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, (...)

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Excellent news from Bosnia for the European archaeology: a team, led by Ms. Snjezana Vasilj, Professor of Archaeology in Sarajevo and Mostar Universities, has published the discovery of the first Illyrian boats ever found (en) in Hutovo Blato.
Hutovo Blato, located near Capljina, half-way between Mostar and the Adriatic Coast South of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a marshland in the Neretva valley, made a nature park (en) for the sake of its exceptional wetland fauna and flora (en) (it is particularly a known habitat for migrating swampbirds). The marshland is connected, by the Krupa river, (...)

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Is Mr. Osmanagic’s Foundation abandoning its pyramid chimeras, and beginning to devote itself to real archaeology and the protection of the Bosnian heritage? That’s what one could believe, at least for a moment, when one sees the news published on the 29th of April 2007 (en) on the Foundation web site. Indeed the Foundation announces a new "multidisciplinary project", with no less than "28 experts from 8 countries" in every kind of science, aiming at "studying, preserving and displaying the Old Town Visoki"; Visoki is an old town and fortress, once the political and economical heart of (...)

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The reader probably remembers (see this article) that Mr. Osmanagic’s Foundation appears to have this year - contrary to the year 2006 - some difficulties in obtaining the necessary excavation permits in order to pursue their project. It seems that the responsible federal authorities, that is the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Physical Planning, have this year decided to ask for the opinions of various scientific authorities about Mr. Osmanagic’s projects. I have already mentioned the very negative opinion of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments that, in its mail (bs) to (...)

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I have described a few days ago in this article some official documents published on geolog-mrak (bs)’s blog. It appears that Mr. Osmanagic’s Foundation has asked from the Ministry of Culture an excavation permit (including for excavations in the protected area on Visocica, see here) as well as some subsidies; and that the Minister, Mr. Gavrilo Grahovac, has, before answering, contacted various Bosnian scientific institutions in order to get their opinion on Mr. Osmanagic’s project. Geolog-mrak had already published part of these opinions (from the geologists of Tuzla University and of (...)

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Bosnian "pyramids": hills shaped by Romans, that’s the title of a new blog, created in August 2007, dedicated to the "Bosnian pyramids" : http://omerbashich.blogspot.com/ (en). Not just another pro- or anti- pyramids blog : this one at the same time denounces Mr. Osmanagic’s "amateur digging" and hoaxes, and claims to offer an alternative theory to the existence of the "pyramids".
His author is a real scientist, trained in geophysics and geodesy, and specialized in gravimetric terrestrial spectroscopy, Dr Mensur Omerbashich. One can find on the web an abstract of his PhD thesis (en) or an (...)

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Since the beginning of the "pyramids" affair, one of the things Mr. Osmanagic, his team and his supporters, repeat again and again, is the idea that Visoko region would be "terra incognita" for the archaeologists; that enables them to claim 1) that the "official" archaeologists do not do their job; 2) that, thanks to Mr. Osmanagic, the archaeological wealth of the region will be revealed to the world. This idea is doubly false; first, even if there is certainly still much to research, Visoko region archaeology is much better known than Mr. Osmanagic says or hopes; second, it is more and (...)

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The supporters of parasciences consider the debate as the struggle of open, revolutionary minds, against the censorship of an omnipotent and sclerosed institution, which tries to suppress the truth in order to ensure the perenniality of its domination. This schematization, that will be called here "appeal to Galileo", is founded upon the drawing of a parallel between the present controversy about parasciences and Galileo’s trial - or rather the myth it generated.
Marianne Doury
« Le débat selon les partisans des parasciences II : L’appel à Galilée» , Chapitre 7, Le débat immobile, (...)

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Imagine: in place of Bosnia, you have Peru; in place of a pyramid, you have a cyclopean fortress; in place of mythical Atlanteans, a legendary Inca hero; in place of a Texan businessman, the mayor of a Peruvian town, owner of a touristic company...
So, the context is given, let’s tell the tale. On the 10th of January 2008, the Peruvian offical News Agency, Andina, announces the discovery (en), on the 29th of December of the previous year, of a gigantic fortress called Manco Pata, covering an area of 40,000 square meters, in Kimbiri district South-East of Peru. With the news is presented (...)

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Several speleologists and scientists from Bosnia and Herzegovina have sent, a few weeks ago, a public petition to protect Vjetrenica; their text can be found here in English, and there in Bosnian.
Vjetrenica is a wonderful cave in the Popovo Polje, a karstic polje in the South of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It’s quite a large cave: more than 6000 meters have been explored, with several subterranean lakes (one is 180 meters long); and it has been known since Antiquity (Pliny the Elder mentioned it in his Historia Naturalis) thanks to the strong cold wind it sends most part of the time, (...)

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This article by Prof. Blagoje Govedarica was published in Oslobodjenje on the 4th of April 2009. Prof. Govedarica teaches archaeology of South-East Europe at the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory in Heidelberg University, he is Editor of the Annals of the Centre for Balkan Studies and member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A few days ago, a journalist suggested to me that I take part in a documentary about the excavations at Visoko. He said it would be in the interests of fairness to let me present my ideas and arguments about the Bosnian pyramids (...)

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