Gunung Padang

The surface megalithic terraces date from about the 2nd century BC to the 8th century AD — this is the archaeological consensus, based on C14 dating of charcoal and pottery (45 BC - 22 AD). Lutfi Yondri (Padjadjaran University) estimates the structures at ~2,000 years old, Harry Truman Simanjuntak at the 6th-8th centuries.

The 2023 study (Natawidjaja et al., Archaeological Prospection) was retracted on March 18, 2024 by Wiley (DOI: 10.1002/arp.1932): the C14 had been applied to soil samples with no identifiable artifact or anthropic trace. The '25,000-year-old pyramid' interpretation is declared incorrect by the editors.

The columns are made of porphyritic andesite with columnar joints — a natural volcanic formation from the Homblenda Pasir Pogor intrusion (~32 Ma). Reshaped and stacked on the surface by the builders, they do not constitute a buried pyramidal structure.

34 Indonesian archaeologists and geologists signed a petition in 2014 against the methodology of the Natawidjaja-Arif team. Volcanologist Sutikno Bronto (Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation) concludes that the hill is the neck of an ancient volcano, a natural formation.