by bcaulfield on 11/7/23, 6:59 PM with 40 comments
by driggs on 11/7/23, 8:46 PM
The authors don't mention having done any core samples away from the pyramid as a control group.
It seems like they have, at best, proved that Gunung Padang contains old soil, without proving anything about the age of the pyramid itself.
by simbolit on 11/7/23, 8:52 PM
"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"
by Lazare on 11/7/23, 11:22 PM
You can't carbon date human activity, 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 around 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.
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 all you've discovered.
Guess which approach to carbon dating was followed here?
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.
by wolverine876 on 11/7/23, 9:34 PM
> 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.
> 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.
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-evidence-strongly-indonesia-gu...
by dharmab on 11/7/23, 8:44 PM
by ZeroGravitas on 11/8/23, 9:29 AM
https://youtu.be/zU-wQVAqQnk?si=WNb0Ht0Q647WfYub
tl;dw The lead investigator who published this new paper has books about Indonesia being Atlantis.
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.
by dougmwne on 11/7/23, 8:41 PM
by ZunarJ5 on 11/7/23, 8:45 PM
by ilrwbwrkhv on 11/7/23, 8:38 PM
wow if this is true, this is truly revolutionary.
by civilitty on 11/7/23, 10:04 PM
by Brajeshwar on 11/8/23, 3:58 AM
by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 11/7/23, 8:39 PM
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.
by lawlessone on 11/7/23, 8:21 PM
by Hikikomori on 11/7/23, 9:45 PM
by rabbits_2002 on 11/10/23, 12:18 PM