Last month, a study published in Archaeological Prospection garnered a lot of media attention (including from IFLScience) for its extraordinary claim that a mountain in Indonesia is actually the world's oldest pyramid built by ancient humans. But reactions from archaeologists since have raised skepticism about its bold conclusions.
According to the paper, the Gunung Padang – which translates to “Mountain of Enlightenment” – was not formed naturally but "meticulously sculpted" into its current shape between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago. If this were true, it would be considerably older than the world's oldest pyramids, with the team writing that it “suggests that advanced construction practices were already present when agriculture had, perhaps, not yet been invented.”
Among other bold claims was that there are "hidden cavities or chambers" at the site, and that the site itself appeared to have been buried several times “possibly to conceal its true identity for preservation purposes”.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and other archaeologists are far from convinced that the team has provided this, especially given how it would rewrite the history of human development. Lutfi Yondri, an archaeologist at BRIN in Bandung, Indonesia, told Nature that his work showed people in the area lived in caves between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago, and left no evidence of having the “remarkable masonry capabilities” supposedly employed by people of the area thousands of years before them to build the "pyramid". READ MORE...
