You forgot to include a title, please correct this.

April 15, 2006 8:48 AM

See the big dark Bosnian hill there? Slightly southwest of where the rivers meet. The one that looks like a pyramid. It's a pyramid! Explore Europe's first pyramid here. (via)
posted by thirteenkiller (20 comments total)

Cool if true...but seems a bit far-fetched at this point. Not the tunnels, but the idea that someone built a pyramid that big.
posted by sharpener at 9:26 AM on April 15, 2006

it resembles pyramid sites he has studied in Latin America

Initial excavations have revealed

stone blocks that could be part of a pyramid's outer surface

Sounds like a humbug to me.
posted by LarryC at 9:53 AM on April 15, 2006

Or it could be lava tubes in an old volcano that were adapted for use by people. If they really built the whole thing that would be one big ass pyramid.
posted by fshgrl at 10:01 AM on April 15, 2006

I will be following this with interest - I would love it if my cynicism turned out to be misplaced.
posted by greycap at 10:42 AM on April 15, 2006

Whoa, did GoogleMaps change their interface? What's that funky grey rectangle in the lower right corner? WHAT IS IT?!

I'm checking but I don't see any FPPs for it. WHY WON'T SOMEONE MAKE AN FPP!?!!
posted by Eideteker at 10:59 AM on April 15, 2006

Eideteker: It's a zoomed out view of the map, by about 4x from my guess. That way you don't have to zoom out to get your bearings when you've been looking at things at street level.
posted by furtive at 11:07 AM on April 15, 2006

furtive, that there was some sarcasm, primarily based on the fact that whenever Google does anything at all, there's a corresponding post on the blue.
posted by jonson at 11:09 AM on April 15, 2006

Also, "you forgot to include a title, please correct this" is an awesome title for this post!
posted by jonson at 11:10 AM on April 15, 2006

"[...] seems a bit far-fetched at this point. Not the tunnels, but the idea that someone built a pyramid that big."

I'd also love to be wrong, but judging by the photo on the BBC site it looks far too large to be man-made.
posted by 327.ca at 11:18 AM on April 15, 2006

What's that funky grey rectangle in the lower right corner? WHAT IS IT?!

That's a Overview Map Control, which has been available in the latest Google Maps API for a while (GOverviewMapControl), and is a very recent addition to Google Maps.

Some of the entrances to tunnels were covered over in the 1960s, so this has been something the residents of this area have been aware of for quite a while. I imagine that life near the pyramids is going to be changing tremendously over the next few years.
posted by bragadocchio at 11:28 AM on April 15, 2006

The radio show As It Happens covered this two days in a row. The first show (real player, scroll down to see the summary) is fairly credulous, while the second covers some of the critics. Though he does have a sweet Indiana Jones hat Osmanagic does not sound legit.
posted by thrako at 11:31 AM on April 15, 2006

Isn't it a bit premature for him to be deciding that these are not just pyramids, but The Pyramids Of The Sun, Moon and Dragon?

Anyways, I hope the exploring party isn't trapped inside a complex of underground tunnels by a freak rock-slide and then gruesomely killed, one by one, by (an) unseen foe(s), while tensions rise and supplies dwindle, the flickering torches dying just as a horde of shadowy figures making disturbing flitting movements close in on the decreasing circle of light, so that the Dad-like has to find his inner resolve and escape by bludgeoning his way through the crowd of somewhat-disappointing monsters, in the process saving the Attractive Blonde one but tragically losing the Funny one just as they're about to escape.
posted by Drexen at 12:22 PM on April 15, 2006

He has already named the three hills the pyramids of the Sun, Moon and Dragon.

That's pretty much the first thing I would do. You know, as an antecedent to unleashing the ancient magic upon the earth, ushering in a new age, blah blah blah....
posted by weston at 12:33 PM on April 15, 2006

Looks cool, lets hope it turns out to be the real thing, or something close to it. It is awfully regular, but I certainly wouldn't put it past nature to have it that way and the people just made something of it - or made it pointier.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:22 PM on April 15, 2006

You forgot the Bosnian family that lived there for over a year while attempting to evade the Servian death-squad.

fiction, but would make a great story

true, but it would be better with Serbians.
posted by disclaimer at 8:16 PM on April 15, 2006

.... or you could just blame it on b1tr0t .... [/obligatory]
posted by lodurr at 8:15 AM on April 16, 2006

Maybe, long long ago, the human race came here in Pyramid-shaped spacecraft from beyond the stars, and sthere was a mutiny, and the big ships lifted off again leaving the officers and their supporters behind, and after generations the decendents of the stranded space men built giant pyramids all over the earth in a sort of cargo-cult re-enactment of their ancestors arrival, in the hopes of getting off this benighted rock...

y'know, like, maybe.
posted by hob at 5:59 PM on April 16, 2006

My inner cynic calls shenanigans, but my inner optimist sure hopes it turns out to be something fun.
posted by dejah420 at 6:04 PM on April 16, 2006

wow. this could be really good.
I hope they do get to explore the innards of this thing, since with history going back to the Romans, there'd be a long, long line of archeologists who'd insist their period's artifacts be painstakingly logged before allowing any further excavation.
(ah, Europe)
posted by Busithoth at 9:28 PM on April 16, 2006

Great! But not really Europe's first pyramid. Check it here:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf116/sf116p01.htm
posted by acrobat at 4:10 AM on April 17, 2006