A Controversial Pyramid Isn’t Actually 27,000 Years Old—and Now, the Mystery Deepens ( www.popularmechanics.com )

The fight over the science of an ancient Indonesian landmark has taken another turn in the archeological community—a controversial October 2023 study claiming that Gunung Padang is a pyramid created by humans 27,000 years ago was recently fully retracted from Wiley, the publishers of the journal Archaeological Prospection.

On one side, a robust range of leading archeologists seem perplexed on how the study ever made it past peer review and into print in the first place. On the other side, the team of authors call the retraction “unjust” and based on “unfounded claims raised by third parties who hold differing opinions and disbelieve in the evidence, analysis, and conclusions.”

Let’s go back to the science.

The Gunung Padang site in West Java, Indonesia, includes a raised earth site. The paper’s authors—led by Danny Natawidjaja—claim that it is the remnants of a prehistoric pyramid from up to 27,000 years ago, far surpassing the oldest known pyramid in the world at a mere 4,700 years old. The team based much of their findings on radiocarbon dating from core drilling. But the retraction says that the dating has no tie to human interaction, especially in a place not believed to have been inhabited at the time the paper’s authors say humans were hand-forming the pyramid.

It all adds up to an article with a “major error,” the publishers write in the retraction. “This error,” they say, “which was not identified during peer review, is that the radiocarbon dating was applied to soil samples that were not associated with any artifacts or features that could be readily interpreted as anthropogenic or ‘man-made.’ Therefore, the interpretation that the site is an ancient pyramid built 9,000 or more years ago is incorrect, and the article must be retracted.”

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Add in the fact that there’s been no evidence of an advanced civilization at that site since the last ice age. While the soil samples may well be from 27,000 years ago, without the telltale signs of human activity—think charcoal or bone fragments—those skeptical of the study say there’s no reason to believe there was any sort of large settlement in the area during that time.

Natawidjaja and his team aren’t budging. They claim the soil samples “have been unequivocally established as man-made constructions” that feature three distinct phases of construction. They claim the shapes, composition, and arrangement of the stone bolsters the argument.

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To complicate the skirmish a bit more, politics comes into play. The Gunung Padang hilltop site is a travel destination for those practicing Islamic and Hindu rituals, and more than a decade ago—according to The New York Times—the Indonesian government was funding the narrative that the site was an ancient pyramid. Graham Hancock interviewed Natawidjaja during a Netflix documentary, Ancient Apocalypse, that aired in 2022, and he promoted the site then as an ancient pyramid.

Hancock now supports Natawidjaja and denounced the retraction, but the Society for American Archaeology wrote an open letter arguing that Hancock’s documentary “devalues the archaeological profession on the basis of false claims and disinformation.”

The fight over Gunung Padang seemingly predates the controversial study.

Camps on both sides feel strongly about their position, and the middle ground of archeologists simply don’t believe the study’s evidence supports the conclusions. “It was unfortunate that the paper had to get to this stage,” Noel Tan, a Bangkok archaeologist who had concerns about the study, told The New York Times. “But it was better to be retracted than to have nothing said about it at all.”