As we enter Visoko, dominated by a river and centuries-old stone mosques, we see the first signs of pyramid fever. Souvenir shops are hawking pyramid plates, pyramid plaques, pyramid cigarette lighters, pyramid T-shirts, pyramid key chains, pyramid DVDs, and pyramid belts. Tourist parking lots have sprung up at every bend, and horse-and-buggy drivers shuttle Bosnian families toward what roadside signs identify as the Pyramid of the Moon. Pushing up a footpath, we meet Haris Delibasic, twenty-nine, who is coordinating an excavation. "Every day we are finding new proof of a great civilization," he tells us, showing off a terrace that, he says, formed part of an ancient stairway which extended to the summit. I gaze at cracked sheets of rock. "This is something so important," he says. "It makes us proud."

Skepticism doesn't go down well here—and why should it? My questions to souvenir sellers and diggers evoke hostile reactions, as if they feel I am determined to spoil the party. Slatina, who thinks the pyramids are a hoax, calls this will to believe a national detachment from reality, a yearning for transcendence born of years of trauma and death. Or maybe it's just a naked attempt to cash in on a windfall. Whatever the case, Borovac, Sarajevo's mayor, is one of the pyramids' biggest boosters. "There have been too many dark issues concerning Bosnia," she tells me. "This is something optimistic, and there is a huge explosion of creative energy." That seems exactly the point. Delusion or not, the pyramids mark a fundamental change in the way that Bosnians see themselves and their country. After so many years of brutalization, Osmanagic's discovery may in fact be the most promising evidence of Sarajevo's recovery.