Ancient Pyramids of Bosnia? Many Are Believers

Oct. 29, 2006 — -- Egypt has pyramids, China has a wall and Greece has the Parthenon -- all evidence of ancient and great civilizations.

Ever heard of ancient Bosnians?

Probably not. But some are seeing pyramids towering above a drab Bosnian town -- perhaps pyramids bigger than the Egyptians built.

Tourists are flocking to buy trinkets, to eat pyramid pizza and pyramid cake, and stay at the local hotel, re-named the Pyramid of the Sun.

"Last year here, we had 20,000 tourists in the whole summer," Davor Pekic, owner of the Pyramid of the Sun, said through a translator. "This year, we had that many tourists on one day."

These are tourists who brave the mine fields left behind after the country's civil war because they believe that the Bosnian structures are pyramids.

"Yes," one tourist said about the pyramids' authenticity. "I think 100 percent."

"I come from Slovenia, seven hours traveling, to see these in the Bosnia," another tourist said. "Why not?"

Why not? Because there shouldn't be pyramids in Europe. While the ancient Egyptians were building their pyramids, apparently their European counterparts were living in caves.

"In this age in Bosnia, in Europe, we had prehistoric civilization," said Enver Imamovic, former director of the National Museum of Bosnia. "No houses."

So who claims these are pyramids? Bosnia's very own "raider of the lost ark," Semir Osmanagic.

"This is the biggest civilizational complex ever built on the face of the planet," he said.

Osmanagic is a businessman and part-time archaeologist who left Bosnia for Texas 15 years ago to make his fortune in the oil industry. On a trip back home, something caught his eye.

"The first thing I noticed was the peculiar shape of that hill," he said. "It had the perfect shape, the perfect geometry of the pyramid."

So he got workers to start digging. What they found was a structure they believe may be an ancient pyramid -- a pyramid bigger than the famous pyramids of Egypt.

The Egyptian government sent an expert to Bosnia take a look. His verdict: Keep digging. Something here is man-made, he said, but it is something very primitive that can't possibly be compared to the Great Khufu Pyramid.