'World's Oldest Pyramid' in Indonesia? A Study Draws Skepticism

The study, under investigation by its publisher, has fueled a dispute over the age of a partially excavated site and prompted warnings about the dangers of nationalist mythmaking.



The Gunung Padang site in Cianjur, Indonesia, in December.

By Mike Ives and Rin HindryatiPhotographs by Ulet Ifansasti
Reporting from Seoul and from Cianjur, Indonesia

Jan. 3, 2024
In a mountainous corner of Indonesia lies a hill, dotted with stone terraces, where people come from around the country to hold Islamic and Hindu rituals. Some say the site has a mystical air, or even that it might hold buried treasure.

The partially excavated site, Gunung Padang, is a relaxing place to spend an afternoon. It’s also at the center of a raging debate.

Archaeologists say that the hill is a dormant volcano and that ceramics recovered there so far suggest that humans have been using the site for several hundred years or more. But some Indonesians, including an earthquake geologist and a president who left office in 2014, have suggested that the site may have been built far earlier by an as-yet-undiscovered ancient civilization. Their narrative has spread for more than a decade within the country but not very far beyond it — until recently.

In 2022, a Netflix documentary series, “Ancient Apocalypse,” drew on the geologist's research for an episode about Gunung Padang. And in October, the geologist published an article in an international scientific journal that has fueled an international dispute over questions of science, ethics and ancient history.



A new study about the Gunung Padang site has stirred an international archaeological controversy.

Archaeologists say the study’s most contentious conclusion — that Gunung Padang may be “the oldest pyramid in the world” because its deepest layer appears to have been “sculpted” by humans up to 27,000 years ago — is problematic because it is not based on physical evidence. Indonesia had no history of pyramid construction, they say, and humans in the Paleolithic era, which ended more than 10,000 years ago, could not have constructed pyramids. (The pyramids of Giza in Egypt are only about 4,500 years old.)

More:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240103104657/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/world/asia/oldest-pyramid-indonesia-netflix.html

Or:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/world/asia/oldest-pyramid-indonesia-netflix.html