* Astronomy

Summer excavations at Bosnia and Herzegovina's Mt. Visocica yielded results, but not the kind an entrepreneur turned amateur archaeologist was looking for. Semir Osmanagic, a US businessman of BiH origin, has invested large amounts of his own money in a personal quest to unearth what he says are Europe's first pyramids.
His claims have not yet been corroborated. Instead, an archaeological team said over the summer that it has unearthed significant artefacts from a more recent era. These include eight pieces of Gothic architectural carvings and parts of glass vials dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries, imported from Venice and principalities of today's Germany, as well as numerous pieces of ceramic. They have also found 20 silver objects dating from the 15th-century.

Read more 

A British archaeologist on Friday rejected claims that a hill in central Bosnia is a man-made structure that many local residents insist is a pyramid.

Professor Anthony Harding, who is president of the European Association of Archaeologists, visited Visocica hill and said the formation was natural.

"Not any evidence at all has been found" to support the claim the site would be an archaeological site, he said.



No pyramids are known in Europe, and there are no records of any ancient civilization on the continent ever attempting to build one.
The pyramid theory was launched by an amateur researcher last year but it has been disputed by a number of local and international experts, who claim that at no time in Bosnia's history did the region have a civilization able to build monumental structures.
They say the hill is simply a strange natural formation.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2061081

The story about the world's oldest and largest pyramid found in Bosnia has swept the media. Too bad that it is not a credible story at all. In fact, according to Archaeology magazine, it is impossible.
Semir Osmanagic, a Houston-based Bosnian-American contractor first saw the hills he believes to be pyramids last spring. He is now digging the largest of them and plans to continue the work through November, claiming it is one of five pyramids in the area. These, he says, resemble the 1,800-year-old pyramids at Teotihuacan, just north of Mexico City. Osmanagic maintains that the largest is bigger than the pyramid of Khufu at Giza, and that the Bosnian pyramids date to 12,000 BCE.
Construction of massive pyramids in Bosnia at that period is not believable. 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 Palaeolithic 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."

In Osmanagic's book The World of the Maya are some rather bizarre notions (to say the least): "...It is my theory that the Maya should be considered watchmakers of the cosmos whose mission it is to adjust the Earthly frequency and bring it into accordance with the vibrations of our Sun...The Mayan hieroglyphics tell us that their ancestors came from the Pleiades... first arriving at Atlantis where they created an advanced civilization."

Stories like the one about ancient pyramids in Bosnia infuriate serious scholars like Runnels.

"These reports are irresponsible on the part of journalists. These claims are completely unsupported with any kind of factual evidence, such as artefacts or photographs of the alleged architectures. They have not been confirmed by archaeologists who have the training and competence to evaluate them."

Some in the academic establishment maintain that the kind of project Osmanagic is running is far worse than just misleading the gullible public.

"The situation of professional heritage management in Bosnia-Herzegovina is in a poor state, with a tiny number of people trying to do what they can to protect their rich heritage from looting and unmonitored or unauthorised development. It adds insult to injury when rich outsiders can come in and spend large sums pursuing their absurd theories, in ways that most other countries would never countenance, instead of devoting their cash to the preservation of the endangered genuine sites and monuments in which Bosnia-Herzegovina abounds." - Anthony Hardy, president European Association of Archaeologists.

In one of the few critical accounts of the Bosnian pyramid story, the University of Sarejevo's Enver Imamovic is quoted as saying, "This is the equivalent of letting me, an archaeologist, perform surgery in hospitals."

There is public outcry within Bosnia, and an online petition that seeks to shut down Osmanagic's project. But he apparently has backers within the federal government and the Sarejevo city government. Whether he is allowed to continue or not is unresolved for now, and his website makes no mention of any controversy. And even when the mainstream media catch up and realise that the "Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun" is no such thing, it will have entered the annals of fantastic archaeology and will have a multitude of believers and defenders.

Source: Archaeology Magazine

Excavation work started on Friday on what a Bosnian explorer claims to be Europe's first pyramids in an area north of Sarajevo.

A team of experts started digging at the site of a 3.8-kilometer tunnel believed to lead to one of the two structures resembling pyramids, about 30 kilometres from the Bosnian capital. As residents of the nearby town of Visoko eagerly watched, digging also began on one of ten 20-by-50 metre wells on the lower slopes of a hill.

Last year explorer Semir Osmanagic started initial probes in the area convinced that the two "constructions" were the work of builders from an unknown civilization who shaped the hill into a 'step pyramid' then coated it with a kind of primitive concrete.
The explorers, who are expected to be joined by an Egyptian archaeologist and a geologist, hope to find stone blocks, or the steps of the "pyramids".
Osmanagic says that the two structures are precisely aligned with the compass to the four corners of the world. Visocica Hill, which Osmanagic refers to as the "Bosnian pyramid of the sun", stands some 220 metres high.

He says that he sees astonishing similarities between the structures and Mexican pyramids dating back to about AD 200, which also come in pairs, one believed to represent the Sun and the other the Moon. The excavation work led by the foundation "The Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun" that gathers local archaeologists will last for 200 days, and is expected to cost some $150,000.

Source