I saw a show today on The History Channel called Historys Mysteries, and one of the subjects of topic was The Mt Ararat Anomoly. Some people claim that this is Noah's Ark, some say its ice or a natural rock formation. I found it quite interesting.

Heres an article I found on the web, along with a pic. What do you all think?

CLICK HERE

I saw the same show lisa, and for the amount of people that have been there searching for a long time now, you'd think they would have found something that is as big as the Ark is supposed to be.And the picture could be just a rock formation, as some of the skeptics said on the show.
If there was any chance that it was the Ark, every tom, dick and harry would have been there like a flash and we haven't heard anything so me thinks there's nothing there but rocks.

I always figured that the story of Noah's Ark was a myth based upon the end of the last Ice Age when water levels rose and all the land-based animals had to scurry to the tops of mountains and hilly areas in order to survive.

The idea of all of the animals (in pairs) being in one boat is utterly preposterous.

The funny thing however is that not only does the bible mention Noah, but many other religions! There is one link within most of the religions of that age, and all of them mention the great deluge. It seems that each of these religions had their own "noah" and each had some sort of Ark. Therefore this means that all these texts refer to the same accounts but with different intreperters. One example (the only one I remember) comes from the Saga of Gilgamesh, which places the great deluge at the same time as the one mentioned in the Bible. I think the saga of Gilgamesh is sumerian, or Babylonian, and thus it has no major links to the bible. I don't know but there seems to be a lot in favour of this hypothesis, the reason that many people can't go is because it compromises Turkish security, and the government won't allow it. I have various articles I could quote from but I have them at home and not in the UK, I'll be able to retrieve them by July the 14th? If you are willing to bear with me, I'll be much obliging to post it here in this thread. I'll tell you this much, I believe that the anomaly is more than just a rock formation.

As strange as putting wolves and sheeps on the same ship.

But I have to confess that I find something exciting in this kind of research, like the lost ark, the graal or other relics...

I find it terribly exciting too Ronin! Imagine...

Delving down the catacombs retrieving the Holy Grail, or opening the Lost Ark, or finding Noah's Ark! The best one however would be finding the Garden of Eden!!!!!

Hey don't hold it against me I have an Indiana Jones complex!!!!!!!

Awwww damn, I wish I could be Indiana Jones!

Lol Vox I always wantedto be Indiana Jones when I was a kid too .
Only a girly version of course

in hinduism, the god vishnu reincarnated himself as a fish, to save the man called manu. because there was to much evil between men, and loads of daemons, the gods flooded the earth. vishnu saved manu because he believed that humans had potential to be good, and manu was one of the kind good men left. dont know about the animals thogh....ill see what i can find

ok, i was told wrong in the previous post.

here is what i have found:

In Hindu myth, the first incarnation of the god Vishnu. When the Deluge came, he saved the mortal Manu Vaivasvata. This mortal found a small fish, which asked his protection. The fish grew rapidly, and Manu recognized it as Vishnu incarnate. At the fish's command, Manu embarked in a ship together with the Rishis and the seeds of all existing things, and the ship, bound to the fish's great horn, was preserved during the Flood. Finally it rested on a peak of the Himalayas. Matsya later destroyed an underwater demon who had stolen the Vedas.


so there was a ship here aswell with seeds of all life.

funny thing happened when i was looking. i went to yahoo and searched vishnu. then i saw the results, i had a feeling of deja-vu, all links i remember seeing on a page.....i hhave never searched for vishnu on any search engine until now..

Lol @ Kismit I always Wanted Indiana Jones another girlie vision.

Somewhere recently a navy pilot told of having been sent up over Ararat to take detailed photos of the anomaly, though there are no records of this having been part of the mission of that carrier now.

Also, the CIA, I believe, has some files on Ararat. I don't think these have been released to the public.

Facts which are suggestive that somebody in the government was interested, at least..

As for sending up a team to go looking, you would need to know where to go I suppose. There may be other problems as well. I've seen a movie, from 1977 I think, about the mystery.. but I saw it way back then and I can't remember what it said. There was some reason they couldn't get to the site though.

I have also seen images of a weird looking thing.. from a distance it does look like a huge rectangular thing that has broken in two.

But if it were really there, and we still didn't have proof of it, that would suggest a global conspiracy to keep it quiet. I simply can't see the point of it.

Well I dunno Sidhe, could it be to deny Christianity absolute proof that the bible is correct, and thus keeping it in line with all the other religions in the world...

tun tuh tun tuuuun.... tun tuh tuuuuuuuun, tun tuh tun tun..... tun tuh tun tun TUN, tun tuh tun tuuuun.... tun tuh tuuuuuun, tun tuh tun tun, tun tuh tun tun, tun tuh tun, tuuuuuuuuun tun tuh TUUUUUUUUN! or something to that effect! Indiana Jones RULES!!!!!!

My leather skipping rope has snapped, so I'm using it as a whip, and I'm chasing girls all over my dorm hall whipping the air as I go, it's quite worrying!!!!

Ahhh Halo . I allways wanted Hans Solo another girlie version

vox, i dont think that it is to deny christianity. as i have alredy said, hindism had a great flod with a giant ship, it is a fact that there are stories of the persians telling the same story as part of their religion ( long before the bible was written on paper). but it may be possible that is the reason, i doubt it though. i would think that if they have found it and released it, it would mean that there could be a real fact in religious beliefs, whereas science tries to dismiss religion as fact. it would also cause more 'holy wars' as most religions that have a flood and ship in their religion would say it is theirs, and they want it back.

sorry if it was too long winded.

Isn't the girlie version of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft?

Lara Croft's not reall L.B. sheesh not like the hansome Hans Solo or Indy

Good thought...very interesting..

I saw that episode! It was pretty good - but I don't think they have found Noah's Ark! I just feel like it's something that will never be found - or if they find it they will never get to it!

The search for Noah's ark is very much the preserve of fundamentalist Christians; if the Flood did not happen, Noah did not exist and then the bible is not inerrant.

The countless 'Flood myths' were probably a response to quite extensive local flooding that, while not covering the world and everything in it, at least covered what the victims considered the world.

The next problem is that Ararat is an ancient name for Armenia, and then later a small area of Armenia. The mountain Ararat in Turkey wasn't called as such until the eleventh century. Also, there are plenty of other sources which locate the ark in Iran, Armenia, Greece and a whole load in various places in Turkey.

Basically, claims that the ark is on Ararat are crippled by historical inaccuracies from the start.

And then, if the ark HAD, by some miracle ( ) ended up on mount Ararat in north eastern Turkey, it would have been shifted centuries ago by glacial movement, and certainly at least part of it would have broken up.

As far as I remember, Ararat is not a particularly high mountain, and any pieces of the ark scattered about the lower slopes would be easily reached by anybody wanting to go and have a look.

And then, of course, a single ship, 300 cubits long to carry two of every animal species? It would necessarily have been a flotilla of ships, if not a veritable armada. Which ship is supposed to be on Ararat? Where are the others? Perhaps there's an ark at the top of every mountain postulated by ancient sources as the resting place of the one true ark!

From what I understand of the stories relating to Noah et al. is that these stories only come from areas around the middle east and that other cultures existing at the time have no such myths. In relation to this, there is some geological evidence that a large flood did take place in that area, but it in no way covered the whole earth. Chances are, that idea was religious hyperbole to instill the fear of God et al. into others.

Aslan makes a good point about the size of the ship and it not being able to accomodate all of the animals. To add to this, conider that some animals are found only in certian continents (or regions that are even smaller). How did something like the ring tailed lemur, which lives on an isloated island (Madagascar) manage to march all the way to the Middle East? Or how did the Panda, which eats only bamboo, manage its way to the ark without a foodsource along the way? More importantly, how did Noah manage to get them all back to the right place to not disrupt the fossil record?

Fish are more or less understood to have taken care of their own, but all that rain would have mixed the oceans with the lakes and very few species could have handled this. Again, how did it happen that none of these animals happened to die in the 100 some odd days before the waters went back to normal levels without leaving fossil remains all over the place?

Peraps you can say that God et al. managed these feats by guiding the animals and making sure none of the fishes died and transporting all of the animals back to where they came from. If he had all that power, why bother with the 40 days of rain crap? God shows tendancy towards getting a little lazy at the end of the week and he was probably not up for the 100 days of intense micromanagement to accomplish this task. It would have been far easier on everyone if he just struck dead all of the bad people through some less difficult task.

I watched breifly a documentary last night on Discovery something that said the flood myth was started from a giant flood that occured around the sea of death as it was known in ancient times. Caused by the melting of the ice caps.

There are myths of the flood in the traditions of many widely separated peoples:

the most widely known, though not the oldest is that of Noah, contained in Genesis Chapters 6-9.

There is a Mesopotamian legend, from which the one in Genesis is derived, though it is far older than the Genesis one. There are several known versions of this account and one of them was incorporated by a Babylonian named Berosus, and is written in Greek in the 3rd Century BC. It says that Cronus appeared to Xisuthros, 10th king of Babylon, in a dream and warned him about great flood that would destroy mankind. He was told that he would be saved only if he did 2 things first, one was to write a history of the world and bury it a sippura, then he had to build a ship 5 furongs in length, 2 in width, onto which he took his family, friends, birds and only 4 footed creatures. When it came to rest he sent out birds and when one did not come back he went off the ship with his family and buit an alter, and was raised to the heavens, his friends stayed on the ship during this time. They became worried for him and went looking for him and his voice told them not to worry and to go from Armenia, where they had landed and go to Babylon and dig up the history.

There is an earlier account than this, and it forms part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was not involved in the flood but heard about it from his immortal ancestor Utnapishtim. A difference with this story though is that Utnapishtim created a barge and put on it a house with 6 storeys. After the flood the gods repented and said that mankind shal only ever again be killed y the animals or by plague, and never agaian by flood.

The oldest known account of this story is that inscribed on a clay tablet found during excavations at Nippur, and was written in about 2100BC, in the language of the Sumerians. The hero in this version is called Ziusudra, and was a king and a priest of Enki. He built a ship after being warned. but then the tablet is broken and we do not know about what happens directly afterwards, such as how big it was, then afterwards after 7 days and nights had passed the rain stopped andEnki was appeased after a offereing was sent.

Ziusudra was given immortality and the title preserver of the seed of mankind. The deluge is mentioned in the Sumerian kings list, after a few kings names it states 'Then came the flood. After the flood, kingship again descended from heaven.' Archaeologists have proved that there had been a flood back then.Sir Leonard Woolley, in 1929, found evidence of a vast inundation, greater in extent than anything subsequently known in the region, that had occured about 3000BC. It had been big enough to cover practically the whole of lower mesopotamia and drown most of its inhabitants. It is easy to see how after this a myth came up about the destructin of mankind.

While the flood myth is widespread, it does not occur everywhere. They are found in India, Burma and elsewhere in southern Aisa, in Australia and New Zealand, New Guinea and the islands of the Pacific, in North and South America. Mexico and some regions of Europe. All of the follow the same general pattern.

India has several versions, of which the earliest known is preserevd in the Satapatha Brahmana. In this is is stated that the hero, Manu, was warned and then helped by a fish. He alone survived the flood. When it was over the world was empty, but because he desired children, he offered sacrifices of soured milk, curds and whey. Out of these a woman was miraculously created. and the race of manu was created.

In the early form of Greek flood legend, as told by Pindar in the 5th Century BC. every living creature was destroyed, with the ezception of Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha. These 2 wheathered the storm in an ARk which Deucalion had created., and which came to rest on Mount Parnassus. They recreated manking again, by throwing rocks over their heads, each one that landed became either man or woman, but it does not say how the animals where saved, but according to a later version it says that Deucalion took all the animals 2 by 2 into the ark with him and by the power of the Gods they did not harm one another.

There was also a Greek tradition that Deucalions flood was not the only one. There had been two others, one in the time of Ogyge, king of thebes. and one after it, when Dradanus wass drivemn from his home by a sudden and terrible, but apperently, not a worldwide flood. he escaped upon a raft, or in some versions an inflated skin, and drifted to mount Ida, he landed there and in due course became the founder of the city of Troy.

Sir j. G. Frazer has pointed out that the myth of Africa and western Asia there are no worldwide flood legends, the same can be said of western Europe. But, there are stories of local or partial floods, not caused by rian, but by the vilent encroachment of the sea, or land subsidence. In the form we know of them today, they come from medieval times, but they probably came from stories from much earlier times, and may well have a foundation in fact.

One of these, is the story of the Lowland Hundred, a Welsh legend. This was atract of land lying westward of the present west coast of Wales, submerged now under Cardigan Bay. According to the stroy it was fertile and prosperous territory, 40 miles by 20 miles, which went from Bardsey Island to the River Teifi. It was protected from the sea by a system of sluices, and had 16 noble cities. the cheif of which was called Caer Gwyddno. The site of this town was supposed to be marked by a numvber of underwater boulders at Sarn Cynfelin, they are natural formations, but in popular belief they were manmade causeways, or defensive battlements.

Another Welsh story, that is most likely a varient is that of Tyno Helig, it was a little kingdom that extended from Caernavonshire coast and is now sunk in Conway Bay. This catastrophe was supposed to have been prophesied for 4 generations before it happened.

Further south, in Cornwall, there is the tradition of Lost Lyonnesse, it is better known than others because of King Arthur and Tristan, in Cornish it was called Lethowstow, and lay between Lands End and the Scilly Islles.

In western Brittany, there is the elaborate version of this legend, in the form of the city of Ker-Is., its site is given as in the Bay of Douarnenez, it was protected by a strong dyke and sluice gates, but to no avail, it was supposed to have vanished in about the 6th Century.

Like all the sinking land stories, all of them were prosperous and fertile, and all of them aoart from Lyonnesse happened suddenly because of thw wickedness of its inhabitants.

Lyonnesse sunk over a time, and the inhabitants moved away. There are supposed to be traces of the 140 churches and other buildings at Lyonnesse, that you can go and see.

ooh, al, alot of stuff there. i think i saw that program too. i think it was the one where they said that the genesis flood was a story told by the bablonians.

as regard to the manu story, animals survived because the fish (reincranation of vishnu) had taken the life seed and energy from every species of animal and plant in order to recreate them after the flood

Well as I know and as I have always heard ... that Noah's arch is in Iraq ... My parents have seen it before the invation of Iraq on Kuwait ...
And people can still see it as I THINK ...
I don't know what happend to it now after the war ...

I found this web site ... it might help ...

http://answering-islam.org/Hoaxes/noah2.html

Just to clear it up, only the first paragraph that I put was what the show was about, the rest is what I have put out of my head.

Djdodo,

the website which you gave a link to (thank you) is a website debunking the finding of Noah's ark. The story itself is fairly shoddy, the two versions can't agree on where the find was supposed to have happened (the valley of Kiev and the valley of Kaat), the find was not registered in any scholarly journal, but was, apparently, mentioned in the Manchester Sunlight, a paper which doesn't and never has existed.

At the end of the account of the find people are told that

'If you ever have a chance to visit the Soviet Union, you would be able
to see the actual [name]plate (from the arc), and it will increase your faith in Ahel-al-Biet.'

Which seems to say it all, really. An exercise in faith-boosting, the same way that the alleged bones of various saints are paraded on their feast days in various parts of the world to wow the masses.

And not least, if people are still willing to claim that they have found the arc (however ineptly they claim it), it's a pretty clear bet that nobody really believes that it's been found yet.

i think i remember hearing or reading about a flood myth from the inca, maya or native americans.

A very debated topic, eh...

ooo i found this linkie has loads of flood myths on it. funny how alot of them involve destrying evil, and a few sevivors

There's another "Noah's Ark" somewhere in Asia I think. It's on a mountain or something. The length and width matches how they were explained in the bible. They found fosilized animal droppings and iron things while digging in. The other one which is in a glacier had been seen before. A man claimed to have been in there and seen stalls big enough for animals. And a president, can't remember which was flying past there and they saw a huge, dark object. And fosils have been found of animals dying in a swimming position. Pretty weird.

I agree with Aslan and Space Moose here.

Also why would they care so much about birds, can't they fly and swim?!?

There are many religions both christianity and otherwise that have stories of the prophets and floods and etc, etc...

as for Noah's arc and the covenant and the scrolls..grail..and the such.. the world as shifted greatly since the great flood happened and names have changed of countries. It could be in Armenia or in the Iraq region... however if the wood is as old as it is said to be it would be petrified and therefore not act like wood.. right?

Another thing is thag with the melting of the glaciers and the shifting of the plates in the earth it could be moved and grown up around.

I trully believe that there is an arc, covenant, more scrolls and the such..
and if and when we are ment to find these items.. we will

Eyewitnesses say this thing is up there. The question is, what is it?


Here is a photo in 1989 courtesy of www.noahsarksearch.com

Its the same object, what is it?

The anomoly first shown is nothing more than rock and ice, that is why we get to see it.

Wow, talk about the uniformed. "Flood stories" are global. And since we are somewhat on that topic, the idea that all these stories popped up independently is kind of ridiculous. It is the single memory of one event.

Yes, Mt Ararat is a bastardized name. Masis, or Agri Dagh got the name becuase so many people have seen it up there.

There are many known false sightings too. The first picture is a huge chunk of basalt. It is all over the mountain. On the show when the guy has the images from Ikonos is know now as the ice cave or eye of the bird. It is a rock formation from the right angle that looks peculular. That is all. CIA imagery will never be released becuase we dont want anybody to know how much we know.

If the Ark survived to this day, which it is belived to be, it is buried in the ice cap which is why it is only visible a few times a century.


Compare that and its shape to the eyewitness description.

Is it the Ark? Maybe. The mountain has been closed there for several decades due to civil unrest. It is not known when anybody can return to the site. That is the Abich II glacier. Yes it may be broken ito several pieces according to the locals.

And it isnt two of every animal. It was two by two of the animals taken. 7 pairs, a male and his mate of clean animals. Those are listed in the Bible in a few places. Those are animals to be eaten. 2 of the unlcean, those are also listed. Could it work? Again we dont know for sure, but people have studied it. The volume is enough for 116,000 sheep sized animals, tons of food, dirt, hay and water. The overwhelming size of animals is smaller than a sheep. And dont take adults. That is the theory anyway.

This may have been asked and discussed before, but, the ark is supposed to have had 2 of every animal going in it, it would have taken years and years to round up all those animals, due to the amount. If it really happened as is described in texts, then it would be more feasable to suggest that 2 of every animal in that geographical location was collected.

The story of the flood is in very nearly all myths the world over, one reason for this, instead of it being a world-wide flood, which is a big flood, is for it to be so old that when it happened all peoples were still living in that area, and had not migrated over the earth.

As study shows that people came out of Africa and then dispersed out over to the East, all people that went that way had the flood myth in their mythos, those that went West, did not have the myth in the mythos and, that is where the myths come from that do not have it in.

Instead of one source for all the flood myths in the worlds, wouldn't it be more reasonable to think that any flood, being the most common and most destructive of the natural phenomena these people had to deal with, would be the basis for any story that talks about the near extinction of life on earth? Much like today we have movies about giant comets striking the earth? It's the only natural thing that we can think of that would take out most of the planet at one go.

Anyways, you are correct about the Inca having a flood legend. My grandmother told it to me when I was a tyke. It seems that one day the farmers noticed that the Llamas were looking up into the sky and sighing sadly. When they asked the animals what was wrong, the llamas responded that soon the sky would begin raining and not stop for a full tunr of the moon. The people, alarmed, gathered all their stock and property and moved to the highest mountain they could get to. The rain fell and the people survived. Not too incredibly similar to the Middle Eastern versions, but then we had decent mountains, so we didn't need arks.

The fact that there are a bunch of flood stories only helps the case for the truthfulness of the Genesis account (as some folks have already noted). In fact, that is the case for many of the Near-East myths. It is true that there are other creation stories that precede the Genesis account. However, we can't figure out who's got the real deal by just finding out which was written first. Besides, Genesis is written as an attack on alternative stories, so its very presence assumes the existence of other texts. The presence of competetive texts all describing similar events has to do more with their interpretations of events, not whether or not they happened.

As far as Noah's ark is concerned, I'm not skeptical so much of the story, as much as I am of the findings. If folks have got it, they should just cough up either the ark or some serious evidence. No more weirdo "I dun seent it!!" speculation. Also, even if the ark isn't found, that doesn't mean the story isn't true.

Nickma71, the second attachment you sent--is that a picture or a drawing? Where did you get it? It looks more like a drawing.

I think that it is interesting the Chinese character for large boat is :

vessel + eight + people

looks a bit like a submarine, if anything. heh...that's a wicked idea, noah's nuclear submarine.

Sorry to burst peoples bubble but the chance that the shape is the Arc is minimal to say the least.

Firstly speculation about observations of rock features have a reputation of turning out wrong. Take the Mars face and pyramids for example and countless photos of land features proported to be alien spacecraft.

Secondly if a huge boat was buried on top of a mountain it would have been discovered long before the CIA existed to cover it up. Could it not have easily been found any time in the last 2000 years? Why not until now?

Thirdly, as already mentioned, a series of middle eastern flood stories pre-date the biblical account. One interesting point is that these stories become progressively more exagerated. The earliest versions describe a local, not global flood along with other survivors.

Fourthly there are tiny practical problems with how the biblical flood story plays out if taken literally. How were kangeroos gathered and deposited to Australia, etc.

I believe the stories are based on a factual flood that occured locally in the middle east area thousands of years ago. However I do not believe every animal was placed upon this arc, perhaps local cattle but certainly not marcupials from australia.

This shouldnt be too hard...

The second half of the show where the Lawyer from Florida who went to West Point is barking up the wrong tree. The ararat anomoly is a rock, or a vocanic vent. It has also moved? How was that?

The one clue that can not be ignored was the former officer who when directly asked about it responded with

Comments on what looks like the bow of a ship on the side of Mt Ararat?

I think it is also a rock. An ark is a "chest" or a "coffin", like the ark of the covenant. Not a boat. But that is weird and explains sightings by pilots. The ark is the oversized recatangular structure on the northeast side in the Abich II glacier. Well, technically, it isnt known what that thing is, as nobody has documented going to it.

Some eyewitnesses say they did, but it cant be proven. It looks like this summer may be the first time in a long time that that part of the mountain will be open to the researchers.

And you think a wooden ark survived mostly intact through out all these years?
And anyone who claims that the ark has been found because he finds a piece of rock thats partly shaped like it is a religious nut who is doubting his own religion and feels the need for something, anything that might help him reaffirm his belief.

Sometimes I see a cloud that looks like Mickey Mouse, does that mean that its Mickey Mouse?