Pyramid in Bosnia -- Huge Hoax or Colossal Find?

Sean Markey
for National Geographic News

May 12, 2006

He's been called a Balkan Indiana Jones. Others label him a dreamer, or worse, a pyramid buff with loony ideas.

Despite his critics (and he has many) Semir "Sam" Osmanagic believes he's discovered the find of a lifetime—a series of ancient pyramids in the heart of Bosnia.

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If the Bosnian-American businessman is correct, the structures would be the first known step pyramids in Europe.

"I am 100 percent sure. There is no other option," the Houston, Texas-based Osmanagic said.

At the heart of Osmanagic's belief is Visocica hill, an undeniably pyramid-shaped mound near the town of Visoko, 18 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of Sarajevo (see aBosnia and Herzegovina map).

Visoko, the former medieval capital of Bosnia, cradles a rich history, including Roman and Illyrian ruins and countless Neolithic artifacts.

"Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun"

Last month Osmanagic and his team began sinking a series of wells into the 700-foot-tall (213-meter-tall) hill, which Osmanagic renamed the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun.

The kick-off was observed by a clutch of onlookers, journalists, and—in what may be a first for such endeavors—contestants from the Miss Bosnia beauty pageant.

So far a mixed crew of volunteers and hired help has unearthed a network of tunnels along with what Osmanagic describes as ancient mortar and sandstone blocks shaped by human hands.

(See a related news photo: "Pyramid Discovered in Bosnia?").

He says the pyramid is at least 2,500 years old and may even date to the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago.

o Ajvatovici i paganskim običajima među Bošnjacima

MEHMED HANDŽIĆ, MUHAMMED SEID SERDAREVIĆ i VEHBIJA HODŽIĆ o Ajvatovici i paganskim običajima među Bošnjacima

1) MEHMED HANDŽIĆ u jednom radu bilježi:

„Opaža se i to da je neki NEUKI muslimanski svijet postavio u vezi sa nečijim kaburom na određenom mjestu u određeno vrijeme razne svetkovine. Tako je, naprimjer, neuki dio našeg bosanskohercegovačkog muslimanskog svijeta postavio u vezi s nekim Ajvaz-dedom svetkovinu, KOJU NAZIVAJU AJVATOVICA, a sastoji se u tome da se u određeni dan svijet okupi nedaleko od Prusca, posjeti kabur Ajvaz-dedin i kod nekakve stijene UČE RAZNE DOVE. To se toliko kod seljaka uvriježilo, da ga smatraju, kako to običvaju reći, »malim hadžom«.“ [1]

2) MUHAMED SEID SERDAEVIĆ u djelu Islam i nauka navodi neke od zabranjenih stvari u islamu, gdje kaže sljedeće: „Zabranjeno je dalje: ...sjediti i hodati po grobu; klanjati na ili prema grobu osobito vjerom odlična čovjeka, paliti na njemu svijeće, ljubiti ga i gladiti; uvlačiti u vjeru novotarije, tj. IZUMIJEVATI I POSTAVLJATI ŠTOKAKVE IBADETE (bogomoljstva) (npr. peći halvu ili druge gozbe priređivati 40. dan po smrti umrloga), „HODOČASTITI“ na AJVATOVICU (u travničkom okružju, što mnogi iz ZALUPANE MASE nazivaju MALIM HADŽILUKOM), pratiti hadžiju ili ga dočekivati učeći javno tekbire i sl.“ [2]

3) VEHBIJA HODŽIĆ u Glasniku VIS br. 1 – 2/67 str. 31-32., napominje sljedeće:

“A sada da vidimo šta o turbetima kaže autor jednog fikhskog djela (»Fikhus suneti«):

„Turbeta su se“, kaže on, „pretvorila u idole. Muslimani se ponašaju prema njima isto onako kako se ponašaju idolopoklonici (mušrici) prema svojim idolima. Obožavajući ih, njima se obraćaju, moleći im se traže od njih ispunjenje svojih želja (»murada«) i vjeruju da im oni mogu želju uslišati. Upravo traže od njih ono što se traži samo od Boga. Obraćaju se turbetima isto onako kao što su se mušrici u predislamsko doba obraćali kumirimam, idolima. I što je još gore“, nastavlja ovaj autor, „niko, ni ulema, ni Emir, ni vezir, ni vladar ne diže u ime islama svoga glasa, da bi osudio ovo opasno zlo i ovu idolatriju. Ovi obožavatelji grobova idu tako daleko, da više drže do svog šeha i evlije (ili groba nekog »dobrog«), nego samoga Boga.“ [3]
________________________
[1] Mehmed Handžić, Islamske teme, Ogledalo, Sarajevo, 1999., str. 361.
[2] Muhamed Seid Serdarević, Nauka islama, Islamska dionička štamparija u Sarajevu, 1917., str. 25-26.
[3] Vehbija Hodžić, Sujevjerje, ostaci mnogoboštva (širka), Glasnik – XXX/1967; br. 7-8, str. 307.

Fisherman Says He Saw Bigfoot Bathing ... And He Sent Us A Picture!

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One occupational hazard of reporting on unexplained phenomena: You can always count on waking up in the morning to find an email from someone swearing that they've just seen Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, a hybrid human alien or a UFO on the moon.

2015 began with a photo from John Rodriguez, a 66-year-old retired electrician, who claims that he was fishing Dec. 26 on the Hillsborough River near northeast Tampa, Florida, and came upon an incredible sight.

"I fish for gar in the river and I bring my camera to take pictures of the birds and what not. I heard a squishing sound, looked over and saw this thing walking through the water and crouch down in the duck weed. It did not look like a guy in a suit -- it was definitely an animal. I took this picture and got out of there as fast as I could."

Here's the image that Rodriguez sent to HuffPost:

Rodriguez claims to have seen and photographed -- in a completely clear and non-blurry moment -- that tall, hairy, elusive creature often reported in North America and other parts of the world that goes by many names: Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti. In Florida, it's known as the Swamp Ape or Skunk Ape (primarily from descriptions of an extremely pungent odor it supposedly gives off).

"I've heard of Skunk Ape prints around Green Swamp [in Florida], but never anything like this," Rodriguez told HuffPost in an email. "My whole life, never seen anything like it."

Of course, the fact that the photo looks a little too crisp at some points, made us suspect it to be a fraud. Just look at the jagged line between the hairy beast and the water. That could be the work of a novice who just downloaded Photoshop for the first time.

However, we've got some time to kill. And doesn't this man deserve to be taken at his word? After all, wouldn't finding Bigfoot be a great way to kick off 2015?

Rodriguez said he snapped the picture in the early afternoon at an area where the Hillsborough River becomes a cypress swamp. The map below shows a small section of the 59-mile-long river that flows through Florida, filled with wildlife preserves that include many not-so-friendly creatures, such as alligators, known to jump into canoes and attack unsuspecting humans.

So, what are we to make of this fantastic tale? Did Rodriguez take the clearest, most definitive picture to date of Bigfoot?

Not so fast, according to Ben Hansen, lead investigator of the Syfy Channel's "Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files" series.

"It's a relief to finally have a clear picture of the creature," Hansen, a former FBI agent, told HuffPost. "Every other photo and video we get is usually too blurry or the Bigfoot too obscured in brush to allow for any useful identification. Thanks to the clear photo, I'm excited to announce that the photographer has captured a real-life... gorilla in a Bigfoot suit!"

"To be more precise, the face of a gorilla that has been digitally added to the photo with editing software. Although I originally suspected the creature suit was actually in the water when the photo was taken, I started to notice shadows in front of the Bigfoot that appeared to be an inconsistent length and shape with the rest of the photo."

"Additionally, there appears to be some heavy digital editing touch-up to the fur around the face and where the body meets the water. I'm now leaning more toward believing the whole creature was pasted into the image and then branches and twigs were added in the foreground. The branches also could have really been in the scene, but they were later edited as separate layers so Bigfoot looks like he's now behind them, sitting in deep contemplation."

Digital photographs use a format called EXIF data, which stores a lot of accessible information within each image -- like shutter speed, if a flash was used, date and time of the image, etc. Hansen pointed out that the EXIF information of the Florida swamp creature picture suggests the image was digitally created on Dec. 26 with Photoshop.

Since those details are extremely important when trying to research unexplained phenomena images, we asked Rodriguez about this.

"I did not Photoshop this at all. Believe me or not," Rodriguez said. "When I plug in my memory card, it asks to import and opens in Photoshop. I just changed the name and saved. It seems like people get publicly crucified for coming forward with this kind of stuff."

Rodriguez also said this debunking attitude is what caused him to initially hesitate sending the original picture to HuffPost.

A March 2014 smithsonian.com story about the search for Florida's Skunk Apepointed out the following:

The belief in mythological animals might be as old as humanity itself. Nearly every culture's folklore contains at least one imagined creature in its folklore that has no place in modern science.

It's easy to imagine how, in the days when much of the planet had yet to be explored and catalogued, you might have reasonably believed in the existence of any of these beasts. But in the present day, when every square mile of the earth's surface has been photographed by satellites, and scientists have identified 1.3 million species (with mostly plants, tiny animals and microbes remaining to be found), how could you still believe in a lumbering, seven-foot-tall ape, hiding out in one of the most well-studied countries on the planet?

When dealing with reports and discussions about things like Bigfoot, UFOs, lake monsters, ghosts, etc., there's always a fine line walked by those who make the claims and the skeptics or outright debunkers who do their best to make the stories go away.

In the most literal sense, that's the nature of the beast -- especially where large, hairy creatures are involved.

Hansen brings up another item about this current alleged Skunk Ape sighting near Tampa.

"The white stripe down the middle of the head and chin is a nice touch. If it's a Skunk Ape, why not make it look like a skunk, right? In reality, I have yet to come across a story with any merit where witnesses describe the Skunk Ape with an actual white stripe like a skunk."

Par for the course, these stories produce strong opposing points of view. And still, one clear photograph of something that may or may not be a real Bigfoot is not definitive proof that the creature exists, the way DNA evidence -- or an actual body -- would be.

We still, apparently, don't have either of those things yet.Lee Speigel Become a fan

lee.speigel@huffingtonpost.comEm

History of Bigfoot

History

Before 1958

Wild men stories are found among the indigenous population of the Pacific Northwest. The legends existed before a single name for the creature.^[15] They differed in their details both regionally and between families in the same community. Similar stories of wild men are found on every continent except Antarctica.^[15] Ecologist Robert Michael Pyle argues that most cultures have human-like giants in their folk history: "We have this need for some larger-than-life creature."^[16]

Members of the Lummi tell tales about Ts'emekwes, the local version of Bigfoot. The stories are similar to each other in the general descriptions of Ts'emekwes, but details about the creature's diet and activities differed between family stories.^[17]

Some regional versions contained more nefarious creatures. The stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai were a nocturnal race that children were told not to say the names of lest the monsters hear and come to carry off a person—sometimes to be killed.^[18] In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the native people about skoocooms: a race of cannibalistic wildmen living on the peak ofMount St. Helens.^[12] The skoocooms have been regarded as supernatural, rather than natural.^[12]

Less menacing versions such as the one recorded by Reverend Elkanah Walker exist. In 1840, Walker, a Protestant missionary, recorded stories of giants among the Native Americans living in Spokane, Washington. The Indians said that these giants lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from the fishermen's nets.^[19]

Local stories were compiled by Indian Agent J. W. Burns in a series of Canadian newspaper articles in the 1920s recounting stories told to him by the Sts'Ailes people of Chehalis and others. The Sts'Ailes maintain, as do other indigenous peoples of the region, that the Sasquatch are very real, not legendary, and take great umbrage when it is suggested that they are. According to Sts'Ailes eyewitness accounts, the Sasquatch prefer to avoid white men, and speak the "Douglas language", i.e. Ucwalmicwts, the language of the people at Port Douglas, British Columbia at the head of Harrison Lake.^[20][21] It was Burns who first borrowed the term Sasquatch from the Halkomelem sásq'ets (IPA: [ˈsæsqʼəts])^[3] and used it in his articles to describe a hypothetical single type of creature reflected in the stories.^[12][22][23] Burns's articles popularized the animal and its new name, making it well known in western Canada before it gained popularity in the United States.^[24]

A story told to Charles Hill-Tout by Chief Mischelle of the Nlaka'pamux at Lytton, British Columbia in 1898 gives anotherSalishan variant of the name, meaning "the benign-faced-one".

Each language had its own name for the local version. Many names meant something along the lines of "wild man" or "hairy man" although other names described common actions it was said to perform, e.g., eating clams.^[22]

After 1958

In 1951, Eric Shipton photographed what he described as a Yeti footprint,^[24] which generated considerable attention and led to the story of the Yeti entering popular consciousness. The notoriety of ape-men grew over the decade, culminating in 1958 when large footprints were found in Del Norte County, California by bulldozer operator Gerald Crew. Sets of large tracks appeared multiple times around a road-construction site in Bluff Creek. After not being taken seriously about what he was seeing, Crew brought in his friend, Bob Titmus, to cast the prints in plaster. The story was published in the Humboldt Times along with a photo of Crew holding one of the casts.^[12]

Locals had been calling the unseen track-maker "Big Foot" since the late summer, which Humboldt Times columnist Andrew Genzoli shortened to "Bigfoot" in his article.^[25] Bigfoot gained international attention when the story was picked up by theAssociated Press.^[12][26] Following the death of Ray Wallace – a local logger – his family attributed the creation of the footprints to him.^[7] The wife of L. W. "Scoop" Beal, the editor of the Humboldt Standard, which later combined with theHumboldt Times, in which Genzoli's story had appeared,^[27] has stated that her husband was in on the hoax with Wallace.^[28]

1958 was a watershed year, not just for the Bigfoot story itself, but also for the culture that surrounds it. The first Bigfoot hunters appeared following the discovery of footprints at Bluff Creek, California. Within a year, Tom Slick, who had funded searches for Yeti in the Himalayas earlier in the decade, organized searches for Bigfoot in the area around Bluff Creek.^[29]

As Bigfoot has become better known and a phenomenon in popular culture, sightings have spread throughout North America. In addition to the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes region and the Southeastern United States have had many reports of Bigfoot sightings.^[30] The debate over the legitimacy of Bigfoot sightings reached a peak in the 1970s, and Bigfoot has been regarded as the first widely popularized example of pseudoscience in American culture.^[31]

Bigfoot

Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch) is the name given to a cryptid simian-,[2] ape-, or hominid-like creature that is said to inhabit forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid. The term sasquatch is an Anglicized derivative of the Halkomelem word sásq'ets.[3][4][5] Scientists discount the existence of Bigfoot and consider it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax,[6] rather than a living animal, because of the lack of physical evidence and the large numbers of creatures that would be necessary to maintain a breeding population.[7][8] Scientists Grover Krantz and Jeffrey Meldrum have focused research on the alleged creature for the greater parts of their careers.

639 × 450 - seattletimes.com

 Description Bigfoot is described in reports as a large hairy ape-like creature, in a range of 2–3 m (6.6-9.8 ft) tall, weighing in excess of 500 pounds (230 kg), and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair.[7][9] Witnesses have described large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge, and a large, low-set forehead; the top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla. Bigfoot is commonly reported to have a strong, unpleasant smell by those who claim to have encountered it.[10] The enormous footprints for which it is named have been as large as 24 inches (60 cm) long and 8 inches (20 cm) wide.[9] While most casts have five toes — like all known apes — some casts of Bigfoot tracks have had numbers ranging from two to six.[11] Some have also contained claw marks, making it likely that a portion came from known animals such as bears, which have five toes and claws.[12][13] Proponents claim that Bigfoot is omnivorous and mainly nocturnal.[14]