built we are all the same peoples. It has been through time that we have divided ourselves culturally, religiously and scientifically. When we finally understand that we are of one mind, one heart, then we should know that we built them before time.
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Final thoughts on Bosnian pyramid
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Orbis Quintus » Blog Archive » Alun’s final thoughts on the Bosnian pyramid
Final thoughts on Bosnian pyramid
[…] He posted this over a week ago, but it’s damned thorough. I have a much higher tolerance for crazy bullshit theories because it meshes with my craving for certain genres of literature, so i’m still following the saga of Osmanagić. […]
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rev. Bob
Research on research councils has shown that they often fund things simply because they’re sexy or in the news.
As opposed to researchers who never consider sexiness or newsworthiness when they choose their next project? Puh-leeez!
Foundation managers are perfectly capable of reading their pile of applications, noticing that 10 archaeologists want to study X, realizing that they never funded research in X before, and writing a couple of checks. All without reading a newspaper.
To take a recent example, the Templeton Foundation would have adored being able to fund research in intelligent design. Not just because it was sexy, and not because they’d funded conferences and political action on the subject (the latter, perhaps inadvertently). They were eager to get to some actual research. So they advertised, saying “Yoo hoo! We’ve got this big pile of money here for research in ID. Send in your applications.”
None arrived.
You can’t fund what nobody wants to research. I just thought it was a little unfair to blame the foundations (and no, I don’t work for one) when researchers and funders are all subject to the laws of the herd.
COMMENT:
Sorry it’s not solely a matter of blaming the research councils. There is simply a limited pot of money and demand exceeds supply.- which is no surprise. It’s going to hit prehistorians harder because of the increased willingness to fund historical archaeologists. So a lot of good prehistorians are going to be increasing strapped for cash.
Prehistorians, at least in the UK, would have a keen interest in researching prehistory in Bosnia. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the same elsewhere in Europe. The Balkans are one of the pivots of the past. Starcevo and Vinca in Serbia were the places which introduced farming to the rest of Europe. Later on copper-smelting originates from the Balkans. Now is this all moving up the Danube or differently? Being able to investigate sites in Bosnia would help answer fundamental questions about how the greatest changes in European society, the invention of farming and metallurgy, came to happen.
There are lots of reasons why funding does or doesn’t happen. But in this case a guy with an interest in the past, good connections with the local government and a lot of money or fundraising capability could have had archaeologists fighting to work with him.
If the finds are scraped up by bulldozer and dumped in a spoilheap then none of these questions can be answered because we don’t know anything about their context.
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
I must say I found your article most amusing but I hope you eat your words ‘alun’. You are one of those small minded idiots who cannot see past their own nose and truely believe that you’ve managed to ‘explain’ everything on earth. The Ancient Egyptions built the pyramids because they were big headed??? Who writes this stuff?
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: alun
You’re not the only one who hopes I eat my words. So do I. It would be great to be wrong, but the evidence provided simply doesn’t match reality.
You may also find the about me page useful. It includes various things including my name.
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: alun
Comments are still welcome, but I’ve collated the various posts at Revise and Dissent, so that’s now the place to comment.
Comments opened again because hardly anyone is commenting at R&D. You can all laugh at me because it turns out the next pyramid hasn’t been found in Serbia or Croatia. It’s been found in the Ukraine. But it is older. It’s from a civilisation destroyed 65 million years ago.
hat-tip Ma’at
Selim Bešlagić, co-founder of the Institute for Materials Construction and former mayor of Tuzla, came to Visoko today to share the preliminary results of sample analysis started on July 5. The analysis measured the compression levels of sandstone found on the Pyramid of the Moon and brecca found on the Pyramid of the Sun, finding both types to be unnaturally hard, the sandstone ranging from 550 – 600 kg/cm2, and the brecca reaching 450 kg/cm2. Mr. Bešlagić said, “We don’t have to prove what kind of materials we have here after this.”
In the Institute’s analysis of the connective material used to bond the blocks, calcium hydroxide was indicated in the construction of both pyramids, with a 97% chemical similarity. To Mr. Bešlagić, this discovery proves that “the builders knew about oxidized connective material.”
Nadija Nukić, the project geologist who met with the Institute’s experts, acknowledged this to be an important result, which will allow for follow-up. “We will do chemical analysis of the sandstone and brecca, to see if this percentage of calcium hydroxide is possibly a natural emanation.” Mr. Bešlagić conferred with a geological research intitute in Slovenia which will conduct these tests and do carbon-dating on the connective material.
I assume above comment was cut ‘n’ pasted from http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/news.html. For problems with this statement see the Hall of Ma’at. This page might explain why radiocarbon dating is an odd test to perform on Calcium Hydroxide.
Regarding orientaton of the pyramid, you may wish to consider the effect of precession here. Alignment for the ancients is considered to have been carried out using the stars. Given the North Pole position has wandered, (It currently best fits polaris but some 5000 years ago for the Egyptians it was Thuban or Alpha Draconis, something that Egyptologists continue to have a blind spot)
I would suggest that the angle of deviation should be noted and calculated using archaoastronomical methods to determine age and cross referrenced to archaeological dating. Precession has to be taken into account. That said your coments on misalignment could be misleading.
Ronnie
No amount of whining or bitching about any person’s analysis is going to make the empirical facts on the ground go away. It’s an 800 lb in the living room. The bloody thing looks like a pyramid and it should not be a hard thing to see how it’s put together and with what. If it is found that this structure was the result of deliberate human action then the academic archeological crowd look stupid.
Someone wrote that bosnians are now one mind, and noone looks at other interests. I have to say that nothing more can connect those nations. Osmanagic is a atheist and so is he claiming a hill to be a pyramid. The time will show that this author was in right.
So many jealous hearts. Indigenous Bosnia is what you people are afraid of. And if all of you are so good with hoax and lies why dont you talk about 911, since its what raped all of your souls. Thats why you feel the way you feel about others pople. Ignorance!
This is an extremely interesting and perhaps equally important story. If nothing else, it shows how little we know about the ancient past and that of this region in particular. See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4443738390504296376&hl=en for some video of a large network of tunnels they are currently excavating. Unless this is an elaborate hoax, there was definitely some significant construction at this site for which there is no surviving historical record; and the hills/structures are shaped and positioned in the same very unlikely/unusual way as Egyptian pyramids. We’ve all seen that image from Mars of what seems to be a monument with what looks like a face, but in this case we have much better images and there are three such structures/hills situated exactly like some of the pyramids in Egypt. Admittedly this region of Bosnia has a lot of geometrically shaped hills, so perhaps there is some mix of the man-made and naturally occurring or perhaps it is even entirely natural, but it is definitely worth investigating. The bottom line is the experts are being very stubborn and completely myopic (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but sometimes a lot of knowledge is even more dangerous). Their argument is that there is no supporting evidence to prove the date of the stones/structures that have been uncovered and no POSSIBILITY that an ancient civilization ever lived in that region capable of building such large structures (the logic being that if there was such a civilization we would have already found artifacts, even though they admit to knowing next to nothing about the region’s ancient civilizations such as the Illyrians). The question is simply whether there is a pyramid there (because if there is then there must have been a LOST civilization capable of building it) or just some unknown man-made structures added to a set of very unusual naturally occurring hills (although that could still be very historically significant). So far there has been no conclusive evidence presented either way, but the experts are not going to help answer that question because they are sure they already know the answer and/or because they are afraid of damaging their reputations by being associated with a hoax or even an honest mistake. Osmanagić’s background and his reportedly fraudulent and mistaken claims and statements don’t help, but his background has provided the motivation for his undertaking, and the lack of expert involvement may explain the erroneous statements. He is a businessman and believer in a link between the pyramids of Eqypt and Latin America, Atlantis, and of course the alien visitors that tie everything together. He is most likely wrong about a lot of his beliefs and he may be partly motivated by profit, but again the question is simply whether there is a pyramid there, not whether it was built by or for aliens or whether it proves a link with other regions with similar pyramids. The far more likely explanation for the ubiquity of pyramids and certain religious beliefs (among other things) is that people traveled much farther and more frequently throughout history for trade routes than we previously believed (some people, including a lot of experts, would disagree but recent evidence from China and other locations strongly supports this idea), and that pyramids are the most obvious structure to build with limited technology. The fact is that civilizations around the world built pyramids (including but not limited to Egypt, Central America, South America, China, Rome, England, Spain, France, Africa, and the Ukraine) throughout ancient history, so it would come as no surprise if some lost civilization in this region did the same a little earlier than the biggest (non-Chinese?) ones, on a slightly bigger scale than the biggest (non-Chinese?) ones, or in a unique way (probably dictated by their natural landscape). So I am disregarding the “experts” and eagerly waiting to see if Osmanagić can prove his case. It seems like it should be an easy question to answer but according to Osmanagić it may take several years. If the experts are in fact wrong they will all be very embarrassed and, more importantly, Europe will take it’s rightful place as home of one of the world’s first real civilizations. Otherwise, perhaps Osmanagić is damaging an important historical site (which could be a pretty bad thing but wouldn’t be entirely his fault) but at least he’s doing something to answer a question that has been asked by people in that region for a very long time. –Josh
Ego is the problem, ego of great scientists; & money of course. Unfortunately.
There are many cases like this — same for climate change:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4340135300469846467
A very good example as “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is another tale which has been shown to be nonsense.
Evidence is a problem too. Or rather the lack of evidence when people hurl accusations of corruption without a shred of evidence to back them up. For instance, Risto, would it be reasonable for me to point out that you’re on commission to sell trips to Bosnia? We both know that’s something I’ve made up. I don’t have any proof at all, but can you prove me wrong? If you can’t is it acceptable to say that you could make a lot of money by persuading people a hill is a pyramid?
In my case there might be a financial interest. I’ll be looking for a job soon. My MPhil was on World Prehistory with a specialisation in South-East Europe. My PhD will be on archaeoastronomy. If this were a real pyramid I’d be in huge demand, because there would be other pyramids in the Balkans to study. Unfortunately if you read the other pyramid posts, there’s a lot of evidence there isn’t.
Its typical for the serbian idiots to copy Bosnia..Not only are they jealous that Bosnia never wanted to be Serbian,now they want to go around and search of their own pyramid..Its really funny..They are just jealous of bosnians..Not mainly people care about serbia in last 10 years..because most of the lie and distort the truth about the war..They should accept that the war started because of them!!
In reply to Ronnie Gallagher: I could be wrong, but in reply to your comment about the orientation of the pyramids, Thuban was pretty much dead on North 5000 years ago. At most it was only a degree or two off, and the slight misalignment of a building aligned using it would probably not be visible to the naked eye. Your point about checking these things is thoroughly valid, though, as by 1800 BC it was way off the pole.
It’s funny that it would even be considered a matter of Bosnian pride, because it’s obvious the pyramid, if it exists, was certainly not built by any people that could be called “Bosnians” in any possible sense. Not like the Egyptians, who can claim to descend from the people who built the pyramids.
I can see bulldozing the hill, because it’s unlikely whatever archeaology exists there is going to be properly excavated any time soon, and the claim of a pyramid needs evidence. If the evidence is found, then proper excavation would begin. Certainly some artifacts would be lost, but so many would be found…