SLOVENIA

In Western Slovenia one of the oldest paleolithic instruments in the world was found recently: 

a 43.000 year old bone flute. The real challenge for the archaeology profession is how to explain the find that, on the basis of all the evidence, originates from a time (Middle Palaeolithic) at which neither the technology of working bones nor the necessary artistic (symbolic) behaviour are supposed to have been developed, although weak signals exist for both, the number of which is gradually increasing with new finds.

  Gabriela Lukacs visited another unexplained archaeological site in Slovenia, a pyramid shaped hill in Maribor.

In Maribor, northern Slovenia close to the Austrian border, a hill named Piramida (elevation 386m, height from base to top appr.80m) overlooks the city and has once served as lookout post for the defence of the city. Two more hills, called Kalvarija and Mesti Vrh, of similar height and aligned with Piramida stand next to it.

This 16th century sketch by G.M.Vischer shows the Middle Age town of Marburg surrounded by town walls and a water ditch. On top of the hill to the left sits the Marchpurch castle which gave the name to the town. 7 steep hills arise and surround the city. Castle and town were connected by an underground tunnel, which still exists and is used today as wine cellars. The largest in the world, 2km can be visited starting in the city centre.

This is Piramida hill today with its small white chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. What looks like terraces is now the ascending footpath. The vineyards are cultivated in vertical rows (from bottom to top), not horizontally as terraces. This flank of the hill is facing south. The north side is the access via a winding road.

There is a plateau on top 48x46m which serves now as platform for the little chapel. In Middle Ages there stood the Marchpurch castle, in  Roman times a fortress and before that an Illyrian structure. And what was there before that time ? Official history stops here. We don't know nothing about Proto-Illyrian people. Archaeological excavations in 1985 prooved that all the above mentioned strongholds have been built on an ancient cultural site.

The flanks of Piramida hill point to the cardinal directions:north/south and east/west. The hill rises all of a sudden out of the plain terrain (as can be seen on the sketch by G.M.Vischer above). The 360° view from the plateau is gorgeous and thus made the hill a perfect lookout post. 

The neighbouring hill, Mesti Vrh, is lower than Piramida and looks more like a conical burial mound. It is aligned with Piramida to the left and Kalvarij to the right.