'Noah's Ark' remains discovered 12,000ft up a

[The Original Chupa King]

The only reason I could think of for a boat there would be "ARK."

Where is the proof it is a boat? Looks like a barn. I wonder what all they found? It is intrigueing to say the least.

I doubt highly that it could a barn, seeing as it's 12000 ft up a mountain. If they find it ISN'T the ark of Noah, my second guess would probably be just a house, maybe a very large hermitage of some sort. Or perhaps a secret warehouse or something along those lines. We can't be sure unless they pull the whole thing out.

[donehung]

Interesting archeaological find but.... On an side note i found the holy grail in my attic last week.

[RazielKTB]

Hahahahahaha. But wasn't ARK round-shaped?

[Guyver]

First of all, I think this piece is very interesting and thank the mods for posting it. I don't understand all the skepticism and negative comments. If nothing else, it is a significant archaeological find. At best, if it does in fact turn out to be the ark, then it is the most significant historical find ever - IMO.

Either way it deserves proper study. I'm not saying it is the ark, but I do know that the Bible description states the wood was covered with "pitch" which I do see in the photos. I hope this is the real deal.

[SAmbag]

At least this is one that will probably be cleared up given some time. Investigators not wanting to release information always raises red flags for me though. Actual finds = Funding, so it's a big red flag when they're not wanting to release hard evidence in order to receive funding, eh?

And just on a side note - if I were Noah I'd probably dismantle the ark to build stuff with. That'd be easier than chopping down trees right? Does it say anything in the Bible about anything pertaining to that? Why do people think the Ark would still be around?

Edited April 28, 2010 by SAmbag

[Guyver]

At least this is one that will probably be cleared up given some time. Investigators not wanting to release information always raises red flags for me though. Actual finds = Funding, so it's a big red flag when they're not wanting to release hard evidence in order to receive funding, eh?

And just on a side note - if I were Noah I'd probably dismantle the ark to build stuff with. That'd be easier than chopping down trees right? Does it say anything in the Bible about anything pertaining to that? Why do people think the Ark would still be around?

No, the Bible doesn't say what happend to it after it came to rest on the mountain. But, you bring up a good point. It very well could have been disassembled and used for other purposes. That raises the question; what's on the mountain now?

[freeman88]

I was reading the comments on the article page and i deeply feel sorry for christians:P Their blind faith in something so fake and manipulative really rubs me the wrong way, how can someone be so blind?

[Astute One]

If this is true than it is 100% true that God exists! It was always true that He exists but now I can go and say to scientists who deny God that I have proof so where is yours

How would finding the Ark prove their is a God exactly?

If it can be proved it is, THE ARK, then it proves that ARK did exist.

There will still be no proof that God has anything to do with it.

So, stick with the faith. That's all the proof anyone has for now.

[digitalartist]

Non-Biblical? There are supposed to be 500 flood legends around the world, and the basic story of Noah predates the Babylonians... so as an event, it could have happened... Perhaps a survival story (or many separate stories) of the end of the last Ice Age.

Here's a list:

http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

There are some 267 accounts that I have found and read through. Only about 13% describe a world wide flood and they seem to be spread through the Near East, Africa, Europe and Asia. Some other stories clearly indicate local floods and one supposedly happened in 614 AD.

The Babylonian story was written some 1600 years before the biblical one.

All together, the stories do not tell of or support a global flood but instead, various types of floods (and non-floods) that have supposedly happened around the world.

[digitalartist]

So they find a ship in a mountain and it can only be the "Ark"?

Come on...

If religion is based on "faith" then why do people search so hard to find "proof"?

Also,

"The team said the wood appeared to be cypress although, according to the Bible, the ark was built from gopher. "

Last time I checked, "gopher" is an unknown type of wood, lost in translation. So I guess these guys know it all...

It is my opinion that when they wrote of the type of wood, they mistakenly spelled it Gopher instead of Kopher. Kopher/Kophar wood is best described as wood covered with pitch, which is what the bible indicates.

[digitalartist]

If you need evidence to believe, then its called "science".

I have this lovely piece of wood from the ark of the covenant. Now I'm sure you won't want evidence of it's authenticity, you'll just believe and send me 2,999 for the item plus shipping and handling. Belief is what every conman relies on when they make a sale.

[digitalartist]

I doubt highly that it could a barn, seeing as it's 12000 ft up a mountain. If they find it ISN'T the ark of Noah, my second guess would probably be just a house, maybe a very large hermitage of some sort. Or perhaps a secret warehouse or something along those lines. We can't be sure unless they pull the whole thing out.

It's supposedly 12,000 feet up the side of the mountain but that has not been verified and with no external pictures it could just as easily have been pictures taken at a much lower altitude in the winter of some other object.

[+OverSword]

There are some 267 accounts that I have found and read through. Only about 13% describe a world wide flood and they seem to be spread through the Near East, Africa, Europe and Asia. Some other stories clearly indicate local floods and one supposedly happened in 614 AD.

The Babylonian story was written some 1600 years before the biblical one.

All together, the stories do not tell of or support a global flood but instead, various types of floods (and non-floods) that have supposedly happened around the world.

I was under the impression (from various tv shows admitedly) that there is a flood layer when strata is analyzed all over the world, confirming that at some point in the worlds history there truly was a global flood.

[voiceofreason]

For me, there are several things wrong with this article. The spokesperson states that they found seven wooden compartments. Can these compartments truely be classified as a boat? What shape are they? are they in line or scattered about? Also, the statement 'It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it,' is made by a filmmaker, not an archeologist, historian or religeous scholar.

The wood has been allegedly carbon dated to around 2800bc. It is around this time that we see the unification of Egypt, and the building of the Pyramids. This would not have been possible had the world been destroyed by flood.

Also the article contradicts itself by stating:-

At a press conference yesterday to announce the discovery, another team member, Panda Lee, said: 'I saw a structure built with plank-like timber.

'Each plank was about eight inches wide. I could see tenons, proof of ancient construction predating the use of metal nails

And later states:-

The structure had several compartments, some with wooden beams, the team said.

The wooden walls of one compartment were smooth and curved while the video shown by the explorers revealed doors, staircases and nails.

The first structure describes seems to lack nails, whereas the second has nails used in its construction. Nails where certainly making an appearance around this time, so are we actually looking at separate structures from different dates, one pre and one post nails?

Then the statement:-

The group ruled out identifying the find as a human settlement, saying none had been found so high up in that area. They are keeping the exact location secret.

Just because none have been found in that area, doesn't mean there weren't any. It could even have been an outpost, shepherds settlement, crude temple complex or even an observatory.

Before any real conclusions can be drawn, the site needs to be identified, the wood age verified by dendrochronology, and the site mapped. Then any finds need to be analysed to see if they tie in the the Noahs ark claim, or rather (and I suspect this to be the case) point to another use for the site and buildings.

This is all assuming that what has been found is indeed a genuine archeological site.

Edited April 28, 2010 by voiceofreason

[GreyWeather]

The two things that scream fake with this "discovery" (bear in mind this site was found roughly 20 years ago) is the hilarious straw still left in the animal holds, and the fact that there is no picture of the ark from the outside. The reasoning behind this is that they don't want to give their location away -- how convenient.

What is the motivation behind this? This discovery, even if it is the actual ark used by Noah will not convert any non believers and will not really matter to non-evangelical Christians, Jews or Muslims because they believe anyway - they don't need physical "proof" and don't feel the need to convert the "heathens" via relics like this one, potentially.

I was going to post the exact same thing.

Pictures inside the supposed ark, yet no photograph outside the ark. The straw is an obvious 'wtf' moment, even more so that the wood is not even slightly decomposed...

[Esoteric Toad]

I would question the fact that I origianlly saw this article posted on The Sun

[mumatua]

I was reading the comments on the article page and i deeply feel sorry for christians:P Their blind faith in something so fake and manipulative really rubs me the wrong way, how can someone be so blind?

Christian faith isnt as blind as you think, you just have to experience God for yourself to understand it.

I would say how can YOU be so blind, but i wont, cause i dont wanna start an argument, so just pretend i didnt say it..

It would be cool if its the ark..

[Professor Buzzkill]

Anyway, even a massive flood did actually happen, 12,000 feet of water??

That is near impossible

[lotsocats100]

I was reading the comments on the article page and i deeply feel sorry for christians:P Their blind faith in something so fake and manipulative really rubs me the wrong way, how can someone be so blind?

I feel sorry for you because you don't believe. You're not looking hard enough for the evidence of God. God Bless You.

[voiceofreason]

Anyway, even a massive flood did actually happen, 12,000 feet of water??

That is near impossible

I think you can also rule out a tsunami lifting the boat and depositing it on the mountain.

Versuvius is the only volcano (that I have managed to find info on) to have erupted around that time (1680 bc)and in that area (although still some distance away) that may have caused a tsunami. However, Mount Ararat is some distance inland and Greece and its islands are in the way.

[Professor Buzzkill]

I think you can also rule out a tsunami lifting the boat and depositing it on the mountain.

Versuvius is the only volcano (that I have managed to find info on) to have erupted around that time (1680 bc)and in that area (although still some distance away) that may have caused a tsunami. However, Mount Ararat is some distance inland and Greece and its islands are in the way.

Exactly. But i think that there is some cases of glaciers forming lakes by plugging a gap between mountains. One was 15,000 years ago in america My link but it was only 2000 feet deep.

I can't think of any other way a boat found its way to the top of a mountain apart from someone carried it there.

[+HerNibs]

There is no evidence to support a global flood. Lots and lots of reasons why it wouldn't be possible.

Problems with a global flood

The Flood Itself

Where did the Flood water come from, and where did it go? Several people have proposed answers to these questions, but none which consider all the implications of their models. A few of the commonly cited models are addressed below.

Vapor canopy. This model, proposed by Whitcomb & Morris and others, proposes that much of the Flood water was suspended overhead until the 40 days of rain which caused the Flood. The following objections are covered in more detail by Brown.

•How was the water suspended, and what caused it to fall all at once when it did?

•If a canopy holding the equivalent to more than 40 feet of water were part of the atmosphere, it would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels.

•If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. Noah and company would be poached. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling.

•A canopy of any significant thickness would have blocked a great deal of light, lowering the temperature of the earth greatly before the Flood.

•Any water above the ozone layer would not be shielded from ultraviolet light, and the light would break apart the water molecules.

Hydroplate. Walt Brown's model proposes that the Flood waters came from a layer of water about ten miles underground, which was released by a catastrophic rupture of the earth's crust, shot above the atmosphere, and fell as rain.

•How was the water contained? Rock, at least the rock which makes up the earth's crust, doesn't float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or Adam's time for that matter.

•Even a mile deep, the earth is boiling hot, and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached.

•Where is the evidence? The escaping waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. (Noah would have had to worry about falling rocks along with the rain.) Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.

Comet. Kent Hovind proposed that the Flood water came from a comet which broke up and fell on the earth. Again, this has the problem of the heat from the gravitational potential energy. The water would be steam by the time it reached the surface of the earth.

Runaway subduction. John Baumgardner created the runaway subduction model, which proposes that the pre-Flood lithosphere (ocean floor), being denser than the underlying mantle, began sinking. The heat released in the process decreased the viscosity of the mantle, so the process accelerated catastrophically. All the original lithosphere became subducted; the rising magma which replaced it raised the ocean floor, causing sea levels to rise and boiling off enough of the ocean to cause 150 days of rain. When it cooled, the ocean floor lowered again, and the Flood waters receded. Sedimentary mountains such as the Sierras and Andes rose after the Flood by isostatic rebound. [baumgardner, 1990a; Austin et al., 1994]

•The main difficulty of this theory is that it admittedly doesn't work without miracles. [baumgardner, 1990a, 1990b] The thermal diffusivity of the earth, for example, would have to increase 10,000 fold to get the subduction rates proposed [Matsumura, 1997], and miracles are also necessary to cool the new ocean floor and to raise sedimentary mountains in months rather than in the millions of years it would ordinarily take.

•Baumgardner estimates a release of 1028 joules from the subduction process. This is more than enough to boil off all the oceans. In addition, Baumgardner postulates that the mantle was much hotter before the Flood (giving it greater viscosity); that heat would have to go somewhere, too.

•Cenozoic sediments are post-Flood according to this model. Yet fossils from Cenozoic sediments alone show a 65-million-year record of evolution, including a great deal of the diversification of mammals and angiosperms. [Carroll, 1997, chpts. 5, 6, & 13]

•Subduction on the scale Baumgardner proposes would have produced very much more vulcanism around plate boundaries than we see. [Matsumura, 1997]

New ocean basins. Most flood models (including those above, possibly excepting Hovind's) deal with the water after the flood by proposing that it became our present oceans. The earth's terrain, according to this model, was much, much flatter during the Flood, and through cataclysms, the mountains were pushed up and the ocean basins lowered. (Brown proposes that the cataclysms were caused by the crust sliding around on a cushion of water; Whitcomb & Morris don't give a cause.)

•How could such a change be effected? To change the density and/or temperature of at least a quarter of the earth's crust fast enough to raise and lower the ocean floor in a matter of months would require mechanisms beyond any proposed in any of the flood models.

•Why are most sediments on high ground? Most sediments are carried until the water slows down or stops. If the water stopped in the oceans, we should expect more sediments there. Baumgardner's own modeling shows that, during the Flood, currents would be faster over continents than over ocean basins [baumgardner, 1994], so sediments should, on the whole, be removed from continents and deposited in ocean basins. Yet sediments on the ocean basin average 0.6 km thick, while on continents (including continental shelves), they average 2.6 km thick. [Poldervaart, 1955]

•Where's the evidence? The water draining from the continents would have produced tremendous torrents. There is evidence of similar flooding in the Scablands of Washington state (from the draining of a lake after the breaking of an ice dam) and on the far western floor of the Mediterranean Sea (from the ocean breaking through the Straits of Gibralter). Why is such evidence not found worldwide?

•How did the ark survive the process? Such a wholesale restructuring of the earth's topography, compressed into just a few months, would have produced tsunamis large enough to circle the earth. The aftershocks alone would have been devastating for years afterwards.

Lots more at the link above.

So, no global flood.

The article doesn't give a location of the boat other than some vague "in the mountains".

The article doesn't link to any scientific support for the carbon dating.

No pictures of the outside of the "boat" or even closeups of the "wood".

I can't even discuss the straw crap.

No real evidence that there is a boat, on a mountain, that was built by an 800 year old guy, who was told how to build it by an invisible guy in the sky.

Nibs

[Professor Buzzkill]

Nibs, we understand the science behind why a global flood would be impossible. So if there was a boat at 12000 feet (and im not saying that there is with any certainty) what would be a plausable reason?

[Username Already In Use]

"So if there was a boat at 12000 feet (and im not saying that there is with any certainty) what would be a plausable reason? "

The hitch broke and it rolled away?

[+HerNibs]

Nibs, we understand the science behind why a global flood would be impossible. So if there was a boat at 12000 feet (and im not saying that there is with any certainty) what would be a plausable reason?

As soon as we find one at that level we can speculate as to why it's there and how old it is.

Right now we have some evangelists who claim that there is a boat on a mountain.

IF there is wood under ground up a mountain, I'll still go with Emma - mine.

IF there was a boat on a mountain we would need FAR more info before we could do any real speculating.

Otherwise, we are just making up or adding to a religious myth.

Nibs

ETA -

Or an undersea volcano blew it into the mountains of turkey.

Or magic.

Or aliens.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Edited April 28, 2010 by HerNibs