A recently published paper has presented a remarkable claim that a structure in Indonesia is the oldest pyramid in the world, but these findings are now the subject of criticism from a number of archaeologists, with an investigation being launched by the journal it is published in due to all the conjecture thrown around.
The journal in question is "Archaeological Prospection," where the paper was published last Oct. 20. Its primary claim is that the pyramid structure found at the foot of the prehistoric site of Gunung Padang, located in West Java, Indonesia, might actually have been built over 27,000 years ago.
Historic Claims Made by Indonesian Researchers
With such a claim, the Indonesian pyramid will be older than the colossal Egyptian Pyramid of Djoser which is dated around 4,600 years old. This would also mean that it far surpasses the oldest discovered prehistoric monument in Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, believed to have been constructed by ancient stone masons 11,000 years back.
In a statement to Nature, the co-author of the paper, Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the National Research Innovation Agency in Bandung, said that the discovered pyramid "has become a symbol of advanced civilization," for the reason that it is not easy to build such a structure as it requires significant "masonry skills."
However, archaeologists like Flint Dibble, from Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, have voiced their skepticism over the discovery, saying in a statement of his own, "I'm surprised [the paper] was published as is." He added that although the data looks "legitimate," the conclusions put forward by the researchers about the site and its proposed dating are not as robust.
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Debates Surrounding the Findings at the Gunung Padang Site
From 2011 to 2014, Natawidjaja and his colleagues investigated the site using a number of tests that involved ground-penetrating techniques wherein they identified an additional four layers that they deduced were part of a separate multi-stage construction comprising an innermost layer "meticulously sculpted" using hardened lava.
According to the paper, succeeding layers made from rocks were "arranged like bricks" atop the oldest layer. Using the extracted soil sandwiched between the rocks, the researchers carbon-dated the layers in order to determine their ages and subsequently concluded that the oldest part of the construction occurred around 27,000 and 16,000 years ago.
However, Dibble pushes back on the notion that the buried rock layers were man-made structures because the evidence that supports it isn't clear, instead, he proposes that these structures were the result of natural rock movements and weathering that occurred over long stretches of time.
"Material rolling down a hill is going to, on average, orient itself," Dibble added.
For Natawidjaja, the rocks were just too big and heavy to have rolled on their own, with some of them weighing up to "300 kilograms," not to mention the "neat arrangement" it was found to be in. Another finding that supposedly supports Natawidjaja and his colleagues' claims is the discovery of a "geometrically pointed stone."
Dibble rejects this conclusion, saying that there's no hard evidence of "man-made work" or anything of that nature to support the claims Natawidjaja and his fellow researchers are making.
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