Semir Osmanagic, a self-styled archaeologist who claims to have discovered the world’s greatest pyramid complex, will soon resume excavations in central Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the blessing and financial support of government authorities.
Mr. Osmanagic’s controversial dig was halted earlier this year by Gavrilo Grahovac, minister of culture of Bosnia’s Croat-Bosniak Federation, on account of its pseudoscientific nature and the “unreliable” credibility of its leaders. Mr. Grahovac withdrew the requisite permits to resume work and, according to reports in the Bosnian press, intended to withdraw public support for the project.
But last week Mr. Grahovac’s decision was overruled by the federation’s prime minister, Nedzad Brankovic, during an official visit to the site in Visoko, northwest of Sarajevo. “Why should we disown something that the entire world is interested in?” he told reporters. “Why don’t we recognize something that is visible to the naked eye?”
“The government will not act negatively toward this project,” he said.
The federation, which controls the non-Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s territory, also plans to spend 200,000 marks, or about $140,900, for the reconstruction of a medieval castle on the summit of Visocica Hill. Mr. Osmanagic insists that the hill is actually a structure made by humans. He has dubbed it the Pyramid of the Sun and says it is the largest (720 feet) and oldest (12,000 years) pyramid in the world. Mr. Osmanagic’s Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation hopes to be awarded permission to undertake the reconstruction as well, when it is assigned by municipal authorities.
“We want to do this work to preserve these artifacts, to save and preserve them,” said Sabahudin Hadzialic, executive director of the Pyramid of the Sun Foundation. “But our main goal is to work to be able to show the world that, yes, we have pyramids here.”
Accusations of Pseudoscience
The Chronicle reported (March 30) that scholars worldwide had condemned Mr. Osmanagic’s project as pseudoscience, a threat to real archaeological sites in the area, and a waste of precious resources that could be used to repair war-damaged archaeological sites and institutions.
Geologists who have worked at the site say the “pyramids” are in fact just hills, textbook examples of certain geological processes. Mr. Osmanagic’s writings have also not helped his credibility, as they include New Age interpretations of ancient history featuring Atlantis, flying saucers, and the evolutionary benefits of energy from the galactic core, in which the earth will supposedly be bathed in 2012, when an ancient Maya calendrical cycle is completed.
But the amateur archaeologist’s project has captured the imagination of the country’s Bosniaks, the people previously known as Bosnian Muslims, including leading politicians and most members of the Sarajevo press.
Bosnian scholars who have criticized the project have been ridiculed, and some have been labeled as traitors. Tens of thousands of tourists visited the site last summer to see layered sedimentary rocks that Mr. Osmanagic touts as “monolithic blocks” or “stone pavements.”
Outside Bosnia the project is widely assailed by scholars. “We are strongly opposed to this kind of pseudo-archaeology, especially in light of the Bosnian government deciding to back it up,” said the secretary of the European Association of Archaeologists, Predrag Novakovic, a professor of archaeology at the University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia. “The sad part is that there are fantastic archaeological sites in Bosnia, but all the attention is being focused on something that is really doing damage to the whole scientific and research sector there.”
He added that were Mr. Osmanagic’s team to be awarded a grant to work at the medieval castle atop Visocica, it would be like “letting charlatans undertake a serious job” and would represent “a further insult” to genuine scholarship.
http://chronicle.com Section: Research & Publishing Volume 53, Issue 47, Page A11
