A claim of epic proportions met its match in peer review, sending archaeologists back to square one.
A published study claiming the Indonesian pyramid Gunung Padang was crafted by humans 27,000 years ago was retracted by publishers.
The study’s authors fight the retraction, but the archeological community backs it.
Radiocarbon dating has proved the key sticking point.
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.
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.
It’s hard to unequivocally prove that gunung padang was man-made at this point, but the refutations of this article specifically are at least as shaky.
At least the archaeologists have soil samples.
It doesn’t look like anybody is refuting that the soil samples are that old, the argument against the soil samples are that rocks might have rolled downhill…to the top of this mountain…and corrupted the soil evidence.
The other main argument is that there’s no evidence people lived there before.
But gobleki tepe is definitely man-made, ignored for decades after its discovery, and already confirmed to be at least 12,000 years old before half of its excavation has been completed.
We definitely haven’t discovered all the man-made megalithic sites.
Frickin Angkor wat went “undiscovered” for centuries until a white guy finally admitted there was an ancient palace sitting right outside siam reap Cambodia that no one believed the locals about.
rolled downhill…to the top of
You surely meant from the top of or to the bottom of.
They did not.
The “debunker” here claims that because “rocks can roll down hills to make them appear planned”, all soil sample dates they’ve taken from the top to bottom of a very tall hill must be incorrect.
That’s why i asked, i wasn’t sure i was getting it.
Thanks
The fact that the authors are crying “censorship!” but don’t address the criticism tells me all I need to know.
