Review: Finding the Truth-Worlds Biggest Pyramid

Producer: Said Sefo

An apparent promoter of the Bosnian pyramid hoax who posted in a Facebook group I frequent lately offered to send me a $2.99 Amazon gift card in exchange for a review of the documentary, Finding the Truth: Worlds Biggest Pyramid, which I agreed to and watched via my Amazon Prime account after renting the SD streaming version of it. The rental allowed me to have access for 7 days—I could watch as many times as I like in that period. So I took my time and made some notes.

First, I’d like to point out that the documentary was clearly low-budget but, aside from a few small details, the production value wasn’t that bad. I did notice right away that the title was missing an apostrophe, and expected many more errors. Thankfully, I noticed very few after that. The music seemed appropriate, the camera quality was sufficient, and there were a few artistic methods used that let me know the producer and camera operators knew what they were doing.

There was an effort to present the documentary as an unbiased reporting, but I’d have to conclude that this was anything but in the end. While there were some scenes where the narrator made an effort to seem interested in “finding the truth,” such as when he mentioned the efforts to revoke or remove Osmanagic’s permits to excavate; and while there were many inclusions of opponents to the overall Bosnian pyramid hoax itself, there were also clear indications of bias to a preconceived “truth” that the documentary itself had little intention of straying from.

For instance, there were lines similar to, “Osmanagic broke the archaeological code and outraged…”which popped in on occasion. Much of the bias was subtle, but some was not so subtle. In the last third of the documentary, the narrator takes note of a geologist that shows up after the tour has started and apparently makes his opinion in a manner disagreeable to the narrator:

“Geologist Dr. Anbaawy from Cairo University comes a little late to hear the information about the ancient cement. Unlike his colleague, Dr. Abubakr Moussa, without taking an analyzing samples, makes up his own mind within seconds.”

Anbaawy looks at the sediment layers and describes it as a conglomerate within a calcium carbonate matrix. Almost as if he was a professional geologist who might have seen such a thing before. The camera operator made sure to capture Bakr taking a sample just before declining to make an on-the-spot conclusion. And the narrator fails to mention for the viewers that Moussa isn’t a field geologist; rather, he’s an historic conservationist.

The narrator and the documentary also fail in exploring just about any rabbit hole that might actually show the hills near Visoko in Bosnia in a bad light. As example, Osmanagic is shown while home in Houston, TX to be going over some “energy results” on his computer screen. He says that a “British scientist” named “Harry Oldfield” did some “advanced measuring” of the area with “electromagnetic equipment” and concluded that there are “energy lines” (whatever that means) which go up vertically and that the hill “behaves like a living being” (whatever that means).

Were this an unbiased documentary, the producer had a golden opportunity to explore Semir Osmanagic’s true rationale. Though I must admit, Osmanagic said quite enough to put himself on the side of kooky and hardly deserving to be “excavating” an archaeological site. Osmanagic mentions on his own his space-alien idea, and goes on to say that he believes people 15,000-30,000 years ago used mental frequencies to move or lift objects as a kind of “high technology.”

Perhaps the producer and narrator felt sorry for Osmanagic, and didn’t wish to cause him further embarrassment. But the “British scientist” Osmanagic cites as a source for his “energy” was still an obvious direction for a truly unbiased documentary to take at this point. A little investigation into Harry Oldfield would have shown Osmanagic for what he truly is to the viewers: someone who covets the idea of “being scientific” but rejects the consensus of science when it disagrees with him. This is also evident in the way Osmanagic assembled a large group of authority figures, many of them scientists, as he bamboozled them and sold them the “used car” of archaeology—essentially a hoax and a fraud.

But what about Oldfield? Had the producer been sincere in producing an unbiased documentary, a quick look into Harry Oldfield would have earned some questions and elucidated his qualifications. Oldfield probably isn’t a scientist at all, but—much like Osmanagic—makes a pretense of doing science. No where on Oldfield’s website is any sort of vita listing his credentials or education, but there is much on his work using pseudoscientific methods of electro-crystals and auras.

The most interesting glimpses into real archaeology came when the producers and narrator had the camera operators focus their attention of the work of archaeologists working in Donje Mostre and Okaliste, both neolithic sites just up-river from Visoko. Unfortunately, the producer allows only a taste of what the real archaeologists are doing with Neolithic sites, and makes every attempt to pigeonhole archaeologist Robert Hofmann into saying that a small, terracotta figurine portion is a model of a pyramid. It was “pyramid shaped” in it’s broken form, but very likely the bottom half of a female figure from the waist down. The “pyramid” portion being a dress. One can make out the sash incised along the top and there is considerable broken material at the top. The size (13 cm) is consistent with a portable figure of a goddess, but also of the base of a small offering dish or vessel, the rest of which is detached from the base.

However, when you have a conclusion (that a hill is actually a pyramid), then you only look for that data which are supportive.

I give the documentary, Finding the Truth, two stars. One for production value. And one for pretty scenery. I offer thanks to Ma Ida for the gift card.