There is a dispute over whether certain features are really man made or just the result of natural processes that produce weird looking, unusually regular rocks. There are also allegations that the government is pushing the older date as a "national pride" thing. The oldest date comes from a single team that may not have published all their data.
If the older features are really human made, it would be unprecedented evidence of an otherwise undocumented ancient civilization. If the skeptics are correct, natural geologic processes are being misinterpreted as evidence of ancient construction that human structures were built on top of much later.
So this is a great example of why people need to engage with data critically especially if it makes extraordinary claims. First and foremost, both the study and the article justify calling this the “oldest pyramid” by combining the oldest date that their study alleges there was human activity (carving the outer surface of a naturally-formed dead volcano 25,000-14,000 ya ) with their own description of the more recent layers of construction (i.e. “pyramid”). This is confused and-plainly speaking- idiotic at best and intentionally manipulative at worst. It’s like building a casino on top of the foundations of a prehistoric hut on the Salisbury plain then calling it the world’s oldest casino.
From the acknowledgments of the paper: Hopefully the editors of this journal are getting ridiculed in their field.
From the acknowledgments of the paper:
We acknowledge Mr Graham Hancock for kindly proofreading the manuscript and his team for shedding light on Gunung Padang in Netflix's Ancient Apocalypse.
Hopefully the editors of this journal are getting ridiculed in their field.
The person behind this paper (Natawidjaja) is also someone who has long believed Indonesia to be the true site of Atlantis and written books on that topic. Of course, when Graham Hancock...
The person behind this paper (Natawidjaja) is also someone who has long believed Indonesia to be the true site of Atlantis and written books on that topic. Of course, when Graham Hancock introduced him on Ancient Apocalypse he left that out.
If anyone cares about potholer54's videos (geologist & journalist turned youtube debunker), he's got a video on Hancock's coverage of Gunung Padang that talks a bit about Natawidjaja. If he's too harsh for your tastes miniminuteman (archeology youtuber) covers the Hancock series a bit less harshly but doesn't mention Natawidjaja. It is also a bit less detailed than potholer's, but covers the entire series.
I gotta say, this is cool news, but not exactly shocking. It's been well-established that our biological mental capacity has been roughly the same for hundreds of thousands of years. It would make...
I gotta say, this is cool news, but not exactly shocking.
It's been well-established that our biological mental capacity has been roughly the same for hundreds of thousands of years. It would make sense that masonry techniques were useful enough while simple enough to focus on passing down via word of mouth. Much how there were probably fairly elaborate wooden and rope tools very early, but we have virtually no way of tangibly proving the existence of because their lack of durability.
I think the primary limiting factor was discovery of new teqniques, and I'm betting mud+sticks evolved quickly to mud+stones, then merely refining mud through trial and error until it was more like mortar.
What makes you think rocks come after sticks? Piling rocks up is a really obvious method of construction. (it's called dry-stone masonry and is still in widespread usage today, e.g. for paddock...
I think the primary limiting factor was discovery of new teqniques, and I'm betting mud+sticks evolved quickly to mud+stones, then merely refining mud through trial and error until it was more like mortar.
What makes you think rocks come after sticks? Piling rocks up is a really obvious method of construction. (it's called dry-stone masonry and is still in widespread usage today, e.g. for paddock walls). In fact, perhaps you'd start with piling rocks and then someone would invent the idea of putting mud into the gaps. Plenty of areas don't even have many sticks around for use in construction - anyone in Mongolia, for instance, would much prefer to use the nearly-infinite surrounding rocks, instead of dipping into a rather limited supply of firewood.
Incan masonry famously doesn't have any mortar; the stones are all just chiseled to be flush with their adjacent 'brick'.
The reception in /r/archeology and /r/history was dim:
From the acknowledgments of the paper:
Hopefully the editors of this journal are getting ridiculed in their field.
The person behind this paper (Natawidjaja) is also someone who has long believed Indonesia to be the true site of Atlantis and written books on that topic. Of course, when Graham Hancock introduced him on Ancient Apocalypse he left that out.
If anyone cares about potholer54's videos (geologist & journalist turned youtube debunker), he's got a video on Hancock's coverage of Gunung Padang that talks a bit about Natawidjaja. If he's too harsh for your tastes miniminuteman (archeology youtuber) covers the Hancock series a bit less harshly but doesn't mention Natawidjaja. It is also a bit less detailed than potholer's, but covers the entire series.
I gotta say, this is cool news, but not exactly shocking.
It's been well-established that our biological mental capacity has been roughly the same for hundreds of thousands of years. It would make sense that masonry techniques were useful enough while simple enough to focus on passing down via word of mouth. Much how there were probably fairly elaborate wooden and rope tools very early, but we have virtually no way of tangibly proving the existence of because their lack of durability.
I think the primary limiting factor was discovery of new teqniques, and I'm betting mud+sticks evolved quickly to mud+stones, then merely refining mud through trial and error until it was more like mortar.
What makes you think rocks come after sticks? Piling rocks up is a really obvious method of construction. (it's called dry-stone masonry and is still in widespread usage today, e.g. for paddock walls). In fact, perhaps you'd start with piling rocks and then someone would invent the idea of putting mud into the gaps. Plenty of areas don't even have many sticks around for use in construction - anyone in Mongolia, for instance, would much prefer to use the nearly-infinite surrounding rocks, instead of dipping into a rather limited supply of firewood.
Incan masonry famously doesn't have any mortar; the stones are all just chiseled to be flush with their adjacent 'brick'.