{"id":240352,"date":"2023-11-03T23:19:44","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T23:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lovemainstream.com\/?p=240352"},"modified":"2023-11-03T23:19:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T23:19:44","slug":"scientists-uncover-the-worlds-oldest-pyramid-gunung-padang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovemainstream.com\/lifestyle\/scientists-uncover-the-worlds-oldest-pyramid-gunung-padang\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists uncover the &apos;world&apos;s oldest&apos; pyramid Gunung Padang"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Scientists discover &#8216;world&#8217;s oldest&#8217; pyramid: New carbon dating shows Gunung Padang in Indonesia was built 10,000 years ago &#8211; making it THREE TIMES OLDER than Stonehenge and Egyptian pyramids<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Carbon-dating of the\u00a0Gunung Padang pyramid reveals it&#8217;s over 16,000 years old<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The pyramid was found within a hill of lava on the Indonesian island of West Java<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE: Ancient Mayan city discovered in uncharted jungles of Mexico<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Archeologists have found that Indonesia&#8217;s pyramid, a 98-ft-deep &#8216;megalith&#8217; submerged within a hill of lava rock, ranks as the world&#8217;s oldest pyramid.<\/p>\n<p>Gunung Padang, first re-discovered by Dutch explorers in 1890, may in fact also be the\u00a0oldest known man-made construction\u00a0of its size, at least, according to the latest radiocarbon dating of the ancient site.<\/p>\n<p>The tests place early construction of the pyramid, with its hundreds of steps chiseled from andesite lava, back to more than 16,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age.<\/p>\n<p>That means Gunung Padang is likely to be over 10,000 years older than not just<span>\u00a0all of the great monuments and pyramids of Giza in Egypt, but also England&#8217;s legendary Stonehenge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As with recent evidence that the Egyptian Sphynx was built with savvy use of wind erosion, the hunter-gathers who built Gunung Padang made an architectural virtue of working with, not against, their local conditions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Indonesian pyramid&#8217;s first and deepest layer, the researchers found, was carved from the site&#8217;s natural wealth of cooled lava flows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/03\/17\/77375647-0-image-a-18_1699033037482.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Archeologists have found that Indonesia &#8216;s Gunung Padang pyramid, a 98-ft-deep &#8216;megalith&#8217; carved into a natrual hill of lava, now ranks as the world&#8217;s oldest pyramid &#8211;\u00a0over 10,000 years older than all of the great monuments and pyramids of Giza in Egypt<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/03\/21\/77381987-12708099-image-a-39_1699047321571.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The tests place early construction of the pyramid, with its hundreds of steps chiseled from andesite lava, back to more than 16,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age<\/p>\n<h3>QUICK QUIZ: Can YOU name the country with the most ancient pyramids?<\/h3>\n<p>A: Egypt<\/p>\n<p>B: Mexico<\/p>\n<p>C: Sudan<\/p>\n<p>D: Peru\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span>**scroll down to the bottom of this article for the correct answer**\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Gunung Padang may even prove to be thousands of years older than the\u00a0G\u00f6bekli Tepe &#8216;megalith&#8217; discovered in Turkey, the last frontrunner for &#8216;world&#8217;s oldest.&#8217;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Scientists said the structure promises to upend the conventional wisdom on just how &#8216;primitive&#8217; hunter-gather societies actually were\u00a0\u2014 revealing the true &#8216;engineering capabilities of ancient civilizations.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Scholars have spent\u00a0over a century debating whether the underground structure known as Gunung Padang (which means &#8216;mountain of enlightenment&#8217; in the local tongue) really constitutes a man-made pyramid, and not just a natural geological formation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But between 2011 and 2015,\u00a0geologist Danny Hilman Natawidjaja of Indonesia&#8217;s National Research and Innovation Agency led a crew of\u00a0archaeologists, geophysicists and geologists to literally get to the bottom of this ancient mystery.<\/p>\n<p>Using\u00a0ground penetrating radars to take subsurface images, core drilling and &#8216;trench&#8217; excavation techniques,\u00a0Natawidjaja and his fellow researchers were able to probe down into the very first layers of\u00a0Gunung Padang\u00a0\u2014 which lay over 9 stories (98 feet, or 30 meters) below its surface.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;This study strongly suggests that Gunung Padang is not a natural hill,&#8217; the archeologists wrote last month, in the journal Archaeological Prospection, after years of analyzing data from those past trips, &#8216;but a pyramid-like construction.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At the pyramid&#8217;s core, the team found what they described as &#8216;meticulously sculpted&#8217; and &#8216;massive&#8217; lava-stone structures made of\u00a0andesite: a\u00a0fine-grained kind of igneous rock.<\/p>\n<p>This inner-most chamber, dubbed Unit 4, &#8216;likely originated as a natural lava hill,&#8217; they wrote, &#8216;before being sculpted and then architecturally enveloped during the last glacial period,&#8217; sometime between 16,000 to 27,000 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/03\/21\/77383877-12708099-image-a-45_1699048361040.jpg\" height=\"375\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Scholars spent over a century debating whether Gunung Padang really constitutes a man-made pyramid, and not just a natural geological formation. But after analyzing years of field data, scientists have literally got to the bottom of this ancient mystery, 9 stories underground<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/03\/21\/77383875-12708099-Scholars_spent_over_a_century_debating_whether_Gunung_Padang_rea-a-41_1699047894069.jpg\" height=\"437\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Using ground penetrating radars to take subsurface images, core drilling and &#8216;trench&#8217; excavation techniques, Natawidjaja and his fellow researchers were able to probe down into the very first layers of Gunung Padang, which lay over 98 feet, or 30 meters below its surface<\/p>\n<h3>READ MORE:\u00a0Scientists discover hidden, 30ft-long corridor in the Great Pyramid of Giza<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/03\/19\/68262273-12708099-image-a-29_1699041255857.jpg\" height=\"165\" width=\"274\"><\/p>\n<p>Scientists detected the corridor using a technique called cosmic-ray muon radiography, developed by experts at the University of Nagoya, Japan. The researchers then\u00a0<span>retrieved images of the secret passage by feeding a 6mm-thick endoscopic camera through a tiny joint in the pyramid&#8217;s stones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Scientists describe the past 11,500 years or so of human existence (and counting), as an &#8216;interglacial period&#8217; between Ice Ages known as<span>\u00a0the Holocene.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The radiocarbon dating technique, used by Natawidjaja and his group to pinpoint Unit 4&#8217;s age, relies on a common radioactive isotope of the carbon atoms found all over the world to measure the age of old, preserved &#8216;carbon-based&#8217; life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Because of the radioactive rate of decay of this isotope, carbon-14, scientists\u00a0can accurately measure the age of dead organic material as far back as 60,000 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>To make sure that their radiocarbon dating was accurate, Natawidjaja&#8217;s team took pains to select the right organic soil samples from their drill cores and trench walls, samples that were not tainted by fresh roots from modern vegetation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The researchers now believe that\u00a0Gunung Padang was built across millennia, in &#8216;complex and sophisticated stages.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>After Unit 4 during the Ice Age,<span>\u00a0Gunung Padang was &#8216;abandoned by the first builders for thousands of years,&#8217; according to the team&#8217;s new study.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Around\u00a07900\u20136100 BCE, the next phase, Unit 3, appears to have been &#8216;deliberately buried with substantial soil fills.&#8217;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The next layer of stone pillars, steps and terraces, Unit 1, came\u00a0<\/span><span>between 6000 and 5500 BCE, with a final layer, Unit 1, that is younger than some of Egypt&#8217;s pyramids, having been finished between\u00a02000 and 1100 BCE.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Many more millennia later, Indonesia&#8217;s Ministry of Education and Culture recognized all this ancient hard labor, declaring Gunung Padang\u00a0<span>a heritage site of local interest in 1998.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8216;The builders of Unit 3 and Unit 2 at Gunung Padang must have possessed remarkable masonry capabilities, which do not align with the traditional hunter-gatherer cultures,&#8217; according to Natawidjaja and his colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Given the long and continuous occupation of Gunung Padang, it is reasonable to speculate that this site held significant importance, attracting ancient people to repeatedly occupy and modify it.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><span><span>Quiz Answer | D: Peru, where the city of Lima alone has over 400 ancient pyramids.<\/span> (Sudan has approximately\u00a0255 pyramids. Egypt has about 118. And Mexico has approximately 300 known ancient pyramids, including the world&#8217;s largest, the Great Pyramid of Cholula, hidden inside a mountain.) Sources: <\/span><span>National Geographic<\/span><span>; <\/span><span>NPR<\/span><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Mexico&#8217;s<\/p>\n<p>, which is actually hidden inside a mountain.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/article-12708099\/worlds-oldest-pyramid-Gunung-Padang-Indonesia-three-times-older-Stonehenge-Egyptian-pyramids-Giza.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists discover &#8216;world&#8217;s oldest&#8217; pyramid: New carbon dating shows Gunung Padang in Indonesia was built 10,000 years ago &#8211; making it THREE TIMES OLDER than Stonehenge and Egyptian pyramids Carbon-dating&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Scientists uncover the &amp;apos;world&amp;apos;s oldest&amp;apos; 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