This Man Says He's A Time Traveler
Even before Alexander the Great, Macedonia evoked power from which to steer clear. When the ancient Greeks held their
Olympic Games they forbade the participation of the mountainous neighbor to the north because the hunter-warriors there were too strong, too fast, too good — favored by the geographic and genetic equivalent of steroids. It was believed the Macedonians were descendants of Zeus, after all. When Alexander decided to enter the Olympics, he proved the dread justifiable: he won. Then again, he was the emperor.
Alexander had proven himself a brilliant general and decisive conqueror even before his father, Phillip II of Macedon, died. Then, between 336 and 323 B.C., the young leader embarked on a mission to conquer and unite the known world, becoming what some have called the first true global leader — bringing classic Greek (and Macedonian) culture as far north as the Danube, east to India, south to the Nile. The last Egyptian pharoahs were Macedonian, the Ptolemaic Dynasty, descendants of Alexander's general Ptolemy Soter.
After Alexander died, at the seasoned age of 32, Macedonia became the Catena Mundi, the link between the worlds, the mystic cultural crossroads, the nexus of epochs. Over the following millennia almost everyone passed across this junction, most of them to put the stamp of conquest on it — the Romans, the Huns, the Goths, the Normans, the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, the Ottomans, the Serbs, and of course the Germans during World War II.
After the war, the core of this country was assimilated into Yugoslavia as its southernmost province, and for 47 years it endured the ignominy of anonymity. But in 1991 the nationalistic spirit reasserted itself, and bloodlessly it re-created a nation, the Republic of Macedonia.
Through it all a certain character has persevered... a stolid grit, a rock-like steadfastness and resolve that transcends time and empires... while at the same time assimilating the more sapid traits of conquerors and passers-through, creating a sort of mixed salad, Makedonska salata of temperament and spirit.
In the humus of history
Its layered history means Macedonia is fecund with archaeology. It seems you can send a spade into the earth practically anywhere and turn up an antique coin, a Neolithic shard, a helmet, even a golden glove thousands of years old. There's a shadow industry of "diggers" who skulk about with scoops and shovels, and trade their finds on the black market, sometimes for millions of denars.
In the southwestern quadrant of the country we find Lake Ohrid, the deepest lake in Europe. The vacation city on its shores may be the oldest continuously habited settlement in Europe, dating back some 7,000 years, and its archaeological riches are barely tapped. Here we meet the foremost archaeologist in Macedonia, Pasko Kuzman. He has been excavating 3,000-year-old submerged sites in Lake Ohrid, and the first fortress of King Philip II, Alexander's father, on its shores.
Though his academic credentials are impressive, my first response is that he's a carbon dated copy of Anthony Hopkins as the lost anthropologist in the film Instinct. There's a permanent supernal glow to his face, like a religious icon — his long white hair is airborne, chest hairs pop around his Neolithic cutting-stone pendant. He's stray-dog restless, like his hero Alexander, whom he admires as a "philosopher in action."
Pasko's signature tools include three weighty watches he wears on his left wrist, what he calls his "time machines." With one he says he travels to the Bronze and Neolithic ages. With another to the future. And with the third, his "archaeological watch" with its special sensors, he makes his finds. "If it beeps twice it is silver; three times and I've struck gold."
Pasko leads us down an alley into a junkyard of rusted tools and stinging nettles. Here he worms down a dark warren, and motions us to stoop and follow. Suddenly we are in a musty, ancient tomb, and by its generous size it appears it was a sepulcher for royalty. Could it have been Alexander's, whose final resting place is still unknown? In the darkness I can still see Pasko's impish eyes dart as he replies, "It is not for me to say."
Regardless, the burial chamber is empty, perhaps the victim of one of the many tomb raiders who steal about this country smuggling antediluvian treasures to overseas buyers.
The mask of Macedonia
After our peregrinations up and down the cobbled streets of Ohrid, Pasko offers to take us to Cabinet Troja, his attic lab up several flights of narrow stairs. As we enter he flips on the fluorescent lights, and there along long tables and shelves are the fruits of his trowel — rows of spear points, shields, arrowheads, swords, necklaces, wine goblets, and patinaed bronze battle helmets. One of these has a wreath and curving ram's horns, similar to the one Alexander wears in depictions on coins and plates. It seems amazing to me that all these treasures are spilled about this loft like a boy's rock collection, and that we're allowed to fondle these artifacts, reaching back and touching the works of hands from over two millennia ago.
Then, with a twinkly beam, Pasko pulls out a silver key. He opens a file cabinet and sets down a container that looks looking like the humidor for some sort of theatrical MacGuffin. We lean over, and he snaps back the lid to reveal his greatest unearthing, the golden mask of Trebenista. Next to it is a golden glove bearing a golden ring, both of which he discovered in 2002 in a tomb here beneath Ohrid.
This is perhaps the most significant modern-day find in Macedonia, and it has made Pasko a bit of a national celebrity. Four other similar masks have been found and spirited across borders, sold in black markets, and are now showcased in museums in Sofia and Belgrade. Pasko keeps this one in a cigar box in his musty loft. He insists I hold the delicate fifth-century B.C. mask, which I almost drop when he remarks it could fetch $18 million on the open market. But he seems none the worried, as though there are troves more where this came from.
Pasko explains the mask was funereal, intended to help the dead communicate with the living. To further clarify, he waxes as precise and elusive as a Basho haiku: "Through the archives of the earth, and the archives of consciousness, Macedonia threads both as legend and reality."
Pasko himself seems threaded in legend and reality, a man who uses the power of the past to understand the future. I can't resist — I have to ask what the future holds for Macedonia.
"Macedonia will never disappear. It is a legendary place that will exist through time. Only when the basic elements of the universe cease to exist, so then will Macedonia."
"What have you learned about the past?"
"Alexander fused the world. He used his power greatly. He enabled the people of
Iraq and
Iran, Palestine and Egypt, India and Pakistan, to live together, to live in abundance. We try to reach this ideal, but we cannot. We can only aspire to understand the world as Alexander. If we have 100 years of peaceful development we will still be far back. But someday, if we use the light of history to look into the future, we will move forward to the past."
Pasko puts the mask of Macedonia back in its box, ushers us through the door, and with a swipe of his hand turns off the lights.
Video link http://www.yahoo.com/s/354688
http://adventures.yahoo.com/b/adventures/adventures7228
Even before Alexander the Great, Macedonia evoked power from which to steer clear. When the ancient Greeks held their
Olympic Games they forbade the participation of the mountainous neighbor to the north because the hunter-warriors there were too strong, too fast, too good — favored by the geographic and genetic equivalent of steroids. It was believed the Macedonians were descendants of Zeus, after all. When Alexander decided to enter the Olympics, he proved the dread justifiable: he won. Then again, he was the emperor.
Alexander had proven himself a brilliant general and decisive conqueror even before his father, Phillip II of Macedon, died. Then, between 336 and 323 B.C., the young leader embarked on a mission to conquer and unite the known world, becoming what some have called the first true global leader — bringing classic Greek (and Macedonian) culture as far north as the Danube, east to India, south to the Nile. The last Egyptian pharoahs were Macedonian, the Ptolemaic Dynasty, descendants of Alexander's general Ptolemy Soter.
After Alexander died, at the seasoned age of 32, Macedonia became the Catena Mundi, the link between the worlds, the mystic cultural crossroads, the nexus of epochs. Over the following millennia almost everyone passed across this junction, most of them to put the stamp of conquest on it — the Romans, the Huns, the Goths, the Normans, the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, the Ottomans, the Serbs, and of course the Germans during World War II.
After the war, the core of this country was assimilated into Yugoslavia as its southernmost province, and for 47 years it endured the ignominy of anonymity. But in 1991 the nationalistic spirit reasserted itself, and bloodlessly it re-created a nation, the Republic of Macedonia.
Through it all a certain character has persevered... a stolid grit, a rock-like steadfastness and resolve that transcends time and empires... while at the same time assimilating the more sapid traits of conquerors and passers-through, creating a sort of mixed salad, Makedonska salata of temperament and spirit.
In the humus of history
Its layered history means Macedonia is fecund with archaeology. It seems you can send a spade into the earth practically anywhere and turn up an antique coin, a Neolithic shard, a helmet, even a golden glove thousands of years old. There's a shadow industry of "diggers" who skulk about with scoops and shovels, and trade their finds on the black market, sometimes for millions of denars.
In the southwestern quadrant of the country we find Lake Ohrid, the deepest lake in Europe. The vacation city on its shores may be the oldest continuously habited settlement in Europe, dating back some 7,000 years, and its archaeological riches are barely tapped. Here we meet the foremost archaeologist in Macedonia, Pasko Kuzman. He has been excavating 3,000-year-old submerged sites in Lake Ohrid, and the first fortress of King Philip II, Alexander's father, on its shores.
Though his academic credentials are impressive, my first response is that he's a carbon dated copy of Anthony Hopkins as the lost anthropologist in the film Instinct. There's a permanent supernal glow to his face, like a religious icon — his long white hair is airborne, chest hairs pop around his Neolithic cutting-stone pendant. He's stray-dog restless, like his hero Alexander, whom he admires as a "philosopher in action."
Pasko's signature tools include three weighty watches he wears on his left wrist, what he calls his "time machines." With one he says he travels to the Bronze and Neolithic ages. With another to the future. And with the third, his "archaeological watch" with its special sensors, he makes his finds. "If it beeps twice it is silver; three times and I've struck gold."
Pasko leads us down an alley into a junkyard of rusted tools and stinging nettles. Here he worms down a dark warren, and motions us to stoop and follow. Suddenly we are in a musty, ancient tomb, and by its generous size it appears it was a sepulcher for royalty. Could it have been Alexander's, whose final resting place is still unknown? In the darkness I can still see Pasko's impish eyes dart as he replies, "It is not for me to say."
Regardless, the burial chamber is empty, perhaps the victim of one of the many tomb raiders who steal about this country smuggling antediluvian treasures to overseas buyers.
The mask of Macedonia
After our peregrinations up and down the cobbled streets of Ohrid, Pasko offers to take us to Cabinet Troja, his attic lab up several flights of narrow stairs. As we enter he flips on the fluorescent lights, and there along long tables and shelves are the fruits of his trowel — rows of spear points, shields, arrowheads, swords, necklaces, wine goblets, and patinaed bronze battle helmets. One of these has a wreath and curving ram's horns, similar to the one Alexander wears in depictions on coins and plates. It seems amazing to me that all these treasures are spilled about this loft like a boy's rock collection, and that we're allowed to fondle these artifacts, reaching back and touching the works of hands from over two millennia ago.
Then, with a twinkly beam, Pasko pulls out a silver key. He opens a file cabinet and sets down a container that looks looking like the humidor for some sort of theatrical MacGuffin. We lean over, and he snaps back the lid to reveal his greatest unearthing, the golden mask of Trebenista. Next to it is a golden glove bearing a golden ring, both of which he discovered in 2002 in a tomb here beneath Ohrid.
This is perhaps the most significant modern-day find in Macedonia, and it has made Pasko a bit of a national celebrity. Four other similar masks have been found and spirited across borders, sold in black markets, and are now showcased in museums in Sofia and Belgrade. Pasko keeps this one in a cigar box in his musty loft. He insists I hold the delicate fifth-century B.C. mask, which I almost drop when he remarks it could fetch $18 million on the open market. But he seems none the worried, as though there are troves more where this came from.
Pasko explains the mask was funereal, intended to help the dead communicate with the living. To further clarify, he waxes as precise and elusive as a Basho haiku: "Through the archives of the earth, and the archives of consciousness, Macedonia threads both as legend and reality."
Pasko himself seems threaded in legend and reality, a man who uses the power of the past to understand the future. I can't resist — I have to ask what the future holds for Macedonia.
"Macedonia will never disappear. It is a legendary place that will exist through time. Only when the basic elements of the universe cease to exist, so then will Macedonia."
"What have you learned about the past?"
"Alexander fused the world. He used his power greatly. He enabled the people of
Iraq and
Iran, Palestine and Egypt, India and Pakistan, to live together, to live in abundance. We try to reach this ideal, but we cannot. We can only aspire to understand the world as Alexander. If we have 100 years of peaceful development we will still be far back. But someday, if we use the light of history to look into the future, we will move forward to the past."
Pasko puts the mask of Macedonia back in its box, ushers us through the door, and with a swipe of his hand turns off the lights.
Video link http://www.yahoo.com/s/354688
http://adventures.yahoo.com/b/adventures/adventures7228
