Java's Megalithic Mountain
archaeology.org
archaeology.org
> They use the generic SHCal20 calibration curve for the southern hemisphere which is generally fine for testing bone and some plant matter but they didn't find any fossilized plants and I doubt it's accurate for soil samples in a volcanically active area. Gunung Padang sits atop an extinct volcano and Mount Gede is miles away uphill with active vents and hot springs. Local emissions of C14 depleted carbon dioxide and dissolution of ancient carbonate minerals in groundwater usually throws those numbers way off. The samples will appear older because the volcanoes are constantly dumping C14-poor carbon into the environment from deep in the earth. -civilitty [1]
> It looks like all 7 of their C14 dated samples were simply "organic soil", no artifacts or charcoal. If you're going to build a pyramid by piling soil and rocks, then the soil will be older than the pyramid. The authors don't mention having done any core samples away from the pyramid as a control group. It seems like they have, at best, proved that Gunung Padang contains old soil, without proving anything about the age of the pyramid itself. -driggs [2]
From the retraction:
> 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.” Therefore, the interpretation that the site is an ancient pyramid built 9000 or more years ago is incorrect, and the article must be retracted. [3]
[1] New evidence strongly suggests Indonesia's Gunung Padang is oldest known pyramid (40 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186510
[2] The pyramid of Gunung Padang began construction in the deep past, study claim (40 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181200
I often get great comments from peer review, but I used to worry that some critical mistake would be missed (one time there was!). My work is purely theoretical, so these days I formalise everything in a proof assistant. But in empirical science, there is no such certainty to be had. There really should be some kind of comment section under the published works.
The common view of how hard it is to move large stones doesn't match reality. There are many examples (eg [1][2]) of what one man can do without any heavy machinery. People have been moving large stones around for thousands of years. And the "how" is simply using leverage and the power of many people and beasts of burden.
Still, it's interesting that they would. I suspect many of them didn't have a choice.
You mean we can reach 130 comments without referring to the content? I’m doing my part, i guess.
Dang often sweeps up off-topic threads (including this one, including my own comment) into a buried off-topic stub, which is a brilliant HN affordance:
<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>