A team of archeological and geological experts studying Indonesia’s ancient megalithic site of Gunung Padang have discovered evidence that artificial structures at least as old as—and possibly even older than—Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe, buried deep below the terraces that adorn the face of the earthwork pyramid.

Located in Indonesia’s province of West Java, Gunung Padang is a megalithic site that was constructed atop a series of terraces that were built over the mound of a long-extinct volcano. Considered a sacred site by the Sudanese, the most recent structures, constructed from volcanic stone, lie in ruin, although the layout of the ancient architecture is still visible.

Using a combination of remote sensing techniques such as ground-penetrating radar (GPR), seismic tomography (ST) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) for views of the interior of the hill, and more direct methods like core drilling and trench excavations, the research team has peeled back the mound’s complex layers to reveal a complicated history that stretches back to well before the founding of Göbekli Tepe and its sister sites: somewhere between 25,000 and 14,000 BCE it appears that someone sculpted the ancient volcano’s natural lava formation to use as a foundation for stone structures; although the remote imaging techniques appear to show artificially-worked stones, their purpose is likely to remain a mystery until a more direct analysis can be made of the objects.

Following this period, the site appears to have been abandoned for thousands of years, leading to significant weathering on the stone, until sometime between 7,900 and 6,100 BCE when the site was deliberately buried, roughly the same time that Göbekli Tepe received the same treatment. New construction efforts on top of this layer commenced somewhere between 6,000 and 5,500 BCE, followed later by another, more recent building period between 2,000 and 900 years ago, much of which is still visible on the mound’s surface today.

The mound also has what appears to be a series of underground chambers, visible in the ERT, GPR and ST scans made of the hill’s interior as low-density regions, with one large anomaly appearing along the center of the pyramid-like structure of the hill; the team plans to drill boreholes in an attempt to lower cameras into the anomalies to determine their true nature at a future date.

It is important to bear in mind that the study states that the evidence uncovered so far only “strongly suggests” that there is a deeply ancient megalithic site buried beneath the mound: unlike Göbekli Tepe, Gunung Padang has not been excavated to the depth of the layers that appear to hold the truly ancient formations, but so far have only been imaged by remote-sensing equipment that is unable to offer detailed views of the structures, meaning that there is still a strong possibility that they could simply be the product of natural processes.

Regardless, if the formations below Gunung Padang prove to be artificial it adds even more solid evidence to the idea that our civilization extends much further back in time than what recorded history suggests—possibly even twice as far into the past than the founding of the complex at Göbekli Tepe.

“Gunung Padang stands as a remarkable testament, potentially being the oldest pyramid in the world,” according to the study text, published in Archaeological Prospection. “Further investigation and interdisciplinary research will uncover its hidden secrets and shed more light on the ancient civilizations that thrived in this enigmatic site.”

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