Row over 38,000-year-old metropolis of misplaced civilisation ‘buried underneath pyramids’ – what we all know
The team behind the research claim that, which the pyramids themselves are around 4,500 years old, the structures below are more to the tune of 38,000 years old
An ‘underground city’ has been found beneath the Pyramids, we errr, think… maybe.
Actually we, like everyone else, don’t know anything for sure yet with a row now going on between the upper echelons of Egyptology and radar-based research circles over whether or not the discovery of hidden structures are as dramatic as claimed.
Boffins from Italy have presented findings regarding underground columns and chambers, thousands of feet deep, bellow the Khafre Pyramid.
The team behind the so-called find claim that, while the pyramids themselves are around 4,500 years old, the structures below are more to the tune of 38,000 years old.
The claims from the researchers, Professor Corrado Malanga, from Italy’s University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde, haven’t been peer-reviewed yet and already other academics have been hitting back hard.
Are claims about the structures under the Pyramids true?
As we’ve said, no one knows yet. A battle is raging between two sides, largely around the technique used by Biondi and Malanga.
Radar expert Professor Lawrence Conyers of the University of Denver stands firmly opposed. He reckons that radar pulse technique used – similar to technology used for taking a look at the bottom of oceans – wouldn’t be able to penetrate that depth.
Speaking to the Mail, he said he thought the information about the scale of the find was “a huge exaggeration”. He did concede that smaller structures like smaller shafts could be present but at the moment, little is clear as the two sides scrap it out.
One notable point that has been brought up during the saga is the reputation of Malanga into question, noting he has long been interested in circumspect theories surrounding UFO and idea of the Giza power plant.
Despite this, he told a press conference: “Until yesterday, Egyptologists said there was nothing, that it is an empty mountain of stones, but there are a lot of things”.
Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister of antiquities, was speaking to The National, however when he said the theory was “completely wrong”.
He joins a chorus of independent experts who claim that while the research method they have used stands up, the way the data has been presented makes it impossible to use.
What are the researchers claiming?
Malanga and Biondi have claimed that structures spanning around 4,000 feet could be older than the first known man-made structure by tens of thousands of years.
They think they have found a series of columns with possible staircases winding their way around the outside, descending to a depth of more than 2,100ft, with further possible chambers suspected of being at the bottom.
They think they could relate to an old text from the Egyptians that points towards another civilization that existed before our own, but which was wiped out in a major event.
Professor Conyers, however, claims that the idea is “outlandish” and thinks that at that point people were mostly “living in caves”.
“People did not start living in what we now call cities until about 9,000 years ago,” he told the Mail.
What now?
Speaking to the Daily Star, Rebecca Leigh, a historian at Academized laid things out succinctly.
“With this latest discovery we can see that ancient Egypt still has plenty of secrets to share,” she said. “The hidden passageways inside the Great Pyramid are like something straight out of an adventure movie. It’s also exciting because ancient texts have long hinted at secret chambers. So this could finally prove them right.
“We have more questions to answer now. Were these spaces part of the pyramid’s construction? Or do they hold something more? Every new find reshapes what we think we know. And that’s what I think makes Egyptology so incredible, you know. There’s always more to the story.”
