Flatirons ≠ pyramids, but they're still cool

I've noticed a few stories recently about Sam Osmanagich, a Bosnian archaeology enthusiast who claims to have discovered several 12,000-year-old 'pyramids' in the Balkans. The whole 'pyramid' saga mainly concerns a case of mistaken identity - the pyramids are just hills - and Indiana-Jones-style archaeology (by which I mean not very methodical, scientific or objective) on Osmanagich's part, and you can read more about it at the links below:

National Geographic: Pyramid in Bosnia - Huge Hoax or Colossal Find?
Smithsonian Magazine: The Mystery of Bosnia's Ancient Pyramids

They're really not hoaxes or mysteries, though - just badly misidentified. I minored in archaeology in college, and it really makes me cringe to see something so pseudo-scientific be accepted by so many people, even becoming a point of national pride in Bosnia. Archaeology has become a very scientific process, and properly-conducted archaeological digs are just as methodical as anything we do as geologists. Digging holes in a hillside, finding layered sandstones and conglomerates and then declaring that they're poured concrete mostly because they look like concrete is really crappy science. (There are also a lot of archaeologists who are unhappy about the whole situation because the 'pyramid' digs could potentially destroy a lot of genuine archaeological sites, which that area of the Balkans apparently has in abundance.)

Anyway, the situation is a great big mess. But what I found really interesting in the Smithsonian article was the (much more plausible) geologic explanation for the pyramids. Here's what the article says:

Visoko lies near the southern end of a valley that runs from Sarajevo to Zenica. The valley has been quarried for centuries and its geological history is well understood. It was formed some ten million years ago as the mountains of Central Bosnia were pushing skyward and was soon flooded, forming a lake 40 miles long. As the mountains continued to rise over the next few million years, sediments washed into the lake and settled on the bottom in layers. If you dig in the valley today, you can expect to find alternating layers of various thickness, from gossamer-thin clay sediments (deposited in quiet times) to plates of sandstones or thick layers of conglomerates (sedimentary rocks deposited when raging rivers dumped heavy debris into the lake). Subsequent tectonic activity buckled sections of lakebed, creating angular hills, and shattered rock layers, leaving fractured plates of sandstone and chunky blocks of conglomerate. 

In early 2006 Osmanagich asked a team of geologists from the nearby University of Tuzla to analyze core samples at Visocica. They found that his pyramid was composed of the same matter as other mountains in the area: alternating layers of conglomerate, clay and sandstone.
Nonetheless, Osmanagich put scores of laborers to work digging on the hills. It was just as the geologists had predicted: the excavations revealed layers of fractured conglomerate at Visocica, while those at Pljesevica uncovered cracked sandstone plates separated by layers of silt and clay. "What he's found isn't even unusual or spectacular from the geological point of view," says geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, who spent ten days at Visoko that summer. "It's completely straightforward and mundane." 

"The landform [Osmanagich] is calling a pyramid is actually quite common," agrees Paul Heinrich, an archaeological geologist at Louisiana State University. "They're called ‘flatirons' in the United States and you see a lot of them out West." He adds that there are "hundreds around the world," including the "Russian Twin Pyramids" in Vladivostok. [From pages 2-3 of the article]

Well, if you're trying to draw attention to the fact that someone's mistaking a geological formation for a man-made structure, I guess saying it isn't "unusual or spectacular from the geological point of view" is a good way to do it. But I think that flatirons are still pretty neat, even if they're made out of conglomerate, which as a volcanologist I will have to admit is not on my 'most exciting rock' list.

I've seen a few good examples of flatirons in my time out West, and I'm always impressed by the forces it took to move all that rock around. Here are some novaculite flatirons from the Big Bend, Texas region:

A great Michael Collier photo of the flatirons at Waterpocket Fold in Utah, which is part of Capitol Reef National Park:

Copyright (C) Michael Collier; hosted on the AGI Earth Science World Image Bank

(Michael Collier is an amazing photographer and a great person; I was lucky enough to meet him while I was working at AGI. I dare you not to buy a book of his photos once you've seen a few.)

And probably the most famous US flatirons, the Flatiron range just outside of Boulder, Colorado:

From Wikipedia

It's not hard to see how one of these things could get covered over with soil and vegetation and look like it was man-made. But pure observation that isn't backed up by data will give you bad results every time, and flat, triangular rock formations do not a pyramid make. It's really too bad that so many people in Bosnia are getting excited about their flatirons because they think they're remnants of an ancient civilization, and not because they're a neat geological formation that tells us about the landscape evolution of that part of the Balkans. But we can't all be geologists, I guess...

Hot, gooey fillings

My least favorite geological misconception would have to be one that I come across a lot as an aspiring volcanologist: The Earth's mantle is a molten sea of liquid, and the crust "floats" on it.

Now, I suppose this is a perfectly good way to provide a simple explanation to young children who are too young to understand the rheology of rock in the mantle, or the fact that it can flow and not be a liquid. (I certainly believed it when I was little. Mind you, this was pre-elementary school and all I had to go on was "The Magic School Bus Inside The Earth.")

But things are not so simple! (Insert totally fake tone of wonder and awe here.) While it would be a whole lot easier to call the crust solid and the mantle molten and leave it at that, it isn't accurate. Better to divide the Earth up by the way things actually are (and behave) - using the lithosphere and asthenosphere (or aesthenosphere, which I prefer but my spell-checker doesn't) and their associated subdivisions. The asthenosphere being, of course, the fun part, where rock actually deforms plastically - in short, flows - and where only a few percent of the material is actually molten.

Gasp! You mean what my kindergarten teacher taught me (and what a lot of people I come across seem to believe) is a lie? I was being deliberately decieved? All those layered models of the earth that are so diligently trotted out and explained in three (or occasionally, if we separate the core into an inner and outer core, four) layers are totally wrong?

Well, yes and no. I wasn't being taught the correct structure of the Earth (at least right off). But when I think about how difficult it is to explain the concept of rock (or a solid) that flows to your average elementary-age child, I suppose I can't get too upset. And since few people seem to get much instruction in Earth science beyond their elementary or middle school years, it's easy to see why they cling to the "simple" explanation of the Earth's structure. Unfortunately, unless they take an upper-level course in Earth science in high school or college, there's not much opportunity to correct this. TV shows, especially on the Discovery and Science channels and the like, seem to be taking a good stab at it, but again, it's a limited audience - and those shows are totally overwhelmed by all the other stuff that's on the air nowadays.

Anyway, maybe it's easier to just say that the mantle is molten rock and leave it at that, but I would appreciate it if the science teachers of the world (those that don't already do this, that is) would take a stab at explaining that while the mantle is actually solid, the heat and pressure involved at that depth make it behave like a liquid. Much as I like having the opportunity to impart a little geologic knowledge to the people I meet, this particular misconception isn't particularly difficult to head off before it becomes permanently implanted in someone's understanding of the planet they live on.

Of course, this means the teachers had better be prepared with some material to help answer the inevitable "Why?" and "What do you mean, a solid can flow?" questions, but there's nothing wrong with a healthy spirit of inquiry and they might even start some bright young minds on the path to a career in the geosciences.

As for pie and the Earth Sciences...well, I have the perfect example.

As you might have read in an earlier post, my first real experience with geology was on a 3 1/2 week-long field course to the Colorado Plateau. We started out in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas and made our way up through New Mexico. On our way into Arizona, about 80 miles West of Socorro, NM on Highway 60, we came across a wonderful place:

Pie Town, New Mexico!

Yes, by golly, there's actually a Pie Town. And yes, they sell pie - at The Daily Pie Cafe. And they tell you what kind of pie they have that day with...you guessed it, a "Pie Chart".

I had Spiced Apple, and it was delicious. An experience not to be missed.