Intuitive Ancient Architecture?

I love this story. Not having visited the site* (much less being trained in Engineering or Architecture) I really don't have much basis for a helpful opinion. I do know that folk can do wonderful things without quite knowing what it is they're doing. That makes me think this may have been a naturally occuring geological feature, which was intuitively modified by ancient Europeans for whatever practical reasons they might've had at the time.

Even beavers build dams without blueprints on paper.*

I think that simply blowing it off as not man-made is premature. Even if it didn't involve any advanced thought processes to build it up to quasi pyramidal quality, the number of unlikely natural features described by the discoverers suggest someone was manipulating nature for specific reasons. Ignorance and accidents have frequently produced oddities which lead to more purposeful arrangements. All too often, the knowledge gained in such endeavors is lost with the lives of the folk who discovered and/or developed it.

Just so we're clear here, though, I don't see any reason to think this formation is the sign of what we would call an advanced civilization. But, if there were no "civilizations" at the time of its development, even a tribe of homo sapiens who happened to build up a natural formation to satisfy their curiosity and paleolithic needs would have to be considered important and valuable information for modern archaeologists and anthropologists.

After all, homo didn't go from tree shrews to theocrats without passing through millions of years of incidental and deliberate trial and error along the way.

British expert nixes Bosnia pyramid claim
By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON, Associated Press Writer

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A British archaeologist on Friday rejected claims that a hill in central Bosnia is a man-made structure that many local residents insist is a pyramid.

Professor Anthony Harding, who is president of the European Association of Archaeologists, visited Visocica hill and said the formation was natural.

"Not any evidence at all has been found" to support the claim the site would be an archaeological site, he said.

No pyramids are known in Europe, and there are no records of any ancient civilization on the continent ever attempting to build one.

The pyramid theory was launched by an amateur researcher last year but it has been disputed by a number of local and international experts, who claim that at no time in Bosnia's history did the region have a civilization able to build monumental structures. They say the hill is simply a strange natural formation.

Nevertheless, Semir Osmanagic, the amateur Bosnian archaeologist who has been investigating Latin American pyramids for 15 years, organized excavations to Visocica, about 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo, in April.

His team — made up mostly of volunteers, found that the 2,120-foot hill has 45-degree slopes pointing toward the cardinal points and a flat top. Under layers of dirt, workers discovered a paved entrance plateau, entrances to tunnels and large stone blocks.

Egyptian geologist Aly Abd Alla Barakat, who arrived in May to check on Osmanagic's claims said the structure is "man made" and worth investigating.

"My opinion is that this is a type of pyramid, probably a primitive pyramid," said Barakat, a geologist from the Egyptian Mineral Resource Authority.

However, Harding, who said he visited the site briefly on Thursday and looked at the same stone blocks Barakat said were man made, said on Friday they were a natural formation.

"I've seen the site, in my opinion it is entirely natural," he told reporters in Sarajevo. Harding did not visit other sites in the area which Osmanagic and Barakat say are further evidence of the existence of pyramids in Bosnia, such as a tunnel leading to the top of Visocica or a stone pavement made of geometrically regular shaped pieces.

Harding said that although he had not seen the stone pavement, by looking at photographs, "I would not believe it to be archaeological. It looks to me as a natural stone pavement." He did not visit the tunnel either.

But Barakat, an expert in the stone blocks used to build ancient pyramids in Egypt, has recommended more experts visit the site. An archaeologist from Egypt is scheduled to visit the site this month.

The theory of a pyramid has sparked intense interest in Bosnia, with local residents seeking to cash in on the craze; restaurants serve meals in triangle-shaped plates, artisans make pyramid-shaped wooden key-chains, shopkeepers sell T-shirts saying "I have a pyramid in my backyard."

When asked to comment on Harding's statement, Mario Gerussi, the director of Osmanagic's team leading the excavations, said the team had not been informed of the timing of Harding's visit and that none of the staff at the site had seen him there.

Harding specializes in the European Bronze Age, and has led excavations in Poland and the Czech Republic as well as in Britain.

* Something I'd really love to do someday.

* I don't want to make too much of that, either. But WOW! are those li'l guys incredible! {-;