Mount Padang ancient temple of 13,000 to 23,000 years ago?

The Independent Research Integrated Mount Padang Team, which is facilitated by the Special Staff of President for Social Assistance and Disaster, found the stone structures of man-made beneath the ancient site of Mount Padang, at Karyamukti Village, the District of Campaka, Cianjur Regency.

According to the result of survey of team who did an archaeological excavation and geoelectric surveys on the eastern slopes of the hill in March 2013, found the structure  of colum andesite stone with near horizontal position elongated east-west.

"From the horizontal position of the colum andesite rocks and its line direction, we can conclude with certainty that the colum stones or" columnar joints "is not in a natural condition," said Danny H. Natawidjaja, Coordinator of The Independent Research Integrated Mount Padang Team in Jakarta, Tuesday (2/4).

In excavation, The Archaeological team which is led by DR. Ali Akbar from the University of Indonesia found the evidence to confirm the hypothesis of team that there are man-made structures in the basement of Mount Padang. The building structure is the same as with the structure of the stone terrace which has been revealed and become cultural sites on the hill.

The excavation also found a filler material among the stones columns, even  there is a stone column that was shattered but styled and put together again by the filler material as ancient cement.

The Ancient cement has also been found on a canyon railroads between the porch steps one and two, and also on drill core samples from a depth of 1 to 15 meters of drilling conducted by the team in 2012 and then on the site.

The Geologist team and also the center coaches of Indonesian Association of Geologists center, DR. Andang Bachtiar, find more surprising facts. The Cement material has a primary composition of 45% of iron mineral and 41% of mineral silica. The rest is 14% clay minerals and there is also the carbon element. "This is a good composition for strong cement adhesive, perhaps combining between the concepts of resin or modern strong adhesive made ​​from silica materials and the use of concentration of the iron element which become as brick amplifiers," said Danny H. Natawidjaja.

The high content of silica indicates that the cement is not the result of weathering of colum andesite rocks which is surrounded by a poor of silica. Then, the levels of iron in nature, even in the rocks at the ore mineral mining,  generally the content of iron is not more than 5%, so iron levels in "Gunung Padang cement" is many times higher than natural conditions. Therefore it can be concluded that material which is lied between the columns andesite stones are man-made grout.

 So the technology of that time seems to have known metallurgy. One common technique to obtain a high concentration of iron is to carry out the combustion process from the broken rocks with very high temperatures. Similar to the making of bricks, which burn caolinite and illite clays to produce a high concentration of iron on the brick, explain Andang.

Indications of ancient metallurgical technology is more strengthened by the findings of a lump of metal materials sized 10 inches by the team of Ali Akbar at the depth of 1 meter on the eastern slopes of Mount Padang. The rusty metal material possessed a rough surface hollow-small cavity on the surface. Presumably this material is a metal dough residue ("slug") that is mixed with carbon material which has become its combustor materials, can be from wood, coal or other. Cavities are likely to occur due to the release of CO2 when burning. The team will conduct further laboratorium analysis to investigate.

The results of radiometric analysis of the content of the carbon element in some samples of cement in drill core from the depth of 5-15 meters which was conducted in 2012 at the prestigious Laboratory, BETALAB, Miami, USA in the mid-2012 shows its age with a range between 13,000 and 23,000 years ago.

Previously, the results of carbon dating which carried out in the BATAN laboratory, the dominant quartz sand that fills the voids between the columns of andesite at the depth of 8-10 meters below the terrace of five also showed the same age range is about 13,000 years ago.

Data from drilling conducted by DR. Andang Bachtiar and microscopic analyzes of rocks from drill core samples were carried out by DR. Andri Subandrio, geologist of volcanic rocks of the Petrology laboratory ITB,  can be assured that the high resistivity body rock is andesite lava rock, the same rock type as the column of the site of mount Padang.

Another thing that is interesting from petrological analysis is finding of many microscopic cracks in the thin section of andesite stone columns that allegedly non-natural because the cracks cut its constituent mineral crystals.

Danny H. Natawidjaja states that mount Padang has same potency with Borobudur, even it is more meaningful because it can be a breakthrough of knowledge about "the craddle of civilizations" in this century, as a proof of the great monuments of the oldest civilizations in the glorious world that destroyed because of catastrophe thousands of years ago in the pre-history of Indonesia.

"It is not impossible anymore if Indonesia as archipelago nation has civilization as advanced as the ancient Egyptian civilization, even in the much older," Danny said. (WID/ES)(HN/S)