PatternsNo. 07 · Stratigraphy
Ground that argues with the date on the sign.
Weathering, sediment and buried courses that read older than the date on the sign. The one criterion where the evidence sits under the building rather than in it.
31 sites · 16 countriesEquirectangular · every dot is a site in the Atlas
Watch the comparison · 7 studies
Why Are There So Many Underground Cities? In Conversation with Ageless RockAncient AtlasIn conversation · what the deeper layers keep turning out to be
Ancient engineering on the Giza plateauUnchartedXEgypt · the Sphinx enclosure walls
Gunung Padang is 27,000 years old. The paper was retracted.The Cosmic SummitIndonesia · the retraction is part of the record
Atlantis in the Azores — examining the evidence on the groundArchaic LensPortugal · sceptical fieldwork
The 7,000-year-old Carrowmore megalithic cemeteryHugh Newman / MegalithomaniaIreland · older than the pyramids, undisputed
Is Sogmatar an ancient Sabian hall of records?Archaic LensTürkiye · rock-cut, undated
Phanom Rung temple — ancient underground technologyPraveen MohanThailand · what is below the platformContested dating, filmed at the section rather than argued from a chair.
What the pattern is, and what it is not: the argument in full
This is the most contested thing the Atlas tracks, and the tag means a dispute exists, not that it has been settled. Geological dating of a monument is genuinely hard: erosion rates vary, fill gets redeposited, and a buried course can mean an older phase or a later repair.
So these are collected as the argument rather than the answer. Where a claim is disputed in the literature, that dispute is the point of the page.
Every site in the Atlas that carries it · 31 across 16 countries
China
Indonesia
Italy
Lebanon
Mauritania
Mexico
Portugal
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
Thailand
Türkiye
The other patterns
Dimmed patterns are tagged across the Atlas but have no comparative study written yet.