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Minister urges renewed study into Gunung Padang archaeological site
The culture minister has urged additional studies into the hotly debated origins of Gunung Padang in West Java, which was attributed to an ancient culture from over 25,000 years ago in a now-retracted controversial study.
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Gunung Padang, an archeological site located atop a hill in Cianjur, West Java (Courtesy of/Shutterstock)
C
ulture Minister Fadli Zon is calling for further research into Gunung Padang, an archaeological site in Cianjur regency, West Java, following heated debate in the scientific community over its construction and age of more than 25,000 years old, as claimed in a controversial 2023 study that was retracted last year.
Addressing a forum of archaeological and geological experts on Tuesday in Jakarta, Fadli said he had visited the site atop an extinct volcano last month and was confident it was once home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations.
Noting that exact data was not available as to when the civilization might have emerged, “I think it is the part of information that we need to complete,” the minister said.
Controversy & retraction
Nestled among banana and tea plantations almost 3,000 feet above sea level, the Gunung Padang site consists of stone terraces.
The October 2023 paper by Danny Hilman Natawidjaja et al., published in peer-reviewed journal Archaeological Prospection, claimed that most of the structure was built by humans in stages over thousands of years.
Read also: Gunung Padang could be the world’s oldest pyramid: Study
