Junk science. They just scooped up some dirt and did radiocarbon dating. No effort to make sure the sample was in context (e.g. from a layer above construction activity, or a cooking fire or something).
So some dirt in the vicinity of the pyramid is 20k years old. That says absolutely nothing of value.
Is there any way that someone now can deliberately add a verifiable date to an object/structure/etc.?
Something that a million plus years from now would objectively demonstrate the age to a researcher of the future.
Considering the strong tendency to disregard old written historical records people of the future will likely face a similar dilemma attempting to accurately date any ruins of our present day buildings.
Maybe you could engrave the relative positions of some nearby stars onto a plaque or something like that? Ceramic lasts basically forever, right? Maybe you wouldn’t get “Tuesday, Deceduary 110th 2132” level of precision but you could perhaps get something pretty precise with the right choice of stars?
We know what the positions of those stars were back into the ancient past and forwards into the distant future. We can engrave positions corresponding to any date we like onto such an object. It provides no proof of date.
There's no need. All of our biological waste (e.g. wood) will provide reliable carbon dates within the range of ~50k years. Radioisotope ratios in our metals and construction materials can be used to date our inorganic ruins on geologic time scales.
Radioisotope dating doesn't work for stone structures like the one described in this article, because it would date the age of the stone, not the structure. But concrete is poured, and steel forged or reforged at or close to its actual use date. So radioisotope ratios in these materials ought to give a reliable dating mechanism on very long timescales.
Someone could put hermitically sealed cartridges of something that will decay nicely into a high visibility container that's designed to stay permanently built into the structure itself. Future humans could drill through the solid exterior and retrieve samples of the decaying inner material providing definitive means of precisely dating the structure.
Designing it to be used more than once by successive generations would help keep future history more accurate than ancient history.
Why bother? Radiocarbon dating is only good up to about 50k years. Longer than that and you would use longer lived radioisotopes which are in the construction materials anyway.
The article specifically says that they "drilled down into the hill and collected core samples that allowed them to use radiocarbon dating techniques to learn the ages of the layers that make up the hill."
They didn't randomly pickup dirt from the base of the pyramid and date it as you seem to be implying, they used the standard method of taking core samples at various depths to find the dates of the various layers of the pyramid. Based on that they made the claim.
The radiocarbon date of the material used in the construction of the hill doesn’t change when it is pushed around to make a hill. That dirt was already old.
I would advise reading the study as it provides much more information, including stratigraphic profiles of 4 different layers, maps/images of the trenches, borehole data, and various remote sensing surveys.
Unit 1 (surface): 2,000-1000BC
Unit 2 : 6,000-5000 BC
Unit 3: 24,000-14,000BC
Unit 4: NO data
Unit 2 is clearly artificial and represents a construction layer. It has pieces of cut columnar basalt aligned parallel to the ground -- which does not occur naturally, so it is undisputedly artificial.
The soil filled on top of Unit 2 contains homogenous radiocarbon dates and no weathering indicating it was placed all at the same time.
They unit 3 layer contains weathered rounded boulders stacked on top of each other -- this type of weathering normally occurs in a stream an their presence on top of a hill does seem to indicate they were placed there. They also seem to be placed into structures forming a wall. While it is less obviously artificial than unit 2 -- they still provide some compelling evidence that it is indeed artificial.
They claim unit 4 is a natural andesite lava flow that has been "sculpted", but I don't see any evidence to back up that particular claim in the paper, unless i missed it.
TLDR: they did exactly what you mentioned -- took samples from above / below / inside various construction layers, and the dates match the stratigraphic context.... It wasn't just 'scooped up in the vicinity of the pyramid.
I agree given the nature of their claims, it would be ideal if they included another dating method like OSL to go along with the radiocarbon dates, but the radiocarbon dates themselves are not as half-hazard as you make them out to be.
That's not what I mean by "in context." For radiocarbon dating, the term "in context" means that it is established that the radioisotopes were captured at a time coinciding with or in some way limiting upon the date of the activity under consideration, in this case the construction of the pyramid structure.
1. Soil is alive--it is constantly interacting with the atmosphere, if it is close enough to the surface, and the nutrients which seep through it and the various organic matter that lives inside it. You might be able to reliably date a peet bog or other undisturbed anoxic system, but packed soil in a tropical environment is a bit more suspect (no matter how buried). Otherwise the "date" of the soil is continuously evolving based on local conditions that are difficult to calibrate. That's why archeologists typically date things like the charred remains of a cooking fire, not soil.
2. Ok, assume that these dates are in any way meaningful. That still doesn't establish the age of the structure as claimed in the article. Surface dates are totally suspect for the reasons I gave above, but for the purpose of this point we can grant it. So Unit 1 provides only an unsurprising minimum age. The packed dirt in Unit 2 & 3 on the other hand is construction back-fill: the radiocarbon age of the packed soil is the average age of the soil they used in construction. But that soil was already old. Think about it this way: if you took that surface soil from Unit 1 and put it on top of your house porch, we'd now be able say your porch was constructed between 2,000-1000BC.
This article establishes that there were two construction phases, and that these phases were likely carried out at different times because different sources of back-fill soil were used. But that's it. The actual dates have no relation to the human activity.
> And, they found that the older parts of the structure were made sometime between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago, making it the oldest known pyramid in the world today.
I mean, it makes it the oldest known structure, not just pyramid.
We have 8,000 years of continuous history, and just barely. We pretend this is linear improvements of human coordination where we just got around to being cognitive enough for anything we do sometime over the last 700 years. I reject this idea completely.
I’m personally not surprised if there are other 8,000 year periods of human coordination and stability to pursue complex ideas. Across, what, now 200,000 years?
I can see the limitations of collecting the evidence involved in perceiving that, and I dont need to wait around for that to believe it. Preteens doing graffiti in caves have preserved art. I dont think it is any indication of human progression at that point in time.
We each are welcome to our beliefs, of course, but unless we provide some basis for them - especially evidence - what value do they provide to others? That basis is the value; its strength is the strength of the comment. The opinion itself has no real substance; it's directions for how the author might navigate the substance (the basis); it's a sign that points out what we perceive as valuable.
Wikipedia has information about this. Essentially the topic of the age, as put forth by the author of this article, is considered "fringe". Doesn't mean this is outright untrue but it seems that, aside from the authors of this piece, the age of Gunung Padang is very much not a settled matter and the information contained in the above link is the fringe theory that is in doubt.
It looks like this wikipedia article has not been updated since the publication of their work. The wikipedia article mentions the work is unpublished multiple times. Potentially, it has changed the view on this dating.
Its funny how people take Wikipedia at face value. Happened in a local newspaper the other day, it said something slightly wonky and referenced a Wikipedia article as the source, which in turn referenced a wonky Youtube video as it's source for that info.
Hilarious. Why is it the most dangerous show on Netflix? I clump it together with light entertainment shows like Ancient Astronauts or whatever it was called. Surely not dangerous by any means.
It spent, what, eight episodes attacking archaeology for not taking Hancock seriously. (And really, why not? Who doesn't believe there was a global civilization roughly like the Victorians built on telepathy and sonic vibration technology about 20,000 years ago?)
It's dangerous because it represents the popularization of anti-intellectualism in the modern world.
except for the people who watch the show and seriously believe the stuff, and then go out and live their lives and the rest of us have to live with them spouting that nonsense
I'd be hard-pressed to call it the most dangerous show, but the reasons why it's problematic are as follows:
1. It's fundamentally anti-intellectual. A lot of the show is ultimately based on attacking archaeology as a field on the basis that it rejects his ideas, without ever attempting to interact with the (well-grounded) reasons his ideas are being rejected. Quite frankly, takes like "the most dangerous show on Netflix" help Hancock more than hurt him, which is one of the reasons I'd never call it that.
2. The ideology is... uncomfortable. His underlying thesis amounts to "white people built every interesting archaeological structure we find in the world before suddenly disappearing without leaving any other trace," although the "white" has been removed from overt mentions in more recent year. Yet you can still guess that it's still covertly there by observing that European constructions never seem to undergo this process.
3. Bad archaeology and pseudoarchaeology can fuel modern arguments for screwing indigenous peoples out of their land or culture, etc.
4. Poor archaeological practices can ruin the ability to do good archaeology on the site in the future. Note the excavation we're talking about here is an example of such poor achaeological--the site has been greatly disturbed by the excavation, which could well foreclose the ability to properly date the site in the future. On a related note, this can also fuel the general public to visit a site and, well, loot it.
5. A final note is that the demand for ancient aliens-style shows crowds out any attempt by archaeologists to actually put together shows about real, interesting archaeological discovers. Producers don't want a show about Çatalhöyük or Göbekli Tepe or Norte Chico that produce interesting questions that challenge what people likely learned in school about the history of civilization. No, you have to attack it with an ancient aliens or whatever conspiracy theory to be able to actually make the documentary. Mainstream archaeology is considered "boring" even when it is absolutely the opposite.
I think conspiracy stuff is fine on Netflix if presented as entertainment, but I wish they would label it as such in some manner. I'm not sure how one best goes about doing that though outside of hiring some actual anthropologists and archaeologists to do an episode at the end of the series that points out what I assume to be a lengthy list of flaws and assumptions (probably too expensive).
I once watched one of the Ancient Aliens episodes for fun (it was entertaining) and found some pretty poor logic being used to try to fit their conclusions (no surprise there). It is a little sad that a certain portion of the population eats it up though.
I will say the title of the linked article is also jumping pretty hard when asking "how has this been allowed".
> but I wish they would label it as such in some manner.
That might have the opposite effect. If the label is perceived as "being cool", or "presenting stuff they don't want you to know", then some will be more intrigued, more likely to believe it.
> The oldest construction, Unit 4, likely originated as a natural lava hill before being sculpted and then architecturally enveloped during the last glacial period between 25 000 and 14 000 BCE.
Evidence for ‘sculpted and architecturally enveloped’ seems spotty though, and it’s also an interesting choice of words that carefully avoids saying anything was ‘constructed’
The use of language like "oldest pyramid in the world" seems a bit misleading as this structure has been built in several layers around a pre-existing volcanic core. As a feat of engineering it is not directly comparable with the Egyptian or Mesoamerican pyramids. It skipped not only the difficult work of building the core, but also potentially the need for architectural planning and large, organized work crews.
The lead author on this paper first surfaced these claims in 2013, and later that year published a book called “ Plato Never Lied: Atlantis Is In Indonesia”.
Reading the actual paper, I’m having a tough time visualizing the “sculpted” aspects of Unit 4. This is supposedly the volcanic core that was carved bw 20k and 15k BC. Based on the dating of the other layers, it seems much more likely that a volcano erupted there like 50k years ago and slowly eroded, right? Hilman’s got that diagram of the site labeled with “tunnel” and maybe that’s a translation thing, but the tunnel is right where you’d expect a volcanic conduit to be. He also uses the suggestive term “chamber” elsewhere. There’s no debate that this is an old volcano btw, and no debate that there is an interesting ancient structure (500 AD) on top of the hill. It’s the “carved” internal structure that seems like a big big stretch.
Someone on twitter pointed out that their dating methodology is faulty. Carbon dating makes sense only if used on organic materials in human context. For example, dating charred remains in a hearth with human artifacts in its vicinity.
It seems like the authors in the paper just took a sample from the ground and dated the organic material in it, which doesn’t make much sense.
I can’t find the original tweet atm but I hope I’ve been clear enough.
Carbon dating is just fine in non-human contexts. It's commonly used to date non-anthropogenic extinctions, for example. You do need to have a theory about the formation processes that led to the sample and how they relate the sample to the topic under study though.
The dating is this paper is definitely questionable. For one, the extent of their analysis seems to have been taking samples, sending them to the lab (which could have widely varying error checking, I haven't worked with this one specifically), and using stock date calibration software. Unfortunately, they're sampling an area known to be volcanic (which tends to produce older than true dates), with lots of water (matter transports through soil), across a difficult boundary (the Holocene), and a lot of vegetative intrusion (another common error source). They attempt to dismiss the latter by saying it can only make dates younger, which isn't even true, only typical.
The headline would be a tough argument to make even if their evidence was good given the prior history here, but they don't seem to have put even basic effort into it.
IANAArchaeologist but everyone should take this paper's main conclusion with a huge grain of salt. There is a lot of nuance to radiocarbon dating and I think there are several problems to their methodology.
They use the generic SHCal20 calibration curve for the southern hemisphere which is generally fine for testing bone and some plant matter but they didn't find any fossilized plants and I doubt it's accurate for soil samples in a volcanically active area. Gunung Padang sits atop an extinct volcano and Mount Gede is miles away uphill with active vents and hot springs. Local emissions of C14 depleted carbon dioxide and dissolution of ancient carbonate minerals in groundwater usually throws those numbers way off. The samples will appear older because the volcanoes are constantly dumping C14-poor carbon into the environment from deep in the earth.
There's ample evidence for their other conclusions like the multiple stages of building but they'd have to corroborate the radiocarbon dating with several other methods and create their own calibration for the region to really confirm the dating, which isn't necessarily an easy thing to do.
One of the best parts of the Kingkiller Chronicle books is the discovery of a piece of pottery that suggested the historicity of a mythological evil figure whose stories were already ancient.
Even if the dating is most likely inaccurate as a structure, I got that similar surreal emotion when I learned about Gunung Padang.
Graham Hancock is mentioned in the acknowledgments at the end of the article, for describing the site in the Netflix show. In fact, I for one learned about the site by watching the Netflix show.
The show is a collection of archeological sites around the world, and a theory about what happened before the younger dryas. I don’t care about the theory, but I do find the archeological sites very interesting. They shouldn't be dismissed because the theory is possibly (probably) wrong.
The sites located in the US are especially interesting: I couldn’t help wondering why they aren't more well known and publicized.
42 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadSo some dirt in the vicinity of the pyramid is 20k years old. That says absolutely nothing of value.
Considering the strong tendency to disregard old written historical records people of the future will likely face a similar dilemma attempting to accurately date any ruins of our present day buildings.
Radioisotope dating doesn't work for stone structures like the one described in this article, because it would date the age of the stone, not the structure. But concrete is poured, and steel forged or reforged at or close to its actual use date. So radioisotope ratios in these materials ought to give a reliable dating mechanism on very long timescales.
They didn't randomly pickup dirt from the base of the pyramid and date it as you seem to be implying, they used the standard method of taking core samples at various depths to find the dates of the various layers of the pyramid. Based on that they made the claim.
Unit 1 (surface): 2,000-1000BC Unit 2 : 6,000-5000 BC Unit 3: 24,000-14,000BC Unit 4: NO data
Unit 2 is clearly artificial and represents a construction layer. It has pieces of cut columnar basalt aligned parallel to the ground -- which does not occur naturally, so it is undisputedly artificial.
The soil filled on top of Unit 2 contains homogenous radiocarbon dates and no weathering indicating it was placed all at the same time.
They unit 3 layer contains weathered rounded boulders stacked on top of each other -- this type of weathering normally occurs in a stream an their presence on top of a hill does seem to indicate they were placed there. They also seem to be placed into structures forming a wall. While it is less obviously artificial than unit 2 -- they still provide some compelling evidence that it is indeed artificial.
They claim unit 4 is a natural andesite lava flow that has been "sculpted", but I don't see any evidence to back up that particular claim in the paper, unless i missed it.
TLDR: they did exactly what you mentioned -- took samples from above / below / inside various construction layers, and the dates match the stratigraphic context.... It wasn't just 'scooped up in the vicinity of the pyramid.
I agree given the nature of their claims, it would be ideal if they included another dating method like OSL to go along with the radiocarbon dates, but the radiocarbon dates themselves are not as half-hazard as you make them out to be.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/arp.1912
1. Soil is alive--it is constantly interacting with the atmosphere, if it is close enough to the surface, and the nutrients which seep through it and the various organic matter that lives inside it. You might be able to reliably date a peet bog or other undisturbed anoxic system, but packed soil in a tropical environment is a bit more suspect (no matter how buried). Otherwise the "date" of the soil is continuously evolving based on local conditions that are difficult to calibrate. That's why archeologists typically date things like the charred remains of a cooking fire, not soil.
2. Ok, assume that these dates are in any way meaningful. That still doesn't establish the age of the structure as claimed in the article. Surface dates are totally suspect for the reasons I gave above, but for the purpose of this point we can grant it. So Unit 1 provides only an unsurprising minimum age. The packed dirt in Unit 2 & 3 on the other hand is construction back-fill: the radiocarbon age of the packed soil is the average age of the soil they used in construction. But that soil was already old. Think about it this way: if you took that surface soil from Unit 1 and put it on top of your house porch, we'd now be able say your porch was constructed between 2,000-1000BC.
This article establishes that there were two construction phases, and that these phases were likely carried out at different times because different sources of back-fill soil were used. But that's it. The actual dates have no relation to the human activity.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy35mx/a-prehistoric-pyramid...
42 points|bcaulfield|13 hours ago|34 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181200
I mean, it makes it the oldest known structure, not just pyramid.
Old enough to have been the first episode in last year's Netflix documentary “Ancient Apocalypse”, aka “the most dangerous show on Netflix”:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...
20,000 years older than pyramids of Egypt. Older than Göpekli Tepe.
I’m personally not surprised if there are other 8,000 year periods of human coordination and stability to pursue complex ideas. Across, what, now 200,000 years?
I can see the limitations of collecting the evidence involved in perceiving that, and I dont need to wait around for that to believe it. Preteens doing graffiti in caves have preserved art. I dont think it is any indication of human progression at that point in time.
We each are welcome to our beliefs, of course, but unless we provide some basis for them - especially evidence - what value do they provide to others? That basis is the value; its strength is the strength of the comment. The opinion itself has no real substance; it's directions for how the author might navigate the substance (the basis); it's a sign that points out what we perceive as valuable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang
“The integrated surveys at Gunung Padang were conducted for 3 years, from November 2011 to October 2014...”
... completed so long ago it served as an episode in last year's Netflix documentary “Ancient Apocalypse”, aka “the most dangerous show on Netflix”:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...
It's dangerous because it represents the popularization of anti-intellectualism in the modern world.
1. It's fundamentally anti-intellectual. A lot of the show is ultimately based on attacking archaeology as a field on the basis that it rejects his ideas, without ever attempting to interact with the (well-grounded) reasons his ideas are being rejected. Quite frankly, takes like "the most dangerous show on Netflix" help Hancock more than hurt him, which is one of the reasons I'd never call it that.
2. The ideology is... uncomfortable. His underlying thesis amounts to "white people built every interesting archaeological structure we find in the world before suddenly disappearing without leaving any other trace," although the "white" has been removed from overt mentions in more recent year. Yet you can still guess that it's still covertly there by observing that European constructions never seem to undergo this process.
3. Bad archaeology and pseudoarchaeology can fuel modern arguments for screwing indigenous peoples out of their land or culture, etc.
4. Poor archaeological practices can ruin the ability to do good archaeology on the site in the future. Note the excavation we're talking about here is an example of such poor achaeological--the site has been greatly disturbed by the excavation, which could well foreclose the ability to properly date the site in the future. On a related note, this can also fuel the general public to visit a site and, well, loot it.
5. A final note is that the demand for ancient aliens-style shows crowds out any attempt by archaeologists to actually put together shows about real, interesting archaeological discovers. Producers don't want a show about Çatalhöyük or Göbekli Tepe or Norte Chico that produce interesting questions that challenge what people likely learned in school about the history of civilization. No, you have to attack it with an ancient aliens or whatever conspiracy theory to be able to actually make the documentary. Mainstream archaeology is considered "boring" even when it is absolutely the opposite.
I once watched one of the Ancient Aliens episodes for fun (it was entertaining) and found some pretty poor logic being used to try to fit their conclusions (no surprise there). It is a little sad that a certain portion of the population eats it up though.
I will say the title of the linked article is also jumping pretty hard when asking "how has this been allowed".
That might have the opposite effect. If the label is perceived as "being cool", or "presenting stuff they don't want you to know", then some will be more intrigued, more likely to believe it.
> The oldest construction, Unit 4, likely originated as a natural lava hill before being sculpted and then architecturally enveloped during the last glacial period between 25 000 and 14 000 BCE.
Evidence for ‘sculpted and architecturally enveloped’ seems spotty though, and it’s also an interesting choice of words that carefully avoids saying anything was ‘constructed’
Reading the actual paper, I’m having a tough time visualizing the “sculpted” aspects of Unit 4. This is supposedly the volcanic core that was carved bw 20k and 15k BC. Based on the dating of the other layers, it seems much more likely that a volcano erupted there like 50k years ago and slowly eroded, right? Hilman’s got that diagram of the site labeled with “tunnel” and maybe that’s a translation thing, but the tunnel is right where you’d expect a volcanic conduit to be. He also uses the suggestive term “chamber” elsewhere. There’s no debate that this is an old volcano btw, and no debate that there is an interesting ancient structure (500 AD) on top of the hill. It’s the “carved” internal structure that seems like a big big stretch.
https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/pseudo/129
Are there any fields of study where this is not true? Surely someone must have come up with a "Law of..." or "...'s Law" for this by now.
The dating is this paper is definitely questionable. For one, the extent of their analysis seems to have been taking samples, sending them to the lab (which could have widely varying error checking, I haven't worked with this one specifically), and using stock date calibration software. Unfortunately, they're sampling an area known to be volcanic (which tends to produce older than true dates), with lots of water (matter transports through soil), across a difficult boundary (the Holocene), and a lot of vegetative intrusion (another common error source). They attempt to dismiss the latter by saying it can only make dates younger, which isn't even true, only typical.
The headline would be a tough argument to make even if their evidence was good given the prior history here, but they don't seem to have put even basic effort into it.
They use the generic SHCal20 calibration curve for the southern hemisphere which is generally fine for testing bone and some plant matter but they didn't find any fossilized plants and I doubt it's accurate for soil samples in a volcanically active area. Gunung Padang sits atop an extinct volcano and Mount Gede is miles away uphill with active vents and hot springs. Local emissions of C14 depleted carbon dioxide and dissolution of ancient carbonate minerals in groundwater usually throws those numbers way off. The samples will appear older because the volcanoes are constantly dumping C14-poor carbon into the environment from deep in the earth.
There's ample evidence for their other conclusions like the multiple stages of building but they'd have to corroborate the radiocarbon dating with several other methods and create their own calibration for the region to really confirm the dating, which isn't necessarily an easy thing to do.
Even if the dating is most likely inaccurate as a structure, I got that similar surreal emotion when I learned about Gunung Padang.