Bosnablog

In 2005 Semir Osmanagić, an expatriate Bosnian metalworker living in Texas, made a most startling announcement. The hills that surround the central Bosnian town of Visoko were not—as had always been thought—mere hills, but were in fact pyramids, man-made and ancient, built by a prehistoric civilisation that rivalled the ancient Egyptians in technological and cultural sophistication.

The news sent shockwaves through the Bosnian and even the international press, transforming Visoko overnight into a media circus with Osmanagić its ringmaster. Experts were consulted; studies were commissioned; trenches were dug. The claims became more and more outrageous: there was, it turned out, not just one pyramid, but two, then three, then four; tunnels were “discovered”, allegedly bearing ancient writing.

That the consulted experts found Osmanagić’s theories to be riddled with inaccuracies did not dissuade him. Nor did the fact that Bosnia was in an ice age 12,000 years ago, the time when the pyramids were supposedly built. Nor, either, did the fact that Bosnia’s inhabitants at the time were itinerant hunter-gatherers, who built no permanent structures—let alone huge monoliths. Five years on, the archaeological digs continue unabated, and the tourists arrive in droves.

The pyramids have taken over every aspect of the town; they have become its identity. Stepping out of the bus station when I arrived in Visoko, looking for the way into town, I found a cluster of roadsigns; all of the local Visoko ones bore on their left side a stylised pyramid, yellow on white. Crossing the bridge into town, I saw what used to be the Motel Hollywood; now, inevitably, it has become the Motel Piramida Sunca. Local restaurants serve “pyramid pizza”. The town is gripped with pyramid fever.

I headed towards the “Pyramid of the Sun”, the most overtly pyramidal of the four claimed pyramids and the closest to the town. Heading through the winding streets of the old town, I eventually climbed clear of the town and onto the forested road that led up the mountain. A large white sign welcomed me to the “world’s largest complex of pyramids”, and a perspex box filled with coins invited donations to help fund further research.

The owner of a souvenir kiosk signalled the route to the summit, and I ascended the wooden steps that had been carved into the side of the mountain. Groups of tourists were filtering down past me, and when I reached the site of the current architectural digs the area was bustling with guided groups and curious onlookers.

Inside the trenches, Malaysian archaeologists carefully probed the ground, scraping the soil from what looked simply to be ordinary rocks. To the side, a large section of hillside was fenced off, its exposed stone on display to the world: made up mostly of breccia,1 it looked perfectly natural, and did not have even the illusion of design about it.

As I prepared to ascend again past the dig site and to the top of the pyramid, the official guide approached and asked what I was interested in. I mumbled something awkward about the pyramids, but also mentioned Visoki, the ruined medieval fortress that sits atop the so-called pyramid and which was central to the medieval Bosnian state. “Visoki? You don’t want to go there,” the guide snorted. “All it has is some old walls and views of the valley. You must go to the tunnels; to go to Visoko and not see the tunnels would be madness!” He insisted that he drive me the two kilometres in his car—for €10, of course—but I declined; I had wanted to see Visoki for far longer than I had the pyramids. Visibly frustrated, he left me and headed back to his tourist group, and I resumed my ascent.

The route was treacherous, and barely a path at all; the forest grew more dense the higher I went, and the loose, sandy loam beneath my feet offered little traction. In places, the hill became near vertical, and its ascent more a process of rock-climbing than of hiking; I thought with bitter amusement of the idea that this colossus had been crafted by human hands.

Eventually, bursting through a thicket, I found myself on a loose stone wall, its cement crumbling. Was this Visoki, I thought? Surely it would have some notice, some fence surrounding it? But it was; I was standing on one of the outer walls. Climbing further up, I eventually summited the hill and saw the rest of the structure. The sandy rock blazed yellow-white under the early afternoon sun, and as I walked further I saw the remains of one of the fortress’s towers, covered in a plastic wrapping but otherwise neglected. There was no fence, not even a notice warning of the site’s importance; it was thoroughly exposed, to the elements and to human interference.

Looking around, I saw why its location had been chosen: the fortress offered its defenders an unimpeded view of the whole Bosna valley, and approach to it was restricted to the shallower side of the hill. I thought of the bustling groups of tourists I had seen at the mock archaeological sites, barely metres away from where I stood; none had thought to ascend the hill any further, to see Visoki.

This seems to me the tragedy of the pyramid hoax. I can understand its motivation: Bosnia is not a rich country, and in the wake of the “discovery” the increase in tourist visits and revenue to the otherwise-overlooked Visoko must have been a welcome relief. But Visoko has real history, real wonder, that is being neglected and ignored in the hurry to capitalise on the fame of the Bosnian pyramids. Osmanagić has shown himself to be a canny operator, able to mobilise and orchestrate the press with ease; that he felt the need to do so in promoting a false history of his own making—rather than the rich history to which Visoko was already legitimately home—says much of his ego, and is far less than Visoko deserves.

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In the 13th century, under Tvrtko I, the medieval kingdom of Bosnia reached its zenith. Deftly negotiating at least tacit Hungarian approval, Tvrtko took ruthless advantage of weaknesses in the Croatian and Serbian empires to rapidly and substantially expand the Bosnian kingdom. By the time of his death, it stretched from Slavonia in the north to Dalmatia in the south, and from Zadar in the west to Mileševo in the east; in other words, almost all of modern Croatia, all of modern Bosnia, much of modern Montenegro, and the Sandžak region of modern Serbia.

The heartland of this empire was what was known then simply as Bosnia: the central region of the modern country, with Travnik and Visoko at its heart. In those days, Visoko was both a bustling trading town and the political capital of the Bosnia; even greater history, though, can be found just across the Bosna from Visoko, in Mile. At the time of Tvrtko I, who was both crowned and buried there, it was perhaps most famous as a seat of learning—its university was famed in the region for both its theological and secular teaching—but it was also a religious centre, home both to the earliest Franciscan monastery in Bosnia, established in 1340, and the Church of Ss. Kuzme and Damjan, administered by the heretical Bosnian Church.

Little remains of Mile today. It is not even known as Mile any more: crumbling and decaying, it was abandoned and, much later, resettled as Arnautovići. The monastery still remains, though, albeit in updated form: it is now a sprawling complex of buildings, dominated by a palatial Austro-Hungarian building, three-storied and dominated at each ends by cross-topped towers. The painted facade was crumbled and peeling, and bore the scars of machine gun fire, but it was still an impressive sight; I opened the gate and, finding no one around, wandered inside.

Behind the main building, the complex spread out and I discovered that, as well as a monastery, the grounds also held a Catholic school—odd, I thought, in 96-per-cent-Muslim Visoko. The rear of the complex opened onto carefully tended agricultural land; as I wandered around, the smell of fresh tomatoes and peppers, growing under plastic tunnels, filled the air. Around the corner, a statue of a pained Christ, hands extend, sat in an otherwise deserted courtyard, surrounded by flowers, staring out accusingly.

Everything was silent: I hadn’t seen a single soul since I first stepped into the gate. It was an eery silence: was I allowed to be here, I thought? Perhaps it was just that it was the school holidays, but this didn’t feel a place for visitors, and I made my way back out, closing the screeching gate behind me.