World’s ‘oldest pyramid’ may actually be 25,000 years old
It’s long been believed the oldest pyramid in the world is the Djoser Step pyramid in Egypt, built around 2,600 BC.
That may no longer be the case. A paper published in Archeological Prospection has claimed that one site in Indonesia could be at least 9,000 years old, with parts of it dating back 25,000 years.
Gunung Padang, an ancient pyramid sitting on an extinct volcano in West Java, Indonesia, has baffled researchers for decades.
It’s name translates to ‘mountain of enlightenment’, and humans have been visiting the area for thousands of years.
Pottery fragments dating back from 45 BCE have been discovered in the scattered terraces and pillar-like rocks.
And one group of archaeologists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, led by Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, believes a highly advanced civilisation may have built it.
The study reads: ‘This finding challenges the conventional belief that human civilisation and the development of advanced construction techniques emerged only during the warm period of the early Holocene or the beginning of the Neolithic, with the advent of agriculture approximately 11,000 years ago.
‘However, evidence from Gunung Padang and other sites, such as Gobekli Tepe, suggests that advanced construction practices were already present when agriculture had, perhaps, not yet been invented.’
In 2017, a 14,000-year-old village, thought to be one of the oldest human settlements in North America, was discovered by archaeologists.
Artefacts including tools for lighting fires, fish hooks and spears bating back from the Ice Age, were found during an excavation of a remote island in British Columbia, Canada.
The dig took place on a rocky spit on Triquet Island, 500 kilometres northwest of Victoria.
It is estimated that the village is older than Egypt’s pyramids, according to The Independent.
One researcher said: ‘I remember when we get the dates back and we just kind of sat there going, ‘Holy Moly, this is old’.
‘What this is doing is just changing our idea of the way in which North America was first peopled.’
A large human migration may have occurred on the coastline of British Columbia, according to experts.
But Heiltsuk Nation’s oral traditions also tell stories of ancient coastal villages, which have been passed down for generations.
William Housty, from the Heiltsuk Nation, said: ‘To think about how these stories survived all of that, only to be supported by this archaeological evidence is just amazing.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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