I visited the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun, as well as the Ravne tunnels few kilometers away. The pyramid is remarkably pyramid-looking green mountain and the tunnels are .. well, more about that later. Both are in the small town of Visoko, 35 kilometers outside Sarajevo. The claim is that the pyramid is a concrete-covered man-made structure built by an ancient civilization 29 000 years ago. And that the tunnels were also man-made network leading under the pyramids, and only later filled in. And that there are health benefits to all of this. Long story short: lots of pseudoscience, but of course a nice mountain to visit. And it is always pleasant to be wet, dark underground tunnels. Even if the the support beams are rotting...
Here's a view of the "concrete cover" in the pyramid:
The "cover" is only visible in a few places, however, as the mountain is generally entirely covered by grass and trees. To my untrained eye it wasn't clear to my the "concrete" would be actually concrete -- some of it looks like regular stone, some looks like conglomerate rock found in many places.
A view of the pyramid from further away is shown below. The photo is taken from the town center if Visoko, at the very nice hotel Vema where you can ask for "pyramid view" rooms :-)
The main clue to all these claims being pseudoscience was when the tour guide said that it was shown water crystals are damaged by listening to heavy metal music. Clearly, heavy metal can only be good for everything, including water crystals :-)
For more information, look at the Wikipedia page for a critical evaluation of the claims about the pyramid. The organization pushing for the claims is Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation (home page).
They sell all kinds of interesting gadgets and materials in their shop at the Ravne site. An ionisator for 100€, a book in which their lead researcher, Semir Osmanagić, chats about the pyramid with ChatGPT, and so on:
But let's look at the claims more carefully:
Claim 1:
The pyramid is a man-made structure.
Evidence: Quoting Wikipedia's summary [1]: Direct study of the site by geologists, archaeologists, and other scientists has demonstrated that the hills are natural formations known as flatirons,[ and that there is no evidence that they were shaped by human construction. And quoting Stephan Coric from Bohannon's article in Science (2006): "The stone slabs are nothing more than fractured chunks of sediment called breccia" [2].
Claim 2:
The Ravne tunnels are man-made.
Evidence: one of the basis of the claims that they are man-made rests on finding "dry wall" stone structures in the tunnels. These are rocks laid on top of each other by humans, with little sand or other material in between. Here's a photo, as well as a book excerpt from Osmanagić:
However, this is far from convincing. Any openings (man-made or natural) under ground are prone to water flows, and rivers can wash rocks clean by transporting small material away. Later new floods may bring new material and, e.g., cover layers of rock by mud or silt as shown in the book picture. We see these in natural caves all the time. Or, perhaps these layers of dirt and rock were on the surface at the time rocks moved around with the force of water.
And it is undisputed that the foundation dug out the tunnels. They took material out, and built the wooden supports to hold the the rest of the material above the tunnels up. Did they just dug in plain natural hill, perhaps leveraging some naturally occurring channels of differing materials inside?
Or, quoting Anthony Harding speaking in [2], "If these were made by humans without establishing their age, I would just assume they are part of an old mine". And Harding's verdict was "Its just a hill".
Claim 3:
Evidence:
Schumann Resonance is real phenomenon. The question though is if it has a health impact. A Japanese research team concluded that "neither subjective health nor depression was significantly associated with BPR-SR (blood pressure reactivity to Schumann Resonance)" [3]
Claim 4:
This is based on Masaru Emoto's work on "water crystals" and the possibility that water would carry information.
Evidence: Biochemist and Director of Microscopy at University College Cork William Reville wrote, "It is very unlikely that there is any reality behind Emoto's claims." [4,5]
Claim 5:
I was unable to find research articles, but the problems with this claimed scale are many, starting from that no one has published a definition or method for measuring it. As the Wikipedia article [6] puts it: "These are pseudoscientific concepts devoid of any experimental evidence.".
Conclusion
So no, there's no linkage with any of this to real things.
However, speaking personally, I still like to calm down and mediate in dark, wet underground places. There's something about the silence and darkness that soothes me :-)
So the tunnels *are* good for mediation:
Do pay attention though, I'm not entirely sure the tunnels are in great shape. They are excavated tunnels in a loose or conglomerate rock and sand. Cave-in is a real possibility, particularly when the support beams look like this:
References
[1] "Bosnian pyramid claims"- Wikipedia.
[2] Bohannon, John (22 September 2006). "Mad About Pyramids". Science. 313 (5794). AAAS: 1718–1720. doi:10.1126/science.313.5794.1718. PMID 16990525. S2CID 161209455.
[2] Mitsutake G, Otsuka K, Hayakawa M, Sekiguchi M, Cornélissen G, Halberg F. Does Schumann resonance affect our blood pressure? Biomed Pharmacother. 2005 Oct;59 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S10-4. doi: 10.1016/s0753-3322(05)80003-4. PMID: 16275477; PMCID: PMC2656447.
[3] "Masaru Emoto". Wikipedia.
[4] Reville, William (February 17, 2011). "The pseudoscience of creating beautiful (or ugly) water". The Irish Times. Dublin. p. 14. ProQuest 851900025.
[5] "Scala Bovis". Wikipedia.
More photos from the tunnels
Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
