It looks like all 7 of their C14 dated samples were simply "organic soil", no artifacts or charcoal. If you're going to build a pyramid by piling soil and rocks, then the soil will be older than the pyramid.<p>The authors don't mention having done any core samples <i>away</i> from the pyramid as a control group.<p>It seems like they have, at best, proved that Gunung Padang contains old soil, without proving anything about the age of the pyramid itself.
From Wikipedia ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang</a> ):<p>"Thirty-four Indonesian scientists signed a petition questioning the motives and methods of the Hilman-Arif team. Archaeologist Víctor Pérez described Natawidjaja's conclusions as pseudoarchaeology. (...) they 'found' something, carbon-dated it, then it looks like they created a civilisation around the period to explain their finding"
For anyone curious what's going on here:<p>You can't carbon date <i>human activity</i>, you can carbon date the point that organic material stopped growing. If you carbon date some partially burned wood found in the remains of a fireplace, then you can be pretty confident the fireplace was built <i>around</i> the time the tree the wood came from was cut down. And the better you can prove that what you found was actually a fireplace and that the sample actually came from inside it, the more confident you can be that the date you got relates to human activity.<p>If you just dig a hole in the ground, find some organic material, and carbon date it, you can be pretty confident that there were plants growing in the area in the past, but that's <i>all</i> you've discovered.<p>Guess which approach to carbon dating was followed here?<p>There's basically zero evidence presented that the pyramid was constructed 16k years ago, but they have made a strong case that there were plants growing in Indonesia 16k years ago. ...not that this was ever in any doubt, mind you.
The Phys.org article paints a much more clear picture:<p>> More specifically, the researchers found evidence of several efforts that together over time, added up to a completed structure. The first consisted of sculpted lava—where builders had carved shapes onto the top of a small, dead volcano. Then, several thousand years later, sometime between 7900 to 6100 BCE, another group added a layer of bricks and rock columns. Some unknown time later, another group added a dirt layer to part of the hill, covering some of the earlier work. Then sometime between 2000 and 1100 BCE yet another group added more top soil, stone terracing, and other elements.<p>> The research team has also found some evidence suggesting there might be some hollow parts inside the structure, suggesting possible hidden chambers. They plan to drill down to them and then lower a camera to see what might be in these areas.<p><a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-11-evidence-strongly-indonesia-gunung-padang.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://phys.org/news/2023-11-evidence-strongly-indonesia-gu...</a>
Better article with link to paper: <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-11-evidence-strongly-indonesia-gunung-padang.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://phys.org/news/2023-11-evidence-strongly-indonesia-gu...</a>
A video delving into the background on this when it featured in episode 1 of Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/zU-wQVAqQnk?si=WNb0Ht0Q647WfYub" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/zU-wQVAqQnk?si=WNb0Ht0Q647WfYub</a><p>tl;dw The lead investigator who published this new paper has books about Indonesia being Atlantis.<p>Apart from the bleating from Hancock about how mainstream archeologists are all useless, and the fake reality show drama, the drone visuals of the sites in the Netflix show are nice.
The dating of this site is so strange. Why would there be continuous pyramid building at this site for 25k years? How could a culture maintain some kind of cohesive activity over such a long time?
Wiki is sceptical: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang</a>
> they say that the evidence from Gunung Padang indicates that advanced construction techniques existed before agriculture was adopted.<p>wow if this is true, this is truly revolutionary.
For those interested in watching a documentary about the topic, Netflix has it at <a href="https://www.netflix.com/in/title/81211003" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.netflix.com/in/title/81211003</a>
This is one of those things that feels like “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”<p>Just going by Bayesian priors, I would say that the chances of the dating being wrong are higher than this pyramid actually having been constructed as a masonry pyramid in 25,000 BCE.
It's going to rewrite every pyramid conspiracy theory. Someone is probably already recording a video about how stone age people didn't have the technology to stack stones.