More Pyramidiocy

Hello? Everyone out there reading this? Pay attention. You are witnessing an important event — the birth and growth of an utter fraud. I wrote once before about the “Bosnian Pyramid,” and now the big fat fake is still making news. This time, at least, in a slightly more critical article in the New York Times.

The New York Times now refers to Osmanagic as an “amateur archaeologist,” downgraded from the original AP description of him as “a Bosnian archaeologist who studied the pyramids of Latin America for 15 years.” After a few uncritical opening paragraphs, the article finally gets around to airing the skeptics’ side, which we’ve been over: there’s no way anybody was building pyramids before the last ice age, he has no evidence, the “pyramid shape” of the hill is purely geological. My favorite part of this article:

Archaeologists and historians inside and outside Bosnia are appalled, insisting it is simply a peculiarly symmetrical bit of geology. But pyramid fever is spreading through the country. Largely uncritical television and newspaper reports have made the photogenic Mr. Osmanagic a national celebrity…

Gosh, uncritical newspaper reports? You mean in newspapers like the Boston Globe, which is owned by (yep) the New York Times Company? (Note that I was sure the same AP article appeared in the NY Times, but I can’t find it now, so either I’m mistaken or they took it down.)

This latest NY Times article brings us even more golden quotes from Mr. Osmanagic, such as:

“Nature could not have created three identical hills in this pattern,” he said with matter-of-fact confidence. He tells the daily stream of visitors to his dig that at certain times of year, the shadow of the Pyramid of the Sun moves across the valley and covers the Pyramid of the Moon, “symbolizing that the reign of the sun is over and that of the moon is beginning.”

Here’s a picture of the three “identical” hills from an uncritical (to say the least) web site on the “pyramids.” Sure. Identical.

The article is altogether disappointing in its inability to just come out and say this guy is a fruitcake. It’s important for good journalism to be balanced, but come on — this is a childish fantasy backed up by some interesting political and cultural biases. If I say that I did a clinical study proving that girls with blue eyes named “Rebecca Watson” tend to be better in bed than other girls, AP has no journalistic imperative to report on it.

Even if it is true.