Is the Great Bosnian Pyramid actually just a big hill?

Sam Osmanagich, a resident of Texas, claims that he has found “the greatest pyramidal complex ever built on the face of the earth,” in his native land of Bosnia – consisting of three pyramids, each bigger than those in Egypt.^[1]

An amateur archaeologist, Osmanagich has a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Sarajevo. When not searching for pyramids, he runs a metalworking business in Houston.

He has written some books on his hobby, and his views are considered by some to be a bit kooky. The Bosnian Institute, for example, explains: “In The World of the Maya, which was reprinted in English in the United States, he writes that ‘Mayan hieroglyphics tell us that their ancestors came from the Pleiades….first arriving at Atlantis where they created an advanced civilization.’ He speculates that when a 26,000-year cycle of the Maya calendar is completed in 2012, humankind might be raised to a higher level by vibrations that will ‘overcome the age of darkness which has been oppressing us.’ In another work, Alternative History, he argues that Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders escaped to a secret underground base in Antarctica from which they did battle with Adm. Richard Byrd’s 1946 Antarctic expedition.” As one of his Bosnian critics put it, “It’s like a religion based on corrupted New Age ideology.”^[2]

In 2005, Osmanagich visited the summit of Visocica in Bosnia, and when he gazed across the valley, he saw what he took to be a pyramid, which he named the Bosnian Pyramid of the Moon. Then he wrote a book about it and got permits to start digging on the pyramid. In 2006, he invited a team of Bosnian geologists to analyze the pyramid, and they concluded that it was just a hill.

“What he’s found isn’t even unusual or spectacular from the geological point of view,” says geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, who spent ten days examining the alleged pyramid. “It’s completely straightforward and mundane.” Paul Heinrich, an archaeological geologist at Louisiana State University, drew the same conclusion: “The landform [Osmanagich] is calling a pyramid is actually quite common. They’re called ‘flatirons’ in the United States and you see a lot of them out West.” He adds that there are “hundreds around the world” just like the one discovered by Osmanagich.^[2]

Most Bosnians, however, remain convinced that it’s really a pyramid. Says one historian, “If you are not for the pyramids, you are accused of being an enemy of the Bosniaks.” It could have something to do with the genocidal war that swept the country only a generation ago. A Balkan expert at Harvard said: “I think the pyramids are symptomatic of a traumatized society that is still trying to recover from a truly horrendous experience. You have many people desperate for self-affirmation and in need of money.”^[2]

Or maybe they really are pyramids.

Sources include:

[1] SmithsonianMag.com

[2] Bosnia.org.uk

[3] Prophecy.news