The Power of Pyramids

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One of the benefits of teaching is the constant refreshment of ideas presented by students to air out the stuffy closets in minds that tend to close around academic orthodoxies. Each field of studies has its sacred shrines not to be disturbed, and none more so than the field of religious studies. That’s why I appreciate the openness of student minds. This summer I was introduced to the alleged Bosnian pyramid that I posted about some months back. Having reviewed the statements of both archaeologists and geologists it is easy to see how what looks like a pyramid might not be a pyramid at all. Some experts even theorize that the pyramids of Egypt took their inspiration from the shape of a natural desert mountain.

Wikipedia's photo of the "Bosnian Pyramid"

As we were winding up our classroom discussion of Egyptian mortuary cult and its awe-inspiring pyramids, another student asked me if I had heard of the Okinawa pyramids. I hadn’t. Back in my student days I recall a professor entering my Egyptian Religion course after having just read a book on the mystical power of pyramids wherein the author claimed that dull razors placed under a small-scale pyramid would come out sharpened the next morning and other such nonsense. We all had a good laugh and got onto the serious business of comprehending the fascinating world of Ptah and Atum. When I first heard the phrase “Okinawa Pyramids” I had to fight down the immediate flash of embarrassment of unrestrained academic laughter should I be found even considering such a proposal.

I have always, however, listened to those willing to ask about even the most anomalous incidents of history. Two years back I had a student share the “helicopter hieroglyphs” of ancient Egypt with me, despite a fully understandable reading of signs that can look like a helicopter to the uninitiated. The Okinawa Pyramids, however, were different. As the student whipped out his laptop and pulled the images up from the internet, I was intrigued. These were not pyramids, but rather monolithic blocks 60–100 feet below the surface of the ocean near Japan. My amateur study of geology has taught me that many species of rock naturally have squared fractures along various planes and facets, but the number of offset angles and the profusion of the squared edges forced my mind open just a bit. What is more striking yet is that there is no Wikipedia article on this formation at all, despite its discovery in the 1980s. Most intriguing of all is that the complex seems to have sunk at the end of the last ice age, thus predating even the pyramids of Egypt. Even the stepped pyramid of Djoser.

Is there evidence of a pre-civilization civilization under the coastal waters of Japan? I am not qualified to decide. I feel safe in saying that whatever is there is not a pyramid, but I am impressed by the photos and the relative silence about them even on the web. Since the best photos are copyright protected, I’ll provide a link for anyone wishing to creak open a dusty mind-closet and wonder about the implications.

Bosnia Jones meets Egypt Jones

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Scholarship is a remarkable human achievement; so many people from countless backgrounds sparring over ideas with comparatively little bloodshed should be applauded. In the political and religious worlds where armaments are often thrown into the mix, well, the results are colorful but often less kind. I was reminded of this when one of my students recently showed me a copy of a letter regarding a somewhat outlandish claim by Sam Osmanagic (see Momma Maya: Is It the Apocalypse Already? for more on him). Osmanagic, who is studying for a doctorate, has recently added another hapless cause to his dossier of unlikely mysteries of the human past. Investigating Visocica, a hill in Bosnia, Osmanagic has concluded that it is really a pyramid.

The letter to which I referred, written by the irrepressible head of the Antiquities Council of Egypt, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is very gentle. Hawass, a kind of self-styled Egyptian Indiana Jones, notes in a letter to Archaeology magazine, “What was found there is really just a mass of huge stones, evidently a natural geologic formation.” He does, however, also note “His [Osmanagic’s] previous claim that the Maya are from the Pleiades and Atlantis should be enough for any educated reader.” Interestingly enough, Osmanagic is a self-styled Bosnian Indiana Jones, and he has written a book arguing for the pyramid option. Meanwhile, most serious scholars are more circumspect about the claims of any Indiana Joneses. After all, to quote Raiders of the Lost Ark, “archaeology is not an exact science.”

I am sometimes challenged by those who discover that I read such things as Drosnin (see Edoc Elbib Eht) or Osmanagic, but despite my objections to their conclusions that I inevitably reach, I want to hear them. Scholarship suffers from silencing the maverick voices. I have never ascribed to the principle that a person has to have a Ph.D. to be credible; often the reverse is true. I have met many Ph.D.s barely worth listening to while some of the most profound thoughts I’ve encountered came while I was working as a janitor’s assistant, listening to my boss. He was a man who engaged in physical labor that afforded him time to think. No, I do not buy Drosnin or Osmanagic’s conclusions, but I applaud them. Scholarship would be dull if not for those willing to take chances out there on the edge of credibility. (And wearing cool hats while doing it.)