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If not humans, then who? The mystery of who built Earth’s oldest pyramid

Around the world there are numerous ancient megastructures but perhaps pyramids capture our wonder the most. One of them has raised a number of questions.

The mystery of who built Earth's oldest pyramid
Ratnakorn Piyasirisorost

Megalithic structures like Stonehenge and the architectural feats of ancient civilizations like the pyramids in Egypt or Mexico still leave us in awe today. But the sheer scale and given the technology and tools available when they were created also raises questions about how early humans built them. And even sometimes speculation that it wasn’t humans at all.

The title for the oldest pyramid is shared between the Djoser Step Pyramid of Saqqara, Egypt and the Caral Pyramids of Peru, both possibly built as far back as around 4,700 years ago. Exact dating of ancient monuments is difficult thus it cannot be determined which one came first.

However, a group of researchers led by Danny Hilman Natawidjaja published a study in October 2023 in the journal of Archaeological Prospection claiming that the archaeological site of Gunung Padang in West Java province was not only a pyramid but far surpassed the previously mentioned sites in age. According to radiocarbon measurements of soil from drilling samples from the deepest layer of the site the first modifications were made as far back as 27,000 years ago.

These findings have been contested, which led to the retraction of the study by journal’s American publisher, Wiley, after an investigation concluded that the article contained “a major error.”

Simplified reconstruction of Gunung Padang published in 'Geo-archaeological prospecting of Gunung Padang buried prehistoric pyramid in West Java, Indonesia'
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Simplified reconstruction of Gunung Padang published in 'Geo-archaeological prospecting of Gunung Padang buried prehistoric pyramid in West Java, Indonesia'

“This error, which was not identified during peer review, is that the radiocarbon dating was applied to soil samples that were not associated with any artifacts or features that could be reliably interpreted as anthropogenic or ‘man-made,’” stated the retraction. Natawidjaja, who responded on behalf of the authors, said that they all disagreed with the move and expressed “profound disappointment at the unwarranted retraction.”

If it wasn’t humans, then who built the world’s allegedly oldest pyramid?

The hill that Gunung Padang sits atop is a dormant volcano according to archaeologists. On top of it are layers, some of which have clearly be modified by humans.

However, the radiocarbon measurements of the soil samples that linked them to human activity creating a pyramid 27,000 years ago was the study’s “biggest logical fallacy,” according to Noel Hidalgo Tan, an archaeologist at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Archaeology and Fine Arts in Bangkok.

He told The New York Times that “It’s just soil,” adding that “it’s not soil that is tied to construction activity. It’s not soil that’s tied to, say, a fire pit, or soil that’s tied to a burial.” As for the age of the soil, that wasn’t a surprise to him since it accumulates over time thus deeper layers tend to be older.

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