[HN Gopher] Gunung Padang buried prehistoric pyramid in West Jav... ___________________________________________________________________ Gunung Padang buried prehistoric pyramid in West Java, Indonesia Author : nabla9 Score : 48 points Date : 2023-11-08 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (onlinelibrary.wiley.com) (TXT) w3m dump (onlinelibrary.wiley.com) | nabla9 wrote: | If this finding is accurate, this pyramid is 27,000 years old. | | 20,000 years older than pyramids of Egypt. Older than Gopekli | Tepe. | yieldcrv wrote: | 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. | wolverine876 wrote: | A hypothesis of HN (and similar) comments: | | 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. | gaoshan wrote: | 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. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang | wuliwong wrote: | 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 The wikipedia article mentions | the work is unpublished multiple times.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. | waihtis wrote: | 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. | edgyquant wrote: | It's not funny, it's scary as hell. | scottmckenzie wrote: | Graham Hancock will be pleased. | Terretta wrote: | Right, as noted in | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186510, this is not | news. This writeup is covering activity from 2011 - 2015... | | _"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... | waihtis wrote: | 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. | mcguire wrote: | 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. | fragmede wrote: | 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 | jcranmer wrote: | 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 Catalhoyuk or | Gobekli 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. | 7thaccount wrote: | 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". | jameshart wrote: | This is a pretty extraordinary claim: | | > 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' | zeteo wrote: | 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. | pvg wrote: | Just discussed here in the last few days | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186510 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181200 | gnatman wrote: | 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. | rdp36 wrote: | "Gunung Padang Is Not A Pyramid: Does Anyone Double-Check | Anything Anymore?" | | https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/pseudo/129 | irrational wrote: | > The bummer with this one (which often happens) is that when | it's debunked, the debunking will not make the news | | 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. | fragmede wrote: | Idiomatically phrased as "a lie will make it halfway around | the world before the truth can get its boots on" | japoco wrote: | 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. | AlotOfReading wrote: | 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. | civilitty wrote: | 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. | molave wrote: | 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-08 23:00 UTC)