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FACT BRIEF

Did archaeologists find a 1 million-year-old artificial underground complex?

By Christiana Dillard
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NO

The archaeological site in question consists of approximately 3,500 well-studied underground chambers across various complexes, which extend across what is now central Israel. 

A social media claim offers no peer-reviewed scholarship in support of the idea of a million-year-old structure, and leading archaeological institutions say the man-made caves are only a few thousand years old. Human ancestors alive 1 million years ago would not have had the tools to create the structures found in the caves.

David Ilan, director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, says, "There are no such 1,000,000 year old underground complexes. At that point in time we are talking about Homo erectus, who could fashion course stone tools and perhaps light a fire, but there is zero evidence for carving stone or creating architecture."

See a full discussion of this at Lead Stories
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Smithsonian Human Origins Initiative Human Family Tree
Smithsonian Human Origins Initiative The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
Academia Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lead Stories
Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.