Visoko // An Actual Pyramid Scheme

© Aleksandar Todorovic // Shutterstock.com

Cynicism. It’s a disease, right? The bravado of the social media age has made it worse. Now, people seem to go out of their way to ruin the fun of others, which is just about as low as human behaviour can go. Take that in context, please. If you aren’t committing a crime, ruining someone’s fun for amusement is the bottom of the barrel. Being cynical has never been more fashionable. That is a tragedy.

When it comes to the low-hanging fruit of cynicism in the Bosnia and Herzegovina sphere of tourism, the Visoko Pyramids are second only to Međugorje. Scratch that, they might be in first place. There isn’t a ranking for this sort of thing, thank the lord, but the apparition of the Virgin Mary and the mystical pyramid complex are gold and silver, guaranteed. At times, it can feel as if more energy has been committed by the international community to disproving these two things than has been given to, you know, the actual problems here.

© John Bills

But hey, it isn’t difficult to see why cynicism would rage, right? After all, if you squint your eyes, most mountains look a little like pyramids. If you want to see something, you’ll see something.

The pyramids were discovered in 2005 by Dr Semir Osmanagić, a Zenica-born doctor who had moved to the US and worked his way up to being in charge of a manufacturing company in Houston, Texas. Osmanagić visited Visočica Hill that fateful year and promptly theorised that the triangle-shaped hill could be a pyramid. And then, the work began. He named it the Pyramid of the Sun; the rest is history.

I wasn’t on the pyramids though, I was in the nearby Ravne tunnels, a network of underground routes that go back many, many years. I could recount the many facts and figures dispensed to me during my tour of the tunnels, but what purpose does that serve? Let’s not parrot things. I was asked to put my hand on a big rock and asked if I felt anything. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt anything. It was a fruitless endeavour.

© Aleksandar Todorovic // Shutterstock.com

And then, to the pyramid. Try as I might, the tidal wave of cynicism was too torrential to hold back. This is a pyramid scheme.

An actual pyramid scheme.

Built on a pyramid.

A pyramid scheme based around a pyramid.

I’m not a scientist, but I am an artist, and that is beautiful. If that was the central intention of this development, the Visoko pyramid complex would be considered a tremendous success. Obviously, there was more to it than a drunken play on words. Who are you, and how did you get in? I’m the locksmith, and I’m the locksmith. A pyramid scheme. A scheme based on a pyramid. An actual pyramid scheme.

Cynicism bubbled in every one of my arteries, but here I was, I had paid to visit, paid to listen, paid to learn. I’m not going to write about the intricacies of the argument in favour of the pyramids, because I wasn’t really listening. I was trying, but there is only so much attention one can pay when the conversation centres on concrete. It is difficult to care about concrete. The pyramid is made up of layers of the stuff, a strange concrete that is five times stronger than modern concrete, five times more water resistant. It is super compressed, super rigid. A concrete lover’s concrete. Concrete for the professionals.

I have never used the word ‘concrete’ more in a paragraph.

But none of this is for me, right? Why would the apatheist be impressed by any of this? If incontrovertible proof was discovered that God did, in fact, exist, my day would continue as normal. So what if it is a pyramid? Cool, what’s for lunch?

© Digihelion // Shutterstock.com

Visoko doesn’t need these outlandish claims. This is where Tvrtko I was crowned. It was one of the first political centres of Bosnian culture, where the medieval state flourished, and where that original sense of Bosnianness bloomed. It was a town that established itself as an important centre of commerce and culture, even as the Ottoman Empire took control. It was a massive industrial centre during the socialist Yugoslav years. This was the Yugo-centre of leather and textiles. If you care about Bosnia, you will find more than enough in Visoko to grab your attention. Self-confidence is hard to find, but it is the most beautiful of all the drugs.

Yet here we are, climbing a hill, as a man tries to convince the cynics. He is preaching to a lapsed choir. It isn’t for me to say whether the Pyramid of the Sun is an actual pyramid or not. What weight does my opinion carry? No weight, dear reader, that is how much weight. I’m all for it, whether it is a pyramid or not. I have no dog in the pyramid game. Allow all performance-enhancing drugs in the Olympics, let’s see how fast this thing can go. If it brings people to Visoko, have at it. Heck, claim that the thing was built by aliens, dinosaurs, and ancient civilisations. I’ll back you up. I’ll never abandon you. I will leave the lowest-hanging fruit on the tree for the lazy to snap up. Pyramid of the Sun, I believe in you, whether I believe in you or not. Cynicism is too easy, especially in these themes. How could I not love a pyramid scheme based on a pyramid? This is meta-brain brilliance.

It does kinda look like a pyramid though, right?