Searches for Noah's Ark

Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c.275–339) to the present day. Despite many expeditions, no physical proof of Noah's Ark has been found.[1][2] Many of the supposed findings and methods are regarded as pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology by geologists and archaeologists.[3][4][5]

Mount Ararat (39°42′N, 44°17′E), satellite image – a stratovolcano, 5,137 metres (16,854 ft) above sea level, prominence 3,611 metres (11,847 ft), believed to have erupted within the last 10,000 years. The main peak is at the centre of the image.

Conflicting opinions

Modern organized searches for the ark tend to originate in American evangelical circles. According to Larry Eskridge,

An interesting phenomenon that has arisen within twentieth-century conservative American evangelism – the widespread conviction that the ancient Ark of Noah is embedded in ice high atop Mount Ararat, waiting to be found. It is a story that has combined earnest faith with the lure of adventure, questionable evidence with startling claims. The hunt for the ark, like evangelism itself, is a complex blend of the rational and the supernatural, the modern and the premodern. While it acknowledges a debt to pure faith in a literal reading of the Scriptures and centuries of legend, the conviction that the Ark literally lies on Ararat is a recent one, backed by a largely twentieth-century canon of evidence that includes stories of shadowy eyewitnesses, tales of mysterious missing photographs, rumors of atheistic conspiracy, and pieces of questionable "ark wood" from the mountain. (...) Moreover, it skirts the domain of pop pseudoscience and the paranormal, making the attempt to find the ark the evangelical equivalent of the search for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. In all these ways, it reveals much about evangelicals' distrust of mainstream science and the motivations and modus operandi of the scientific elite.[6]

Ark-seeker Richard Carl Bright considers the search for the ark a religious quest, dependent on God's blessing for its success. Bright is also confident that there is a multinational government conspiracy to hide the "truth" about the ark:

I firmly believe that the governments of Turkey, Russia, and the United States know exactly where the ark sits. They suppress the information, but (...) God is in charge. The structure will be revealed in its time. We climb the mountain and search, hoping it is, in fact, God's time as we climb. Use us, O Lord, is our prayer.[7]

Antiquity
Further information: Genesis flood narrative, Noah's Ark, and Mountains of Ararat

According to Genesis 8:4, the Ark came to rest "on the mountains of Ararat." Early commentators such as Josephus, and authorities quoted by him, Berossus, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus, record the tradition that these "mountains of Ararat" are to be found in the region then known as Armenia, roughly corresponding to Eastern Anatolia.

According to Jewish Rabbinic tradition, the Ark was looted in antiquity, the remains being used for idol worship, as related in the Talmud tractate Sanhedrin 96a by Sennacherib circa 705 – 681 BC,[8] and as related in the Midrash anthology Yalkut Shimoni by Haman circa 486–465 BC.[9]

Syrian tradition of the early centuries BC had a tradition of the ark landing at Mount Judi, where according to Josephus the remains of the ark were still shown in the 1st century BC. The location of the "Place of Descent" (αποβατηριον, i.e., Nakhchivan) described by Josephus was some 100 km to the southeast of the peak now known as Mount Ararat, in what is today Iraqi Kurdistan.

Sometime in the third century AD, Epiphanius of Salamis is recorded as having asked critics: "Do you seriously suppose that we are unable to prove our point, when even to this day the remains of Noah's ark are shown in the country of the Kurds?"[10] Later, in the fourth century AD, the Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom similarly asked during a sermon, "Do not the mountains of Armenia testify to it, where the ark rested? And are not the remains of the ark preserved there, to this very day, for our admonition?"[10]

Middle Ages and early modern period
Main article: Mountains of Ararat

Marco Polo (1254–1324) wrote in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo:

In the heart of the Armenian mountain range, the mountain's peak is shaped like a cube (or cup), on which Noah's ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark. It [the mountain] is so broad and long that it takes more than two days to go around it. On the summit the snow lies so deep all the year round that no one can ever climb it; this snow never entirely melts, but new snow is for ever falling on the old, so that the level rises.

Sir Walter Raleigh, writing c. 1616, made a laborious argument taking up several whole chapters of his History of the World, that the term "Mountains of Ararat" originally encompassed all the adjoining and taller ranges of Asia, and that Noah's Ark could only have landed in the Orient – especially since Armenia is not technically east of the plain of Shinar (or Mesopotamia), but more northwest.

19th-century expeditions
  • In 1829, Dr. Friedrich Parrot, who had made an ascent of Greater Ararat, wrote in his Journey to Ararat that "all the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it."[11]
  • In 1876, James Bryce, historian, statesman, diplomat, explorer, and Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, climbed above the tree line and found a slab of hand-hewn timber, four feet long and five inches thick, which he identified as being from the Ark.[12] In 1883, the British Prophetic Messenger and others reported that Turkish commissioners investigating avalanches had seen the Ark.[13]

Modern searches (1949–present)
The structure claimed to be Noah's Ark at the Durupınar site, Agri, Turkey

Searches since the mid-20th century have been largely supported by evangelical, millenarian churches along with local farmers and sustained by ongoing popular interest, faith-based magazines, lecture tours, videos and occasional television specials.

  • In 1949, Aaron J. Smith, dean of the People's Bible College in Greensboro, NC, led an unsuccessful expedition to locate the ark.[14]
  • Former astronaut James Irwin led two expeditions to Ararat in the 1980s, and was kidnapped once, but found no tangible evidence of the Ark. "I've done all I possibly can," he said, "but the Ark continues to elude us."[15]
  • In the 1980s and 1990s, the Durupınar site was heavily promoted by Ron Wyatt. It receives a steady stream of visitors and according to the local authorities a nearby mountain is called "Mount Cudi" (or Judi), making it one of about five Mount Judis in the land of Kurdistan. Geologists have identified the Durupınar site as a natural formation [16].

In the late 1990s, an Australian geologist, Dr Ian Plimer, announced he would challenge creation scientists over the Durupinar site. Plimer sued under Australia’s Trade Practices Act saying material from Sydney-based creationist Allen Roberts' "Ark Search" were "misleading and deceptive". The courts ruled that Roberts had made false claims, including a false claim to have commissioned or conducted research into the geological formation using sonar and false claims to have found nails and animal hairs. (Plimersaid he found golf tees and other plastic trash in mud from the site. However, the judge ruled Roberts' work was not "trade or commerce" and dismissed the case, ordering Plimer to pay court costs.[17] Wyatt's Ark Discovery Institute continues to champion the structure being a gigantic fossilised boat.[18]

  • In 2004, Honolulu-based businessman Daniel McGivern announced he would finance a $900,000 expedition to the peak of Greater Ararat in July of that year to investigate the "Ararat anomaly" – he had previously paid for commercial satellite images of the site.[1] After much initial fanfare, he was refused permission by the Turkish authorities, as the summit is inside a restricted military zone. The expedition was subsequently labelled a "stunt" by National Geographic News, which pointed out that the expedition leader, a Turkish academic named Ahmet Ali Arslan, had previously been accused of faking evidence of the Ark for a CBS documentary.[19]
  • In June 2006, Bob Cornuke of the Bible Archeology Search and Exploration Institute (or BASE Institute) took a team of 14 American "business, law, and ministry leaders" to Iran to visit a site in the Alborz Mountains, purported to be a possible resting place of the Ark. The team claimed to have visited an "object" 13,000 feet above sea level, which had the appearance of blackened petrified wooden beams, and was "about the size of a small aircraft carrier" [400 ft long (120 m)], and supposedly consistent with the dimensions provided in Genesis of 300 cubits by 50 cubits.[20] BASE Institute identifies this site as the site found by Ed Davis. The team also claimed to have found fossilised sea creatures inside the petrified wood, and in the immediate vicinity of the site.[21] No one outside the expedition has offered independent confirmation, and apart from a few purported beams, no photographic images of this supposed Ark in its entirety have been made available (though short video segments have been made available).[22] The team's consensus on the "object" is not absolute; Reg Lyle, another expedition member, described the find as appearing to be "a basalt dike".[21] BASE states that it does not claim to have found the Ark, only a "candidate".[23]
  • In 2007, a joint Turkish-Hong Kong expedition including members of Noah's Ark Ministries International (NAMI) claimed to have found an unusual cave with fossilized wooden walls on Mount Ararat, well above the vegetation line.[24] In 2010, NAMI released videos of their discovery of the wood structures.[25] Members of Noah's Ark Ministries International reported carbon dating suggests the wood is approximately 4,800 years old. It is unlikely that there was any human settlement at the site at altitude of 4,000 meters.[26] Randall Price, a partner with Noah's Ark Ministries International from early 2008 to the summer of 2008, stated that the discovery was probably the result of a hoax, perpetrated by ten Kurdish workers hired by the Turkish guide used by the Chinese, who planted large wood beams taken from an old structure near the Black Sea at the cave site.[27][28] In a response to Price, Noah’s Ark Ministries International stated that they had terminated co-operation with Price in early October 2008, and that he had never been in the location of the wooden structure they identified, and regretted his absence in their find. On their website they say they asked for the opinion of Mr. Muhsin Bulut, the Director of Cultural Ministries, Agri Province. The web site says that his response was that secretly transporting such an amount of timber to the strictly monitored area and planting a large wood structure at an altitude of 4,000 metres would have been impossible.[29] At the end of April 2010, it was reported that Turkey's culture minister ordered a probe into how NAMI brought its pieces of wood samples from Turkey to China.[30] A Scottish explorer investigating the NAMI claim was reported missing, on 14 October 2010, from an expedition on Ararat. His last camp site and personal effects were subsequently located but the circumstances remain unresolved.[31]

Unsubstantiated claims
A popular rumor claims that Nicholas II of Russia sent troops to locate Noah's Ark c. 1916–17. The historicity of this story, however, is disputed.
  • According to one story, Nicholas II of Russia sent an expedition to Mount Ararat in 1916–1918 to investigate the Ark. Allegedly, the reports were turned in to Leon Trotsky, who destroyed them. However, this tale claims that the expedition was launched just as the Russian Revolution broke out in Russia; the fact that Nicholas abdicated during the February Revolution at the beginning of March 1917 (Gregorian calendar) makes the story unlikely. A few sources put the date of the expedition at 1916, ("the Russian imperial air force ... is supposed to have sent 150 men up Mount Ararat in 1916 to explore a large object said to be as long as a city block", reads one).[32] The story seems to have been first brought to wide-spread attention in 1945, when the magazine New Eden published the story, attributed it to "Vladimire Roskovitsky".[33] According to Robert Moore: "However, [after the story was printed and popularized in 1945] serious questions and criticisms arose, and the fabric of the tale quickly began unraveling. By 1945, New Eden, where [the story] initially appeared, and at least two other magazines [that had also published the story], had printed retractions".[32] Despite the evidence against the story as it appeared in New Eden, the tale is still a popular one.
  • In 1952, Pastor Harold Williams wrote a story he claimed had been told to him by Haji Yearam, an Armenian Seventh-Day Adventist who had moved to the United States. He let Williams take down his account four years before his death in 1920. According to the story, Yearam as a boy was with his father when they guided three English scientists to the ark in 1856. Upon finding the ark sticking out of a glacier near the summit of Ararat, these scientists were however dumbfounded and angry, since they were "vile men who did not believe in the Bible". Having come to Ararat to disprove the Scriptures, they now tried to destroy the ark, but were not able to. They then took an oath to keep the discovery a secret and murder anyone who revealed it. About 1918, Williams claimed he saw a newspaper article giving a scientist's deathbed confession, which independently corroborated Yearam's story. Harold Williams said he preserved both Yearam's account and the newspaper clipping until 1940, when both were lost in a fire, leaving the story hearsay on Williams's part. Despite a diligent search, the ca. 1918 newspaper article with the scientist's "confession" has never been located. The online archive of the old USENET newsgroup talk.origins makes note of the seeming vilification of unbelievers and regards it as suggestive of "religious propaganda".[34] An academic study notes "the melodrama of Haji Yearam's tale".[35]
  • In 1955, French explorer Fernand Navarra reportedly found a 5-foot wooden beam on Mount Ararat some 40 feet under the Parrot Glacier on the northwest slope and well above the treeline. The Forestry Institute of Research and Experiments of the Ministry of Agriculture in Spain certified the wood to be about 5,000 years old – a claim that is disputed by radio carbon dating, as two labs have dated the 1969 samples, one at 650 C.E. ± 50 years, the other at 630 C.E. ± 95 years.[36] Navarra's guide later revealed the French explorer bought the beam from a nearby village and carried it up the mountain.[37]
  • Around 1960, helicopter pilot George Greene claimed to have observed the Ark on Ararat in 1953. It was lying on the side of a vertical rock cliff at the 13,000 to 14,000 ft. level. He photographed it from the air and tried to mount an expedition, but his photographs failed to convince any investors. Greene was found drowned in a swimming pool in British Guiana in 1962, and his photographs have not been seen since. In The Ararat Report, February 1990, Ark investigator Bill Crouse listed various "phantom arks" on the mountain, including a formation that "does look like the prow of a huge ship. In reality, it is a huge chunk of basalt. We believe this is also the 'ark' seen by George Greene in 1953."[38]
  • In 1970, an Armenian, Georgie Hagopian, claimed to have visited the Ark twice c. 1908–10 (1902 in another version, and 1906 according to a segment in the TV series Unsolved Mysteries) with his uncle. Hagopian claimed that he had climbed up onto the Ark and walked along its roof and that some of his young friends had also seen it. The online archive of talk.origins[39] notes that "[t]he apparent ease of getting to the ark conflicts with the accounts of other explorers."[40]
  • Ed Davis,[41] a US army sergeant based at Hamadan in Iran during World War II, reported that he had climbed Mt. Ararat with his driver's family in 1943. After three days' climbing, the group camped 100 feet above the Ark and was able to look down into it but not to approach closely. According to Davis's description, it had broken into two pieces, which had been pushed some distance apart by glaciers. Its description roughly matched Hagopian's, judging by Elfred Lee's paintings. Lee also interviewed Ed Davis and created a painting based on Davis's descriptions. The structures in the paintings appear to match.[42]
  • On February 20, 1993, CBS aired a television special entitled The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark. Produced by Sun International Pictures, it was intended as an updated follow-up to In Search of Noah's Ark. Hosted by Darren McGavin, the special featured interviews with John C. Whitcomb, Philip C. Hammond, Charles Berlitz, David Coppedge, Carl Baugh and Tim LaHaye. One section was devoted to the claims of George Jammal, who showed what he called "sacred wood from the ark." Jammal's story of a dramatic mountain expedition which took the life of "his Polish friend Vladimir" was actually a deliberate hoax concocted with scholar Gerald Larue, and Jammal – who was really an actor – later revealed that his "sacred wood" was wood taken from railroad tracks in Long Beach, California and hardened by cooking with various sauces in an oven.[43][44][45]

See also

References
  1. Mayell, Hillary (27 April 2004). "Noah's Ark Found? Turkey Expedition Planned for Summer". National Geographic Society. Retrieved 29 April 2010.
  2. Noah's Ark Quest Dead in Water – National Geographic
  3. Fagan, Brian M.; Beck, Charlotte (1996). The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195076184. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
  4. Cline, Eric H. (2009). Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199741076. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
  5. Feder, Kenneth L. (2010). Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0313379192. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
  6. Eskridge, Larry (1999). "A Sign for an Unbelieving Age: Evangelicals and the Search for Noah's Ark". In David N. Livingstone (ed.). Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective. D. G. Hart, Mark A. Noll. Oxford UP. ISBN 9780195353969.
  7. Bright, Richard Carl (2001). "Do the Locals Know?". Quest for Discovery: One Man's Epic Search for Noah's Ark. New Leaf. ISBN 9781614582045.
  8. English translation of Sanhedrin folio 96a, Sefaria
  9. ילקוט שמעוני פרשת בשלח, רמז רנ"ו
  10. Moore, Robert (1981). "Arkeology: A New Science in Support of Creation?" (PDF). Creation/Evolution (6): 6–7.
  11. Dr Friedrich Parrott
  12. James Bryce
  13. British Prophetic Messenger and the Turkish Commissioners
  14. Russia: Suspicion On The Mountain, Time Magazine, 25 April 1949
  15. James Irwin, from Arlington National Cemetery website
  16. bogus ark
  17. Leigh Dayton (June 1997). "Ark verdict spells ruin for geologist". New Scientist. Retrieved 16 July 2009.
  18. Wyatt Archeological Research Archived 3 July 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  19. Lovgren, Stefan (20 September 2004). "Noah's Ark Quest Dead in Water -- Was It a Stunt?". National Geographic. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  20. Has Noah's Ark Been Found? Archived 14 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  21. "Noah's Ark? For Real". 16 June 2006. Archived from the original on 3 July 2006.
  22. Dialup and broadband video footage from BASE
  23. "Noah's Ark: The Ark of Noah in Iran?". BASE. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  24. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 May 2010. Retrieved 26 May 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  25. NoahsArkSearch - YouTube
  26. Kelly, Cathal (27 April 2010). "Noah's Ark found, researchers claim". Toronto Star. thestar.com. Retrieved 19 December 2010.
  28. Tigay, Chanan (29 April 2010). "Ex-Colleague: Expedition Faked Noah's Ark Find". AOL News. AOL. Archived from the original on 2 May 2010. Retrieved 29 April 2010.
  29. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 May 2010. Retrieved 1 May 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  30. Chinese explorers stand by claim of Noah's Ark find in Turkey, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 May 2010
  31. Weather hits search for Noah's Ark man Donald Mackenzie, BBC News, accessed 24 September 2013.
  32. Moore, Robert (1981). "Arkeology: A New Science in Support of Creation?" (PDF). Creation/Evolution (6): 8.
  33. Noorbergen, Rene (2004). The Ark File. New York City, NY: TEACH Services, Inc. pp. 82–83.
  34. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH505_1.html
  35. Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective, edited by David N. Livingstone et al., Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 250
  36. TalkOrigins "Navarra's Wood"
  37. Ancient High Technology – Evidence of Noah's Flood?
  38. The Ararat Report, ed. Bill Crouse, February 1990 (http://www.christianinformation.org/Feb1990AraratReport.pdf, retrieved June 2014)
  39. CH505.4: Hagopian and the Ark
  40. Hagopian, however, claims that he visited during drought period and that only the mountain's peak was covered in snow
  41. Noah's Ark Search – Mount Ararat
  42. Mount Ararat Photo Album
  43. Jammal, George. "Hoaxing The Hoaxers: or, The Incredible (phony) Discovery of Noah's Ark". Atheist Alliance International. Archived from the original on 11 September 2007. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  44. Cerone, Daniel (30 October 1993). "Admitting "Noah's Ark" Hoax". Los Angeles Times.
  45. Rosenberg, Howard (1 November 1993). "Will CBS Realize the Error of its Ways?". Los Angeles Times.

Further reading
  • Cummings, Violet M., Noah's Ark: Fable or Fact?, (1972) ISBN 0-8007-8183-X

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