UNEARTHING EUROPE'S OLDEST PYRAMID COMPLEX (5)

Philip Coppens

Not just pyramids and tunnels
In the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids, the tunnels so far have shown that humans were definitely doing something, and logic dictates that this work was connected with the pyramids. As such, the critics hardly ever focus on the tunnels; but when they do, it is with sweeping statements that try to mystify what is at heart not a complex issue at all.
Meanwhile, in September 2007, a team from the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina excavated the nearby site of Okoliste and concluded that, circa 4700-4500 BCE, around 3,000 people lived in the settlement-one of the largest ever found in Bosnia. This shouldn't be surprising, seeing that Visoko is known to have been one of Bosnia's most fertile lands and hence a cherished location for settlers. From the development of civilisations elsewhere, we know that such settlements often had a surplus workforce, which, like elsewhere, might easily have been used to start a building project-the Bosnian pyramids, perhaps?
There is therefore a substantial pool of evidence from which one can conclude that these hills have been artificially enhanced, and that there were "civilised people" present at the right time, in the right place, to have created these pyramids. However, it is equally clear that a smoking gun, which would convince anyone, remains to be found-but, equally, it might be just a spade's turn away.In 2008, preliminary research at the neighbouring village of Ginje brought about some further, very interesting, discoveries. Near the village is a large hill, and next to it, in the valley below, a small tumulus. On both the top of the hill and the tumulus, perfectly rectangular stone slabs have been found that are on a par with similar slabs found on and near the pyramids.
Independent researcher Nenad Djurdjevic has noted in a report, available on the Pyramid Foundation's website: "A few years after World War II, from the roadside many of the megalithic blocks were still visible lying on the top of the hill and its flanks, but...a great number of them was gradually removed by villagers during later decades and used for the construction of foundations, walls and houses."
The remaining conglomerate blocks are of enormous size (approximately 2 m x 1 m x 1 m) and weigh about four tonnes. On the hill itself, it seems clear that these blocks once belonged to a stone structure on its summit. The tumulus in the valley below has two stone slabs lying next to each other; one is sandstone, the other conglomerate. The obvious conclusion is that people moved these two stone blocks next to one other.
In Donje Mostre, a number of rectangular stone blocks have also been found lining the road, and some are without any doubt man-made. On 23 September 2008, a team from the University of Kiel, Germany, found nearby a Neolithic artefact that has been dated to 6000-3000 BCE. The discovery was announced by Zilka Kujundzic, from the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is actually one of the main opponents of the pyramids project and has filed numerous petitions for the Foundation's work to be stopped, claiming that the entire project is a hoax. The small ceramic pyramid-in some reports also referred to as a "Benben stone" because of the apparent visual similarities with such stones in Egypt-is a major discovery, showing that local people, millennia ago, created ceramic objects in the shape of a pyramid.
Furthermore, pyramid-like objects have been found within Old Europe. Dr Gimbutas wrote in The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974) about how the "...richly incised decoration on the Tisza altar from Kökénydomd [in southeastern Hungary] may relate to cosmogonical myths. Its triangular front is covered by meanders and divided into two levels by a horizontal band of meandering lines. In the centre of the lower register two eyes and a nose are set in a triangle... Groups of parallel lines, arranged in three, form panels along each side of the altar. The decorative organisation suggests several levels of cosmic waters..." In Egypt, for example, the Giza Plateau has been portrayed symbolically as the primeval hill which rose from the Waters of Chaos. Considering that the Tisza altar displays triangles (the two-dimensional rendering of the three-dimensional pyramid), this at the very least shows that Old Europe worked with the same cosmogonical material in its myths as the other pyramid-building cultures.
Finally, dowsing expert Adrian Incledon-Webber, of the British Society of Dowsers, has mapped the area and has drawn preliminary conclusions-namely, that the pyramids sit on top of important underground waterways, with three streams meeting under the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun. He stated in email correspondence with me: "All holy places attract water and then some are further enhanced by human intervention, i.e., encouraging further water to cross at specific points. The centres of stone circles, for instance, often have three streams crossing at their centre, too." As elsewhere, so in Bosnia it seems.
A sacred landscape
From Ginje, there is a clear line of sight to the Pyramid of the Sun, which appears on the northern horizon. North has been linked to the World of the Dead, and in some cultures the sacred mountain to the north was sometimes called the Storehouse of the Dead.
Paul Devereux carried out detailed research into sacred landscapes for his book Symbolic Landscapes (1992). He relates how mythology and the landscape interact, and he gives the example of the so-called "song lines" of the Australian Aborigines. Devereux repeats what Yale University architectural historian Vincent Scully observed in The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods (1979): that there was an interaction between the temple and the surrounding landscape-something he noted in Crete as well as in Greece. To quote Devereux on Scully: "He felt that the ancient Greeks had 'developed an eye' for 'specific combinations of landscape features as expressive of particular holiness'."
On the Greek mainland, Mount Zara and the site of Mycenae form one of ancient Greece's most important citadels. As Devereux describes it, Mount Zara "appears in almost pyramidal form from the palace on the summit of the citadel". As with Mount Zara, so with Visocica.
That the sight line from the structures in Ginje towards the Pyramid of the Sun is not accidental is underlined by research carried out by Nenad Djurdjevic. He highlights that only from the top of the tumulus, which is only a few metres high, can the profile of the Pyramid of the Sun be seen. When one stands in front of the base of the tumulus, the pyramid is not visible. This suggests that the tumulus was specifically constructed here and raised to such height as to create a line of sight to the Pyramid of the Sun.
Within the context of sacred landscapes, the complex at Ginje revealed, during initial analysis, several key components that strongly suggest that the site is part of a sacred ancient landscape focusing on the Pyramid of the Sun. It means that the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids is therefore not only more extensive than previously thought, but equally it is more than likely a carefully constructed landscape, as initial observations (e.g., on the equidistance between the pyramids of the Sun, Moon and Dragon) have already indicated.