It was one of the most sensational science stories of 2023. Researchers claimed last month that the Gunung Padang site in West Java, Indonesia, is the world’s most ancient pyramid and could be more than 25,000 years old.

Such antiquity would be unprecedented. Stonehenge and the oldest major pyramids of Egypt are only a few thousand years old, while the previous record holder, Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe stone monuments, are thought to be about 11,000 years old.

But Gunung Padang could be more than twice the age of these ancient megaliths, say the authors in a paper in Archaeological Prospection. “Evidence from Gunung Padang suggests advanced construction practices were already present when agriculture had, perhaps, not yet been invented,” they claim.

The assertion made headlines around the world but has since led to a fierce backlash from many archaeologists, who say that none of the evidence presented by the team justifies their conclusions about the unprecedented antiquity of Gunung Padang. They argue that the settlement there was probably built a mere 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.

“The data that is presented in this paper provides no support for its final conclusion – that the settlement is extraordinarily old. Yet that is what has driven the headlines,” said Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University. “I am very surprised this paper was published as it is.”

The outcry has since forced the editors of Archaeological Prospection, which is published by Wiley, to launch an investigation. “The investigation … addresses concerns raised by third parties regarding the scientific content of our paper. We are actively engaged in addressing these concerns,” the paper’s main author – geologist Prof Danny Hillman Natawidjaja of Indonesia’s national research and innovation agency – admitted last week.

Controversy has been fuelled by the discovery that the paper was proofread by the controversial British writer Graham Hancock. He argues that a once sophisticated, ancient culture – subsequently destroyed in a cosmic incident – brought science, technology, agriculture and monumental architecture to the primitive people who populated the world after the last ice age. Gunung Padang could be an example of their handiwork, he has suggested in his Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse.