A heated debate has erupted among scientists about the Gunung Padang pyramid
Experts are attacking the claim that the structure found in Indonesia is the “oldest building in the world.” The sensational report that the Indonesian site of Gunung Padang is 25 thousand years old is rejected by archaeologists around the world.
It was one of the most sensational scientific stories of 2023, writes The Observer. Last month, researchers said the site of Gunung Padang in West Java, Indonesia, is the oldest pyramid in the world and could be more than 25,000 years old.
Such antiquity would be unprecedented. Stonehenge and Egypt's oldest main pyramids are only a few thousand years old, while the previous record holder, the Gobekli Tepe stone monuments in Turkey, is believed to be around 11,000 years old.
But Gunung Padang may be more than twice as old older than these ancient megaliths, the authors say in an article in Archaeological Prospection. “Evidence from Gunung Padang suggests that advanced construction techniques already existed when agriculture may not have been invented yet”” they insist.
The claim made headlines around the world but has since sparked a fierce response from many archaeologists, who say none of the evidence presented by the team justifies their conclusions about Gunung Padang's unprecedented antiquity. They claim that the settlement there was probably built only 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.
“The data presented in this article does not support its final conclusion that the settlement is unusually ancient. And yet this is what made the headlines, – says Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University. – I am very surprised that this article was published the way it is.”
This outcry has since forced the editors of the journal Archaeological Prospection to launch an investigation. “The investigation… is intended to address concerns raised by third parties regarding the scientific content of our article. We are actively engaged in solving these problems”, – the main author of the article admitted last week — geologist Professor Danny Hillman Natawidjaja from the Indonesian National Agency for Research and Innovation.
Controversy erupted after it emerged that the article had been read by controversial British writer Graham Hancock. He argues that a once complex ancient culture, later destroyed by a cosmic incident, brought science, technology, agriculture and monumental architecture to the primitive people who inhabited the world after the last Ice Age. Gunung Padang could be an example of their work, he suggested in his Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse.
Most scientists ridicule these ideas. “He refers to myths, fanciful and often incorrect interpretations of archaeological sites,”, – said geologist Marc Defant in one review of his program. Or, as Bill Farley, an archaeologist at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, puts it: “The theory that a group of ancient sages taught us everything we know simplifies history to a primitive level, and also denies the right of indigenous people to claim that they developed their own ancient culture and sophisticated crafts.
Natawidjaja told The Observer last week that he considered Hancock's ideas a «reasonable working hypothesis.»
Nestled among banana palms and tea plantations, nearly 3,000 feet above sea level and 75 miles south of Jakarta, Gunung Padang consists of a series of rock terraces perched atop an extinct volcano. Pottery fragments suggest the site is several thousand years old.
However, Natawidjaja and his team say their use of ground penetrating radar shows that there are several deeper man-made layers beneath the main building, with the lowest – solidified lava core – shows signs that it has been “carefully sculpted”.
The team reports that soil samples recovered from material drilled into a mound deep below the excavation site were dated to be between 27,000 and 16,000 years old, with later additions believed to be around 8,000 years old. The team concludes that Gunung Padang has clear evidence that its construction can be traced back 25,000 years or more, to a time when the planet was still in the last ice age.
But Dibble and others refuted this claim. They point out that Natawidjaja and his team provide no evidence that the buried material was made by humans. They say it may be more than 20,000 years old, but it was likely of natural origin as there is no evidence of human presence in the soil – such as bone fragments or artifacts.
“If you went to the Palace of Westminster, sunk a core seven meters into the ground and took a soil sample, you could date it back to 40,000 years old, “ Dibble said. – But this does not mean that the palace was built 40,000 years ago by ancient people. It just means there's carbon there that's 40,000 years old. It's surprising that this article was published.
Natawidjaja defended his team's work. “The observations that form the cornerstone of our research are supported by careful impact analysis, trench wall excavation, core drilling studies, and comprehensive geophysical surveys, “ he told The Observer last week.
This version has not been accepted by other researchers. “This statement suggests a huge leap from the data they have, which is intriguing at best, to the huge conclusion of a pyramid buried deep underground, “ notes Farley. – This is really, really weak and I think it's very reasonable that this article is being investigated. It was not worthy of publication, and it would not shock me if it was ultimately abandoned.