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World's Largest Pyramid Discovered in Bosnia?
kieran writes "Archaeologists have apparently begun to unearth a massive pyramid which had been masquerading as a hill in the Bosnian town of Visoko. At an estimated 722ft in height, it is expected to be 1/3 taller than Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza."
We know how they built pyramids. Huge dirt ramps and lots of slave labor.
Comment of the year
I am sure that a lot more funds are spent toward oil-finding than pyramids-finding.
Also we consume less pyramids than oil. That makes finding them a lesser strategical objective.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I'm not going to point to a particular site, but if you do a google image search on the words: bosnia pyramid
You'll find pictures of it. I'm kind of surprised nobody has considered the possibility before. If you see some pictures that give you a better 3D view of it, it very clearly has 4 slopes at 90 degree angles.
Very cool find, though.
How can he know that with so little excavated?
Seismic imaging
1. If he's right about the time period, it's impossible.
2. He's a loon.
His personal views, of course, have nothing to do with the veracity of the story. And it's perfectly reasonable to assume that his wild-assed guess of 12,000 B.C.E. is totally wrong, while he's 100% correct about the pyramid's existance. Nothing in that article casts any doubt whatsoever on the pyramid itself -- only on the researcher. Ad hominem, anyone?
Had you actually RTFA, you'd see that the reason it's back in the news is that the diggers found cut and polished stone blocks. Let me say that again, just for emphasis:
They found cut and polished stone blocks.
It sounds to me like the exact opposite of debunking is happening.
Another one bites the dust
Second, the fellow cho claims it a pyramid ranks right up there with Uri Gellar as far as credibility goes, according to Archaology last week.
That's all very well, but that Archaeology article spends all it's time slamming the person, not discussing his claims, and reads a lot like a personal attack. The guy may be a loon, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss this automatically.
The pyramid announcement does seem very premature and is probably something else (or a fake) but I'd like to see some discussion of what he's found, which is not in that article.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Or the way an idiot without a cell phone misses the red light and slams into you: inattention to your surroundings.
I hope that this doesn't turn out to be linked to some religion or other. All we need is another whacko group claiming to have the only true religion, and proof of its veracity in this pyramid. I truly do hope that this is built by, or inspired by alien visitors, perhaps stranded travellers or something. As long as its anything but more religious hype/tripe/your-fav-bad-thing-here.
Because if your first thought upon discovering a pyramid is that it was "built by, or inspired by alien visitors" you are far saner, more rational, and down to earth than those religious "whacko group[s]"...
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
From the pictures on the web-sites linked to, it does seem reasonable to assume that there is something there. Geography is rarely THAT regular and it seems like the people digging have found evidence of blocks, construction, tunnels etc. These might be Roman or Ottoman era remains, or they might not.
History is long and great periods are undocumented or forgotten. It seems absolutely reasonable that the ruins of great civilization could have gone unnoticed in Bosnia especially as this area has seen almost constant and vicious warfare for most of the modern era. I think it is very unfortunate that this discovery has been tarred with pseudo-science before real results have been developed.
For once someone who has a grasp on things. Until this mound is dug up all the name calling in the world won't make a difference. Whether or not something is found at least he is guaranteed to have his name go down in history for something. Only question I have is why don't they just hit it with ground penetrating radar and see what comes up before they dig up the whole thing. Would make life a hell of a lot easier.
Kind of amazing to realize how much skillful PR matters in getting media attention. Dude found a pointy hill and is calling it a pyramid, but he knows how to get reporters interested. It probably doesn't help that Americans love all that new-age Atlantis Secrets of the Pyramids BS.
A question for whoever knows. I don't know anything about geology, but I do know physics. How probable is the formation of pointy hill from geological perspective? I wouldn't suspect they are a geologocial impossibility but would need a couple of fortuitous conditions to form instead of the usual rounded hill, like a radial mudslide at the top or a pointy rock formation beneath the soil near the top -- something that would change the typical pattern of erosion. I'd wager there are even technical terms for pointy hills and round hills.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
They found cut and polished stone blocks.
You live in the US, correct?
We Americans have a somewhat different view of what it means to find traces of a civilization than do Europeans.
In the US, if you go out and dig in your backyard and find something man-made and more than a few hundred years old, you've most likely really found something of archaeological interest.
In Europe, you can set up a dig just about anywhere and find crumbled bricks, broken pottery, or some other traces of very very old human civilization.
Hell, for another recent news item to make my point, the UK Times Online reports that archaeologists just found an almost perfectly preserved Roman city in Spain - Which the Spanish felt so impressed by, they promptly turned it into a parking lot.
And it's perfectly reasonable to assume that his wild-assed guess of 12,000 B.C.E. is totally wrong, while he's 100% correct about the pyramid's existance.
I agree that ad hominem doesn't disprove the existance of a pyramid in Bosnia. But when the town loony raves about aliens landing in his back yard, you don't call NASA to disprove him.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/osmanag ic/
"Too bad that it is not a credible story at all. In fact, it is impossible. Who is the "archaeologist" who has taken the media for a ride?
They said the same thing about the guy that found the lost city of Troy.
Let the nutjob dig up the site some, then we'll know. I'm really not happy about "real" archeologist simply declaring that something is impossible.
The train was declared impossible.
Meteorites were declared impossible.
Heliocentrism was declared impossible.
Heavier than air aeronefs were declared impossible.
The experts keep using that word, I do not think it means what they think it means.
You can't take the sky from me...
What I however find most amusing are on the one hand the leaps of faith were assumption after assumption is made only to then conclude the end result to be fact. In this case it is assumed the document was found in a certain part of egypt. They then use the fact that the document is in a certain style/era to then claim that because they found another cave with artifacts in that style/era that it could very well be the cave.
WTF? First off, just because the document was from an era/style DOES NOT mean it has to have spend all the time in a cave of the era/style. It could have been picked up before an buried somewhere else. Second of all just because some cave contains stuff from the same era that does not mean that the object must have come from that region.
Oh look. A pair of mickey mouse ears. They must have come from florida!
Eh? No? They could have come not only from one of the other disney parks but they in fact never have come from a park at all.
Then there is the other side. The entire program is about how there are more gospels then there are known today. It is shown that a mere human decided wich gospels would be included in the new testament.
It is even clearly shown that very simple political and marketting reasons lay behind the choice.
So then what do people think about the Judas gospel. Well it is funny but the "real" gospels are somehow still more real and have something holy about them.
WTF? Just goes to show that facts and believes have nothing to do with each other.
But I suppose that if you have to answer the question why and how did the egyptians build the pyramids the answer "bored, lots and lots of people with no tv to watch" just doesn't cut it. Better to get some fantasy going. Star people! Yeah, never mind that amazing as the pyramids are they seem kinda primitive for a star faring civilization.
I just go with the old prove for the fact that we have been visited by intelligent aliens in the past. They ain't been back. Smart move.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I understand the sentiment, but this is science: Guilty until proven innocent. Until we see any kind of evidence other than "That mountain is pyramid shaped", this guy is worthy of ridicule in proportion to the size of the claim.
Consider it a "hazing ritual" that *all* scientists have to go through when they make extraordinary claims that aren't (yet) backed up with extraordinary evidence.
I'm a bit concerned about your meter for debunking. "Excavating the entire site", when the entire site is a *mountain*. It will never be debunked. This will probably fall into the realm of consipracy theory in a few years, probably when his funding is cut.
As for hating new findings, I think I'd be pleasantly surprised. I'm not holding my breath though.
For the record, my wife has a degree in archaeology. I would guess that archaeologists are far more defensive about known theories because there's been a fair number of charlaitians and hucksters in the past.
"That's all very well, but that Archaeology article spends all it's time slamming the person, not discussing his claims"
No, there's an entire paragraph on why it's impossible.
BUT THAT WASN'T THE POINT OF THAT ARTICLE.
The point, which you obviously missed, was that in the search for new and amazing discoveries, the media
"ignores the truth and embraces the fantastic."
This article was an indictment of the media's behavior, not an ad hominem attack on the guy and his results.
"The pyramid announcement does seem very premature and is probably something else (or a fake) but I'd like to see some discussion of what he's found, which is not in that article."
IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE. The article, AGAIN, was a critique of the behavior of the media, and their willingness to embrace "fringe" characters in an effort to report dramatic findings.
You completely missed the point, and yet SOMEHOW got modded up.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
The three terms on the pyramid story are:
fake, bullshit, hoax
Nice job.
But there's value in money, so long as people are willing to accept it in exchange for goods and services. And I think you inadvertently made my point about T-bills. The government sells a T-bill for something of value (cash, the result of goods or services produced by somebody else). The T-bill has value only because of the government's promise to pay it back later. This is how the government borrows money. That's why it doesn't make any sense for the government to buy T-bills from itself! It's like writing yourself an IOU for five bucks, selling it to yourself for five bucks, and then spending the five bucks. All you're left with is an IOU. The five bucks is gone.If you need to spend another five bucks, you have to do what the government does, and rob the nearest guy with something of value.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
(Mass transit is infinitely superior to cars, anyway, and any "socialist" worthy of the title should know this. Wiping out a key piece of history is also about as anti-social as you can get. Besides which, the city can't take up that much space. Build the car park UNDER it. Spain does have mining equiptment, right? It's not totally deprived of technology, however bereft of wits it might be. Then you can have the ruins AND the car park.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Id say its about even, actually.
That "whoosh" you heard was the sound of a pretty decent joke flying over your head at high speed.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Back in the day, the ratio of workers to retirees (defined as over 65) was 25:1. Today, by the way, before the boom in retirees really happens (most of our old people were born back pre-penicillin, much less modern healthcare - look for the ratio of over 65 to under 65 to continue to grwo dramatically).
To have a similar ratio today, we'd need a total population of ~850 million.
So, you're suggesting that the problem could be resolved by allowing 550 million immigrants into the USA?
Note that 550 million immigrants would imply that in about 30 years we'd triple our number of retirees (or do the immigrants not get SS under your worldview?)
Which increase in retirees could be supported by allowing another 1.5 billion immigrants into the country.
See the problem yet?
Nothing we could do in the way of immigration policy, free trade (or lack of same), or anything else really, will keep the Social Security solvent without a dramatic increase in the retirement age. Which is NOT going to happen, since it is politically infeasible at this point. And will remain politically infeasible until the retiree's lobby isn't the biggest one in the mix....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"