[HN Gopher] Gunung Padang buried prehistoric pyramid in West Jav...
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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| the work is unpublished multiple times.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.
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