CONFRONTING PSEUDOARCHAEOLOGY IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: NEW INITIATIVES
Despite numerous protests and appeals from the worldwide scientific community over the last year, the pseudoarchaeological diggings at and under the Visoko hills in search for alleged prehistoric pyramids continue as false archaeology takes even stronger roots in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Following the pseudoarchaeological success of Mr. Osmanagic, another such pseudoscientific theory has recently reemerged after more than two decades – that of one Salinas Price, a Mexican hotel owner, who claims that the Homeric Troy is situated near the small Bosnian-Herzegovinian town of Gabela in the Neretva river valley. Just like Visoko, the Gabela area is an important archaeological region rich with protected national monuments. Mr. Price and his coordinators in Herzegovina recently made some statements indicating that another Visoko-like project could soon be under way in Gabela.
The Bosnian-Herzegovinian scientists and experts are making a final affort of warning the international community about these pseudoarchaeological threats to our real historical heritage, by writing a new letter to Mr. Christian Schwarz-Schilling, the High Representative of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This letter is even more important since Mr. Schwarz-Schilling himself gave support to the Visoko project last year.
In the previous two weeks, the text of this letter was published in the Sarajevo-based daily newspaper Oslobodjenje and the Croatian weekly magazine Feral Tribune. On this blog, APWR is bringing the English, the French and the German translation of this letter. We are kindly asking you to support this initiative by forwarding this information to a relevant institution in your country or to an institution you consider fit in this case.
The letter also has a declaratory and petitionary charachter, as it has been forwarded last week to various foreign embassies in Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Centre for Balkan Studies of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Academy of Sciences and Arts, with an aim to familiarize the international community with the efforts of the local scientists in confronting pseudoscience.
This initiative is already reaping some significant results. Appart from responses that the Academy received from various embassies, the Federal Ministry for Culture and Sport of Bosnia-Herzegovina yesterday announced thier own initiative to insist with the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Council of Ministers that our country ratifies two important international treaties on cultural and archaeological heritage as soon as possible.
These two treaties are the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaelogical Heritage (Valetta 1992) and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001). With these documents ratified by the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina, there would be sufficient legal and other framework to succesfully protect and research our cultural and historical heritage. We kindly ask for your support for this initiative.
Thank you!
The Letter in German, download link
The Letter in French, download link
The Letter in English, download link
Our special gratitude goes to those who made the most of this possible and those who already so generously reported about this initiative at their websites, namely, The Hall of Ma'at, Indo-Eurasian Research Group, Le site d’Irna, The Antiquity of Man, Археолошки дневник vol.1, Archaeoastronomy and Rogueclassicism. Please, let us know if we missed any.
