Black Pot and Kettle Syndrome: Gunung Padang and Waun Mawn

 There is an almighty row going on in the specialist literature ( and in the popular media) over a claim that a "structure" in Indonesia is by far the oldest pyramid in the world, dating from c 27,000 yrs BP.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03546-w

It all arises from a paper published in the Wiley journal called Archaeological Prospection -- presumably after peer review and editorial oversight had been applied.  Gunung Padang is the name of the site, and all the lurid detail about the argument is there in the Observer and other newspapers.  The fuss is all about the "core" of a mound, which some see as man-made and some see as the remnants of a volcanic cone -- thus entirely natural.  

There are radiocarbon dates, but mainstream archaeologists are unconvinced that they are tied to any human activities, and say that they simply give ages to natural features in the mound:

Quote from the Nature article: But Bill Farley, an archaeologist at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, says the paper has not provided evidence that an advanced civilization existed during the last ice age. The 27,000-year-old soil samples from Gunung Padang, although accurately dated, do not carry hallmarks of human activity, such as charcoal or bone fragments, he says. Archaeological records show that the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to complex societies occupying large settlements occurred after the commencement of the Holocene 11,700 years ago.

Academic geologists and archaeologists have weighed in, accusing Prof Natawidjaja (the leader of the research team) of making a huge and irresponsible leap of imagination from scanty data to earth-shattering and headline-gathering conclusions.  Geologist Marc Defant accused the lead author of invoking myths and being guilty of fanciful and incorrect interpretations of his archaeological finds.

Talk about pots calling kettles black!!  We now see archaeologists (including Flint Dibble of Cardiff University) going after somebody they see as a maverick, far away in Indonesia, whereas I wouldn't mind betting that the very same people have swallowed all the nonsense about Waun Mawn, Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog hook, line and sinker without ever questioning any element of the narrative.  So the "monolith quarries" at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog are accepted as fact even though the evidence is incredibly flimsy and even though (as Prof Danny McCarroll pointed out) the interpretations are falsified by the radiocarbon dates that are cited in support of the mythology.  And make no mistake about it -- the narrative has all the hallmarks of mythology as distinct from sound science.  Since it is unsupported by adequate data, it is all unravelling.  The "giant stone circle" or "Proto-Stonehenge" at Waun Mawn also has a nonsensical narrative attached to it -- with only Tim Darvill and Mike Pitts prepared to voice a certain cautions scepticism.  Now the giant stone circle has been unceremoniously dumped, and the vast industrial quarrying enterprise at Rhosyfelin has been replaced by a feeble story in which maybe one small monolith was taken away at some time or other for reasons that make no sense.  The Carn Goedog narrative will also sink without trace once a detailed investigation of the site is published.

Politeness?  Misplaced respect?  Hypocrisy?  Double standards?  Nothing new there then.  There remains the question of why British archaeologists who are probably just as intelligent as archaeologists from elsewhere have apparently studiously avoided any proper scrutiny of the multiple papers published by MPP and his team..........

Why do the members of the British archaeological community apparently accept the recently invented bluestone transport myth with almost religious deference and reverence?    Answers on a postcard please.