Oldest Pyramid Found Not in Egypt or Americas, but in Indonesia (opens in new tab)

I think where I have seen people take issue is that there seems to be a push for "10000 year old pyramid". In short the measurements are correct the conclusions wrong.

They split things into 4 big layers, unit 1,2, ancient soil fills and unit 3. With unit 1 the most recent, also split into more find layers. Unit 1 goes to 2000 BCE roughly, 2 to 6000 BCE and then ancient soil 7000-8000 BCE and unit 3 13000 BCE+.

Unit 1 has clear megalithic structures and masonry work.

Unit 2 is more debatable, with stones and possible mortar remnants showing possible masonry work. But it is mostly some long stones and gravel, all with shapes that can occur totally naturally.

After that, ancient soil and Unit 3, from what I could read evidence of proper construction work seems more tenuous, if existant at all. Basically stones and soil.

Basically what the paper finds is some surface level masonry work and some deeper level stones they interpret as masonry while it is VERY debatable. Then they take a deep drill, date it to the paleolithic, and frame it as "paleolithic construction". But what most archeologists are reading is "recent construction with possible traces of humans in the area before"

From the paper [1]:

> For example, this study demonstrates that the geophysical layers do not necessarily align with the lithological stratigraphy as depicted from borehole data. The discrepancies highlight the need for caution when interpreting the results and emphasize the importance of considering multiple factors and approaches in the analysis.

Which makes sense, since it's a jungle on a volcanically active island. That's a perfect recipe for a very active and varied geology, the kind that would bring up ancient carbon. The errors are likely correlated.

I think it's all just a bunch of wishful thinking - the interpretations they make are very tenuous.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/arp.1912

>(the usual "big archeology doesn't want you to know about this prediluvian ancient Atlantean civilization").

Which is cartoonishly absurd. Imagine how much easier applying for grants would be if you could write "we may find a 10 000 year old civilization with computers and tech rivaling, possibly even surpassing our own". That's so much better than "we're trying to discover whether 3000-year-old copper picks were usually curved at 5 degrees, or closer to 10 degrees. We suspect it's 7ish".

It's so dumb.

parent's comment seems to denigrate the site itself by associating it with someone named Hancock (who I have non idea who that it is). The article doesn't mention this individual at all. Two things can be true:

• something (an object, a site, a finding) can be amazing

• someone can have over-indexed on how amazing that thing is ahead of available evidence.

Language matterd because this type of guilt-by-association induces a backlash on studying existing evidence and investing in further evidence-gathering (whether supportive or falsifying) efforts. Scientists are all too sensitive to stigmatised or even potentially-stigmatised (watchword: 'controversial') topics b/c their career fundability prospects from grants are at stake.

Exactly. There might be some traces of human passage dating 10000 years ago. But basically what we have is: surface-ish level construction, then a bunch of stones they interpret as old masonry but that is more likely natural, with deeper possible human traces as organic material, such as even a hunter gatherer that made a fire here one night. They use that to conclude to a paleolithic construction site.

Kinda like going to a European church, finding a bunch of stones and gravel under for 30m. Finding one silex around the same depth ans thus concluding European paleolithic people 10-20000 years ago were building complex edifices.

Well that feels more like it's the side-effect of the English word "civilized" being used to mean "genteel and proper", and also "pertaining to large-scale societies with monumental architecture, agriculture, etc." It doesn't seem to controversial that social hierarchies are associated with all of the world civilizations we know about - I suppose that could lead to arguments about them being intrinsically better, or just necessary to organize large groups of people?

Abiotic oil is a pretty well developed theory. Lab experiments have show that temperature and pressures present in the earths core will form hydrocarbons from carbon and water. There's also all the extensive work by Gold on the deep hot biosphere. Also, the entire atmosphere of Titan is hydrocarbons for example, so it's not like hydrocarbons need life to exist. However, abiotic production is perhaps a few billion barrels of oil globally a year. Not close to enough to sustain our current civilization, but enough to try again in 10 or 20 thousand years.

Yeah, oil and coal in the quantities we found them were the result of a very specific set of physical and biological circumstances for the planet. It’s happened once. There’s a good chance it will never happen again in the remaining 900ish million years that the planet can support large, complex animals.

This is often repeated but is an opinion and nothing more. There are an untold number of ways to discover the use of electricity

There's still plenty of coal (hundreds of years worth), which is what fueled the original Industrial Revolution.

Petroleum and gas came much later.

Edit: 435 years worth of recoverable coal in the United States alone, of which 53% is recoverable by surface mining.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/how-much-coal-is-le...

For the better. The future society will develop technology at a slower pace, and their technology will be naturally constrained by sustainability concerns from the get-go. We've turned 'medieval' into a pejorative during the Enlightenment period (17th, 18th centuries) predominantly for political reasons. Think red vs blue false dichotomy in contemporary politics. From a spiritual, technological and cultural perspective the Medieval age wasn't quite the dark pit of despair its political enemies made it to be. Visit a village e.g. in the French country side, there is something deep inside us that recognizes it as more organically fulfilling than either Industrial towns, or Contemporary sprawls.

this is an interesting point of view, but after thinking about it for several years, i think it's mistaken. some of the reasons can't be put into words, but here's what i can explain

geothermal energy (so-called egs) and solar are each individually far more abundant than fossil fuels ever have been; wind energy is comparable to fossil fuels and easier to harness. hydropower is a smaller resource but still one that's sufficient for industrialization

fossil fuel exploitation for mass production of steel in blast furnaces was widespread in song china 800 years ago but didn't lead to the industrial revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Song_dynasty#St...

contrary to kris de decker's wishful thinking, medieval and early modern holland didn't have an industrial revolution either, despite wind power

the industrial revolution still hasn't reached much of the planet; consider how many people still subsist on agriculture or unskilled, non-mass-production urban labor, in places like my own country (my experience here is the part that's hard to put into words) but most especially in the regions where fossil fuels are most abundant

the hard part of the industrial revolution was probably science, liberalism, and capitalism; superstition and kleptocracy are the human default