The discovery of a 3,000-year-old pyramid-shaped mausoleum in Kazakhstan has gone viral over the past months, with several media outlets proclaiming the structure to be the world’s first pyramid. But archaeologists say the structure, which contains a series of five walls that gradually get higher toward the center, is not nearly as old as these news reports claim. The mausoleum is 6.6 feet (2 meters) high and about 49 by 46 feet (15 by 14 m) long, said Viktor Novozhenov, an archaeologist with the Saryarka Archaeological Institute at Karaganda State University in Kazakhstan who helped excavate the mausoleum. “It’s made from stone, earth and fortified by slabs in the outer side,” Novozhenov told Live Science. A number of media outlets that reported the discovery did not include the size of the structure, which, compared to Egypt’s royal pyramids, is very small. While the exact age of the structure is uncertain, it likely was built during the late Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago, Novozhenov said. This is more than 1,000 years after the Egyptians built the step pyramid of Djoser, Novozhenov said, so it is not the “world’s first pyramid.”
Read more at – http://www.livescience.com/55796-ancient-mausoleum-not-worlds-first-pyramid.html
