Posted on 12/03/2005 3:58:44 PM PST by wagglebee
Visoko - With eyes trained to recognise pyramids hidden in the hills of El Salvador, Mexico and Peru, Semir Osmanagic has been drawn to the mound overlooking this central Bosnian town.
"It has all the elements: four perfectly shaped slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, a flat top and an entrance complex," he said, gazing at the hill and wondering what lies beneath.
No pyramids are known in Europe, and there is no evidence any ancient civilisation there ever attempted to build one.
But Osmanagic, a Bosnian archaeologist who has spent the last 15 years studying the pyramids of Latin America, suspects there is one here in his Balkan homeland.
"We have already dug out stone blocks which I believe are covering the pyramid," he said. "We found a paved entrance plateau and discovered underground tunnels. You don't have to be an expert to realise what this is."
Personally financing excavations
Osmanagic, 45, who now lives in Houston, is personally financing excavations at the Visocica hill, a 645m hump outside Visoko, a town about 30km northwest of the capital, Sarajevo.
He learned about the hill in April from Senad Hodovic, director of a museum devoted to the history of Visoko, which is rich in Bronze Age and medieval artefacts. Hodovic had attended a promotion of an Osmanagic book about ancient civilisations and thought he would like to see Visoko's pyramid-shaped hill.
When the pair climbed the hill, the sweeping view revealed a second, smaller pyramid-shaped hill.
After obtaining a permit to research the site, which is protected by the state as a national monument, the first probes of the main hill were carried out this summer at six points.
Debate over manmade hills Nadja Nukic, a geologist involved in the research, said she found 15 anomalies suggesting that some layers of the hill were manmade.
"We found layers of what we call 'bad concrete', a definitely unnatural mixture of gravel once used to form blocks with which this hill was covered," Osmanagic said.
"The hill was already there," he added. "Some ancient civilisation just shaped it and then coated it with this primitive concrete - and there you have a pyramid."
Small-scale excavations continued until early November, when winter set in, with the work focusing on what Osmanagic theorises may have been the entrance to a pyramid-shaped temple.
Osmanagic believes the hill was shaped by the Illyrian people, who inhabited the Balkan peninsula long before Slavic tribes conquered it around AD. 600.
Anthropologists say the Visoko valley already offers ample evidence of organised human settlements dating back 7 000 years.
Osmanagic is taking a cautious approach about the hill.
"No fast conclusions, please. The evidence has to be firm, at least beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.
"God can make many things, but such perfectly geometrically formed slopes, pointing exactly toward the north, south, east and west - if he did that, well, that's phenomenal itself."
Pyramid...ya mean like Amway?
Nah, like our Social Security, the kings back then had the peons do the hard work back then too...I wonder what they promised the peons then?
To me this looks like a natural hill formation that was altered and covered/paved with stones. At least I get that impression.
Coulda sworn that we had a topic about this, or something like it... but anyway, thanks Waggs!
Macro-Etymology: Paleosigns [writing 20,000 years ago?]
Macro-Etymology Website | prior to May 20, 2005 | the webmasters thereof
Posted on 05/19/2005 11:00:18 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1406892/posts
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
Gods, Graves, Glyphs PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
In Egypt it was beer, onions and makeup.
In fact one of the first recorded strikes in history was because Pharaoh was remiss in sending their allotment.
Europe's oldest civilisation
Aether | 11 June 2005 | David Keys
Posted on 06/16/2005 9:32:40 AM PDT by robowombat
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1424180/posts
Archaeologists Find 6,000 Year Old Statuette In Sumperk Area
Czech Happenings | 8-1-2003
Posted on 08/10/2003 5:05:59 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/961667/posts
In fact one of the first recorded strikes in history was because Pharaoh was remiss in sending their allotment.
Sheesh they had democrats way back then?
#
Scientists discover Neolithic wine-making
UNLV Rebel Yell | 11/28/2005 | Lora Griffin
Posted on 11/29/2005 3:38:40 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1530814/posts
Unearthing Bulgaria's Golden Age
Financial Times | 12-2-2005 | Nicholas Glass
Posted on 12/02/2005 10:21:42 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1532824/posts
They had reason to protest, their stuff was six weeks late in arriving IIRC.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Excellent. Now, let me see you post an image.
and of course, the tomb of Lars Porsenna...
Fabled Etruscan Kingdom Emerging?
Discovery News | 4-22-2004 | Rossella Lorenzi
Posted on 04/22/2004 6:18:57 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1122812/posts
Etruscan Engineering and Agricultural Achievements: The Ancient City of Spina
The Mysterious Etruscans | Last modified on Tue, 17-Aug-2004 15:36:27 GMT | editors
Posted on 08/17/2004 9:05:30 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1193229/posts
Wow playing soccer on that pitch has gotta tough on the legs.
"No pyramids are known in Europe..."
As you said, similar pyramids have been found in Italy, in the Lombard area, which is in the northern part of the country.
Voyages of the Pyramid Builders
The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America.
My colleague Robert Schoch's previous book VOICES OF THE ROCKS was a state-of-the-art statement on 'catastrophe theory', the idea that in the not so distant past (ca. 12000 BC) the earth was rocked by a tremendous catastrophe (possibly a strike by an asteroid, bolide or comet) that almost instantly annihilated a large proportion of the larger land mammals then roaming the globe -- mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, saber-toothed tigers and many others.
The extinction of those mammals is of course a matter of record as are the accompanying radical and permanent climatic changes; the North American ice sheet melted, temperate Siberia became tundra, sea levels rose over three hundred feet.
There is no argument about the event itself. The bolide/asteroid/comet theory is, in scientific circles, controversial to a certain extent, but generally 'respectable'. That is to say, there is no doubt whatever that something disastrous happened; there is debate over the exact nature of its cause.
The real controversy swirls about the state of human civilization at that time and prior to it. The accepted academic view is that mankind was in a state of global hunter-gatherer development. I.e., no civilization to speak of in our currently held definition of that word.
As readers of these Eg-updates will know, we believe that our geological work on the weathering to the Sphinx of Giza effectively obliges a radical revision of that view. And the most recent developments in archeo-astronomy (the astronomy of ancient times) provides mounting complementary evidence from another hard-nosed scientific discipline.
We feel that there is fundamental factual basis to the innumerable myths and legends around the world that hearken back to a 'Golden Age', a long period or periods of highly sophisticated civilization and a Deluge or other catastrophe that put an end to this advanced culture or cultures.
Schoch's new book VOYAGES OF THE PYRAMID BUILDERS: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America is the logical sequel to VOICES OF THE ROCKS. It is a state of the art statement on Diffusionist Theory -- the idea that the remarkable similarities between the customs, architectural, artistic and manual techniques, legends and beliefs of cultures all over the world (which seem to have had no connection with each other past or present) stem from 'Diffusion' from an earlier and very ancient central or possibly global 'master culture'.
The prevailing view in archeology and in all other disciplines devoted to the past is, at the moment, resolutely anti-Diffusionist; that is to say, that these myriad similarities are largely coincidental and correspond to a kind of innate (but quite undemonstrable) evolutionary stage attained by humanity at large.
In simple terms: for no particular reason, certainly no practical reason, cultures around the globe with no connection or communication with each other suddenly decided to throw vast amounts of energy into the construction of massive pyramids and pyramid-shaped (anyway, conical) earth mounds.
Schoch focuses mainly on the pyramid shape and structure -- hardly an architectural form or practice that one would logically associate with cultures just emerging from putative primitivism.
He traces and describes the variants of the pyramid wherever it is found -- which is just about everywhere: Mesoamerica of course, but also China, Japan, the United States, England and elsewhere.
In the process he argues that in the most ancient times we can really document, the shipbuilding techniques and navigational skills were already in place for societies around the globe to communicate with each other ... in short, there is no commanding reason, actually no reason at all to dismiss the Diffusionist view and countless reasons to do away with anti-Diffusionism.
Like the redating of the Sphinx, this is no mere academic quibble. Upon the outcome hangs the entire picture of the development of humanity prior to recorded history and the level of knowledge available to it
Thanks. I'll have to get the book, it sounds interesting.
"Stephen Oppenheimer is a world-recognised expert in the synthesis of DNA studies with archaeological and other evidence to track ancient migrations. He is a member of Green College, Oxford University."
While working in New Guinea in the early 1980’s he was the first to notice anti-malarial protection conferred by -thalassaemia, a mild inherited blood disorder. This genetic disorder shadowed the spread of Polynesians out to the Pacific. That research subsequently led to his focus on the use of genetic markers to track migrations. His first book Eden in the East The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia challenged the orthodox view of the origins of Polynesians as rice farmers from Taiwan and was widely acclaimed. Oppenheimer’s paradigm change, using a synthesis of genetics, archaeology, geology and linguistics, has since been endorsed by reviewers in Science. Out of Eden has been the subject of a Channel 4 programme of the same name and a Discovery Channel film ‘The Real Eve’. Stephen Oppenheimer’s work forms the basis of the Journey of Mankind genetic map that can be viewed on this website
Click on that link "Journey Of Mankind" and see how the pyramid builders made their way to Europe.
Why amazing? Building a sizeable pyramid requires a lot of man-hours [and the infrastructure to feed these men during those hours]. When these conditions were finally met in Europe, European builders had better things to build, like Acropolis or Colosseum.
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