New evidence strongly suggests Indonesia's Gunung Padang is oldest known pyramid

The dating is this paper is definitely questionable. For one, the extent of their analysis seems to have been taking samples, sending them to the lab (which could have widely varying error checking, I haven't worked with this one specifically), and using stock date calibration software. Unfortunately, they're sampling an area known to be volcanic (which tends to produce older than true dates), with lots of water (matter transports through soil), across a difficult boundary (the Holocene), and a lot of vegetative intrusion (another common error source). They attempt to dismiss the latter by saying it can only make dates younger, which isn't even true, only typical.

The headline would be a tough argument to make even if their evidence was good given the prior history here, but they don't seem to have put even basic effort into it.

1. It's fundamentally anti-intellectual. A lot of the show is ultimately based on attacking archaeology as a field on the basis that it rejects his ideas, without ever attempting to interact with the (well-grounded) reasons his ideas are being rejected. Quite frankly, takes like "the most dangerous show on Netflix" help Hancock more than hurt him, which is one of the reasons I'd never call it that.

2. The ideology is... uncomfortable. His underlying thesis amounts to "white people built every interesting archaeological structure we find in the world before suddenly disappearing without leaving any other trace," although the "white" has been removed from overt mentions in more recent year. Yet you can still guess that it's still covertly there by observing that European constructions never seem to undergo this process.

3. Bad archaeology and pseudoarchaeology can fuel modern arguments for screwing indigenous peoples out of their land or culture, etc.

4. Poor archaeological practices can ruin the ability to do good archaeology on the site in the future. Note the excavation we're talking about here is an example of such poor achaeological--the site has been greatly disturbed by the excavation, which could well foreclose the ability to properly date the site in the future. On a related note, this can also fuel the general public to visit a site and, well, loot it.

5. A final note is that the demand for ancient aliens-style shows crowds out any attempt by archaeologists to actually put together shows about real, interesting archaeological discovers. Producers don't want a show about Çatalhöyük or Göbekli Tepe or Norte Chico that produce interesting questions that challenge what people likely learned in school about the history of civilization. No, you have to attack it with an ancient aliens or whatever conspiracy theory to be able to actually make the documentary. Mainstream archaeology is considered "boring" even when it is absolutely the opposite.

1. Soil is alive--it is constantly interacting with the atmosphere, if it is close enough to the surface, and the nutrients which seep through it and the various organic matter that lives inside it. You might be able to reliably date a peet bog or other undisturbed anoxic system, but packed soil in a tropical environment is a bit more suspect (no matter how buried). Otherwise the "date" of the soil is continuously evolving based on local conditions that are difficult to calibrate. That's why archeologists typically date things like the charred remains of a cooking fire, not soil.

2. Ok, assume that these dates are in any way meaningful. That still doesn't establish the age of the structure as claimed in the article. Surface dates are totally suspect for the reasons I gave above, but for the purpose of this point we can grant it. So Unit 1 provides only an unsurprising minimum age. The packed dirt in Unit 2 & 3 on the other hand is construction back-fill: the radiocarbon age of the packed soil is the average age of the soil they used in construction. But that soil was already old. Think about it this way: if you took that surface soil from Unit 1 and put it on top of your house porch, we'd now be able say your porch was constructed between 2,000-1000BC.

This article establishes that there were two construction phases, and that these phases were likely carried out at different times because different sources of back-fill soil were used. But that's it. The actual dates have no relation to the human activity.