Pyramid Power

You'd think it would be difficult to overlook a pyramid and yet two previously unknown ones are reported this month. One is on the outskirts of Mexico City, the other in the Visoko valley in Bosnia.

The Mexico City pyramid measures about 500 feet (152 meters) on each side and stands 60 feet (18 meters) tall. It was discovered beneath a site used today for a popular reenactment of the Crucifixion of Christ during Christianity's Holy Week, the week before Easter, according to news reports: for example this National Geographic webpage dated April 6th 2006. It is believed that the same people who built the pyramid also constructed Teotihuacan, a long-abandoned (AD 800) settlement about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Mexico City.

"When they first saw us digging there, the local people just couldn't believe there was a pyramid," Jesus Sanchez, an archaeologist with the National Institute of Anthropology and History, told the Associated Press.
"It was only when the slopes and shapes of the pyramid, the floors with altars were found, that they finally believed us."

You can understand the local people's scepticism, but at least Latin America is well known for its magnificent and abundent step-pyramids.

Compare and contrast then the claims for a Bosnian step-pyramid, known as Visocica and reported here on the BBC website on 15th April 2006, and here on the National Geographic website on 20th April (and lots of other internet news-sites). Not only does amateur archaeologist Semir Osmanagic (pictured) claim that the step-pyramid could be a staggering 722-foot (220-meter) from base to apex (the pyramid of Kufa/Cheops at Giza originally stood half that height), but that it was constructed by unknown people some 12,000 years ago (that's about the time our ancestors were daubing paint onto cave walls in Western Europe).

Compare also the reaction of the locals who sound not so much sceptical as cynical; not only does the pyramid have its own website, www.bosnianpyramid.com, there is even an online Bosnian Pyramid Shop where you can buy such things as Visocica T-shirts and coffee mugs.

Nobody has claimed that Visocica was built by Atlanteans, but it is inevitable someone will. Actually, I could just get in there and be the first. Now does anyone have the Penguin editor's email address? I could have a lucrative book-deal for them . . .

Update 04/05/06: Seems like the locals are cashing in even more, whereas professional archaeologists think it is all a publicity stunt for the area. See this article on archaeologynews.org