The Bosnian Pyramid threatens to spread

Mar 26, 2007 Alun Politics 12 Comments Antiscience, Bosnia, Bosnian Pyramid, Semir Osmanagić

Bosnia’s Pyr­amid Scheme. Photo (cc) Blandm.

I haven’t pos­ted much on the pyramania in Bos­nia since Septem­ber. Still a trickle of com­ments and com­plaints con­tinue to come in. There’s a small num­ber of people who insist that Osman­agić should be allowed to do what he likes and any evid­ence that he’s incom­pet­ent or plain wrong should be ignored. Reports by archae­olo­gists from the EAA? The ‘experts’ (never for­get the scare­quotes) don’t know everything. Bos­nian Geo­lo­gists con­clude the hill is nat­ural. Ignore them, the ‘experts’ don’t know everything. Robert Schoch, a geo­lo­gist admired by the altern­at­ive archae­ology com­munity has examined the site, includ­ing the the tun­nels, and has said it’s nat­ural. Ignore him, the ‘experts’ don’t know everything. The refusal to accept any evid­ence which con­tra­dicts their wishes is known by believ­ers as keep­ing an open mind.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that this is non­sense. The prob­lem for the Bos­nian Pyr­amid Found­a­tion is that people have kept an open mind and listened to what they’ve said. If someone can’t use a tape meas­ure tell if a pyr­amid is 70m high or 220m high, why should they be cap­able of an archae­olo­gical exacava­tion? It’s not all about dig­ging, you need to be able to use a tape meas­ure to tell where you’re dig­ging. So if you were in Osmanagić’s pos­i­tion, how would you cred­ibly ignore the over­whelm­ing evid­ence against you? It’s a prob­lem, espe­cially when the fiercest critic of Osman­agić is, acci­dent­ally Osman­agić.

The com­mon por­trayal by Osmanagić’s found­a­tion is that this is Bos­nia versus the sci­entific estab­lish­ment. This has never been the case. From the earli­est days Bos­nian archae­olo­gists, his­tor­i­ans and geo­lo­gists were say­ing the claims were false. Under­stand­ably Bosnia’s aca­demic infra­struc­ture is still under­fun­ded fol­low­ing the war. Osman­agić in con­trast is flush with for­eign money.

The prob­lem threatens to spread. Stulti­tia has kindly sent me a let­ter from the Sara­jevo paper Oslobod­jenje, which you can read a trans­la­tion of below. Now that Osman­agić has shown that money can pur­chase the right to play archae­olo­gist oth­ers are being attrac­ted to Bos­nia. It now seems that Troy has been dis­covered in Bos­nia by a Mex­ican busi­ness­man. This could be bad news for Gabela, a site dat­ing from the Middle Ages, which sur­vived the war but may have to go if Troy is to be found. There’s employ­ment and the pro­spect of tour­ists, so is it pedantic to quibble about the lack of evidence?

Bos­nian his­tor­i­ans, archae­olo­gists and geo­lo­gists don’t think so. Des­pite the claims of Osman­agić, pub­lished geo­lo­gical reports have con­cluded that the ‘pyr­am­ids’ are nat­ural. Not just out­siders, Bos­nian geo­lo­gists famil­iar with the region have also con­cluded the hills are nat­ural. Bos­nian his­tor­i­ans and Bos­nian archae­olo­gists are also against this pro­ject. This isn’t Bos­nia versus the world, it’s one busi­ness man versus Bosnia’s heritage.

If it was presen­ted as a fantasy, then I’d say that Osman­agić has the right to demol­ish any­thing in Bos­nia if the cit­izens let him. I wouldn’t think it was a good idea, but I can’t force my demands on another demo­cratic coun­try. What I dis­agree with is the present­a­tion of Osmanagić’s work as any­thing approach­ing sound sci­ence. This is decep­tion and rather than a new future Osman­agić is selling fairy gold. This pyr­amid will not be accep­ted by for­eign aca­dem­ics nor, as the let­ter below makes clear, will it be accep­ted by Bos­nian aca­dem­ics.

Sara­jevo, March 14, 2007

Dear Mr. Schwarz-Schilling,

For more than a year now, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian and the inter­na­tional sci­entific com­munity has been fol­low­ing the devel­op­ment of pseudoar­chae­olo­gical trend and pro­ject of search for the alleged pre­his­toric pyr­am­ids near Visoko in Bosnia-Herzegovina in utter appal­ment. Par­tic­u­larly wor­ry­ing are the sup­port given to this pro­ject by a part of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian polit­ical estab­lish­ment and the politi­cized rhet­oric applied to present the alleged dis­cov­ery of Visoko pyr­am­ids as fun­da­mental state interest to the pub­lic. There­fore, your last year’s visit to the loc­a­tion of the alleged dis­cov­ery and sup­port to its alleged researcher, Mr. Semir Osman­agic, given in the capa­city of the High Com­mis­sioner and the most import­ant rep­res­ent­at­ive of inter­na­tional com­munity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is unac­cept­able and shocking.

The local and inter­na­tional experts in archae­ology, his­tory and geo­logy have, over the course of the past year, indi­vidu­ally or jointly, expressed their cri­ti­cism over this pro­ject and warned of the dangers posed by such pseudoar­chae­olo­gical trend and ama­teur­ish excav­a­tions to the real cul­tural and his­tor­ical her­it­age. They par­tic­u­larly stressed the inap­pro­pri­ate­ness of sup­port to such pseudos­cientific pro­ject in a soci­ety that has recently emerged from a hor­rible war and has great dif­fi­culties in restor­ing its high edu­ca­tion facil­it­ies, museums, lib­rar­ies and other cul­tural, sci­entific and research institutions.

In May last year, some twenty Bosnian-Herzegovinian archae­olo­gists, his­tor­i­ans and museo­lo­gists, fol­low­ing many indi­vidual out­cries in local media, dir­ec­ted a joint open let­ter of protest to the fed­eral author­it­ies which gave green light to this pro­ject without adequate sci­entific super­vi­sion. A group of Bosnian-Herzegovinian geo­lo­gists made a report clearly over­turn­ing, on sci­entific basis, the hypo­thesis of the alleged pyr­am­ids near Visoko. Ignor­ing all these reports and warn­ings, the then mem­ber of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian joint pres­id­ency, Mr. Sule­j­man Tihic, asked for sup­port to this pro­ject from the UNESCO rep­res­ent­at­ives. Fol­low­ing that, in June last year, some thirty inter­na­tional experts sent a let­ter to the UNESCO headquar­ters in Paris, express­ing their con­cern over the devel­op­ment of pseudoar­chae­ology in Bosnia-Herzegovina and seek­ing for the prompt expert judge­ment of that pro­ject. Mean­time, sim­ilar cri­ti­cism and con­cerns came from the European Asso­ci­ation of Archae­olo­gists as well as from the Amer­ican archae­olo­gical com­munity. Their sci­en­tific­ally based argu­ments were not accep­ted by any of the author­ized insti­tu­tions in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

A num­ber of these experts and rep­res­ent­at­ives of the highest inter­na­tional archae­olo­gical bod­ies, headed by Mr. Anthony Hard­ing, the pres­id­ent of the European Asso­ci­ation of Archae­olo­gists, and Mr. Her­mann Par­zinger, the pres­id­ent of Deutsches Archäo­lo­gisches Insti­tut, have recently appealed to the Bosnian-Herzegovinian author­it­ies with request that this pro­ject is crit­ic­ally eval­u­ated, but that appeal received no reply. Des­pite all these warn­ings, numer­ous lead­ing Bosnian-Herzegovinian politi­cians, includ­ing reli­gious lead­ers, are increas­ingly sup­port­ive of this highly prob­lem­atic pro­ject. In August last year, you too vis­ited the Visoko hill of Plje­sevica – renamed into the Pyr­amid of the Moon – and gave your sup­port to Mr. Semir Osman­agic, the Amer­ican busi­ness­man of Bos­nian ori­gin, who presents him­self as inde­pend­ent explorer of ancient mys­ter­ies. On that occa­sion, you have called Mr. Osman­agic – who claims that Bos­nia is the cradle of human civil­iz­a­tion – a vis­ion­ary, while Bosnian-Herzegovinian media car­ried your another state­ment:

“I do not believe that this was cre­ated by nature and the scep­tic sci­ent­ists who claim so should come here, make an exper­i­ment and prove it. I con­grat­u­late you on your work so far, on open­ing the pos­sib­il­ity for present gen­er­a­tions to see ancient past and I hope that your vis­ion will, with each day, be closer to the truth. I wish you a lot of suc­cess in the future work and do not hes­it­ate to, in case of need, ask for my help.”

By this act, you have com­pletely turned against the prin­ciples of insti­tu­tion that you rep­res­ent and paved the way for fur­ther open sup­port to this pseudo­pro­ject by the local politi­cians, intro­du­cing fur­ther influ­ence of pseudos­cience in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Europe. The neg­at­ive effects of such sup­port are already vis­ible. A great part of the pop­u­la­tion is con­vinced that the pyr­am­ids are actu­ally dis­covered des­pite the lack of any evid­ence to sup­port this con­vic­tion even after sub­stan­tial dig­gings on the site. The real­ity is, how­ever, far off from your asser­tion that present gen­er­a­tions will be able to see the ancient past of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the con­trary, in the wider Visoko region, where Mr. Semir Osman­agic and his people con­duct their ama­teur dig­gings (often using bull­dozers), endangered are some of the archae­olo­gical lay­ers that are of utmost import­ance to research and under­stand­ing of the human con­tinu­ity in this area from neo­lithic period (Okoliste), the very begin­nings of Bos­nia as an organ­ized soci­etal unit in the early medi­eval period (Biskupici, Mostre, Visoki) to devel­op­ment of the late medi­eval Bos­nian King­dom (medi­eval royal town of Visoki on top of the hill renamed into the Pyr­amid of the Sun).

In that sense, the ama­teur dig­gings and destruc­tion of archae­olo­gical strat­i­fic­a­tion is not the only prob­lem and haz­ard. From the very begin­ning, the pro­ject showed tend­ency to con­ceal­ment of cer­tain dis­covered arte­facts that did not fit the hypo­theses of Mr. Semir Osman­agic, namely remains of human bones, vari­ous tools and ceramic shards, as repor­ted by vari­ous media dur­ing the sum­mer of 2006. All of these finds are con­sist­ent with the exist­ing know­ledge about the Visoko val­ley archae­ology and par­tic­u­larly with the warn­ings by the local and inter­na­tional experts that Mr. Osmanagic’s dilet­tantish and ques­tion­able dig­gings are endan­ger­ing and des­troy­ing real and valu­able archae­olo­gical loc­a­tions and finds, most prob­ably dat­ing to the medi­eval period. His team never pub­lished any offi­cial reports about these finds nor it has informed the pub­lic on where they were sent for ana­lyses, nor on these alleged ana­lyses results.

Apart from con­ceal­ing the unwanted evid­ence, lack­ing any other sup­port­ing argu­ments for their hypo­theses, Mr. Osman­agic and his fol­low­ers are falsi­fy­ing the inter­pret­a­tions of the known his­tor­ical monu­ments and tra­di­tions in order to cre­ate an illu­sion of an ancient mys­tery that needs to be solved. In such attempts, the fam­ous Bosnian-Herzegovinian medi­eval tomb­stones stecci are inter­preted by Mr. Osman­agic as “mega­liths that have rolled down from the pyr­amid” or remains of “ancient energy temples” while early romanesque reliefs of crosses inscribed in circles – a motif well know through­out the medi­eval Europe! – become “dia­grams of mys­ter­i­ous ancient mech­an­isms”, etc.

Any cri­ti­cism over such pseudos­cientific approach in Bosnia-Herzegovina is stamped as a unpat­ri­otic act while crit­ics are stig­mat­ized as trait­ors in pub­lic, since the pyr­amid pro­ject has since its begin­ning been iden­ti­fied with a “national interest”. You have con­trib­uted to this con­vic­tion in the pub­lic as well, by giv­ing your sup­port to Semir Osman­agic, who does not shy away from claim­ing that the entire future and prosper­ity of Bosnia-Herzegovina depend on the suc­cess of his project.

In that sense, the plans to expand the pro­ject to the wider Bosnia-Herzegovina areas in 2007 are par­tic­u­larly alarm­ing. This “Found­a­tion” has vis­ible aspir­a­tions to spread their activ­it­ies to the wider Bosnia-Herzegovina region, as well as the neigh­bor­ing Croa­tia. Fur­ther claims in the European con­text can be expec­ted, since the final pro­claimed goal of this “altern­at­ive” under­tak­ing is noth­ing less than over­turn­ing the entire world sci­ence and all of its achieve­ments, with set­ting up a new sys­tem of “know­ledge and val­ues”, based on the eso­ter­i­cism and sec­tari­an­ism of the “New Age” type. The pseudoar­chae­olo­gical search for alleged pyr­am­ids in Visoko and the sup­port given to this pro­ject have already opened the door wide for other sim­ilar pseudos­cientific tend­en­cies in Bosnia-Herzegovina, namely the recently pro­claimed renewal of the search for Homer’s Troy in the Neretva river val­ley, accord­ing to the claims made by the Mex­ican busi­ness­man Sali­nas Price, which were, oth­er­wise, dis­proved by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian archae­olo­gists some twenty years ago.

Mr. Schwarz-Schilling, these are not vis­ions for a bet­ter future nor of ancient past, that is mul­tiple van­dal­ism – destruc­tion of the exist­ing cul­tural and his­tor­ical her­it­age as well as an attempt to over­turn the civil­iz­a­tional achieve­ments and sys­tems of val­ues, not only in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also in Europe. You, as a rep­res­ent­at­ive of such Europe, have a duty of help­ing the Bosnian-Herzegovinian sci­entific com­munity and lay­man pub­lic to ward off the pseudoar­chae­olo­gical specter of anti-intellectualism in Visoko. Of you, we demand:

1. That the High Rep­res­ent­at­ive, in his engage­ment in the con­text of research and pro­tec­tion of cul­tural her­it­age of Bosnia-Herzegovina, applies the same cri­teria rel­ev­ant in his coun­try, the European Union and entire civ­il­ized world, and keeps in mind the rel­ev­ant facts instead of giv­ing sup­port to adven­tur­istic and pseudos­cientific projects;

2. That the High Rep­res­ent­at­ive, for pur­poses of adequate pro­tec­tion of the remainig endangered monu­ments in the Visoko region, ensures that Mr. Osmanagic’s Found­a­tion full­fills its duty towards the state Insti­tute to Pro­tect Cul­tural Monu­ments by deliv­er­ing all invent­ory books, field diar­ies and the com­plete report with photo and drawn doc­u­ment­a­tion of dig­gings done on Viso­cica hill in 2005 and 2006, and on Plje­sevica hill in 2006, so that the expert eval­u­ation of that doc­u­ment­a­tion is enabled. Only by doing so, a judge­ment can be reached on apro­pri­ate­ness of the con­duc­ted dig­gings, poten­tial falsi­fic­a­tion of the finds elim­in­ated and pos­sib­il­ity of pro­long­ing the fur­ther dig­ging per­mits considered;

3. That the High Rep­res­ent­at­ive recog­nizes the opin­ion and argu­ments by the experts of the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla who have on sev­eral occa­sions pub­licly opposed the abuse of geo­logy for pur­poses of mis­lead­ing the Bosnian-Herzegovinian pub­lic. They have clearly stated these argu­ments in their Report on the geo­lo­gical research at the Viso­cica hill near Visoko, accep­ted by the sci­entific and edu­ca­tional Coun­cil of the Fac­ulty on April 17, 2006. The research was done at the request by the Archae­olo­gical Park: Bos­nian Pyr­amid of the Sun Found­a­tion itself;

4. That the High Rep­res­ent­at­ive urges with adequate author­it­ies of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the European Union and Ger­many as presid­ing the European Union, that Bosnia-Herzegovina signes the European Con­ven­tion on the Pro­tec­tion of the Archae­olo­gical Her­it­age (Val­letta 1992), as well as for provid­ing con­di­tions to open archae­ology stud­ies in Sara­jevo. That kind of study is the only guar­an­tee that appro­pri­ate expert body will be edu­cated, cap­able to apply mod­ern sci­entific meth­ods in research and pro­tec­tion of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian cul­tural heritage.

As stated at the begin­ning of this let­ter, archae­olo­gists, his­tor­i­ans and geo­lo­gists of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Europe and Amer­ica have already on sev­eral occa­sions warned of the danger and dam­age that false archae­ology in Bosnia-Herzegovina causes to the cul­tural his­tory of our coun­try, Europe and the world. Our warn­ings so far have not been con­sidered in any aspect, not by the OHR, nor by the local polit­ical struc­tures dir­ectly respons­ible for such mat­ters. This is our last warn­ing attempt and this time it is not dir­ec­ted only to the local, but also to the European and inter­na­tional pub­lic. In case that this let­ter once again receives no appro­pri­ate reac­tion, you will, together with the local politi­cians, bear the respons­ib­il­ity for all con­sequences that fur­ther unchal­lenged spread­ing of the false sci­ence will leave on our and the world her­it­age, as well as on the inter­per­sonal rela­tions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Europe and the rest of the world.

Please note that this let­ter will be pub­lished in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian and inter­na­tional media, with pos­sib­il­ity of gain­ing a peti­tion­ary character.

With respect,

in the name of his­tor­i­ans, geo­lo­gists and archae­olo­gists of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

Dr. Dub­ravko Lovren­ovic, pro­fessor of his­tory at the Fac­ulty of Philo­sophy in Sarajevo

Dr. Sc. Sej­fudin Vrabac, full-time pro­fessor of geo­logy at the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla; Leader of the team for geo­lo­gical research of the Viso­cica Hill near Visoko

Dr. Sc. Hazim Hrvatovic, asso­ci­ate pro­fessor, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Dr. Sc. Senaid Sali­hovic, asso­ci­ate pro­fessor, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Dr. Sc. Amir Barakovic, asso­ci­ate pro­fessor, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Dr. Sc. Zijad Fer­hat­be­govic, senior lec­utrer, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Dr. Sc. Zehra Salkic, senior lec­utrer, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Mr. Sc. Izudin Dju­lovic, senior assist­ant, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Mr. Sc. Elvir Babajic, senior assist­ant, the Fac­ulty of Min­ing, Geo­logy and Civil Engin­eer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Tuzla

Dr. Ljiljana Sevo, pro­fessor of art his­tory at uni­ver­sit­ies of Sara­jevo and Banja Luka

Dr. Blagoje Govedar­ica, pro­fessor of pre­his­toric archae­ology at the Heidel­berg Uni­ver­sity ; Sci­entific advisor at the Centre for Balkan Stud­ies of the Bosnia-Herzegovna Academy of Sci­ences and Arts in Sarajevo