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Earth Sciences. The Earth Has Experienced a Worldwide Flood. . Noah’s Ark Probably Exists . The precise location of the Ark is an open question. While most sightings point to Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, consideration should also be given to a few nearby mountains in western Iran.
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Noah’s Ark Probably Exists • The precise location of the Ark is an open question. • While most sightings point to Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, consideration should also be given to a few nearby mountains in western Iran. • The following are the more credible claimed sightings. • Some are undoubtedly mistaken. • The search continues.
1. Ancient Historians • Ancient historians, such as Josephus, the Jewish-Roman historian, and his earlier historical sources, wrote that the Ark existed. • Marco Polo also wrote that the Ark was reported to be on a mountain in greater Armenia. • From A.D. 200 to 1700, more than a dozen other Christian and Jewish leaders wrote that the Ark was still preserved, although few claimed to have seen it.
2. British Scientists • In about 1856, three skeptical British scientists and two Armenian guides climbed Mount Ararat to show that the Ark did not exist. • Allegedly, the Ark was found, and the British scientists threatened to kill the guides if they reported it. • Years later, one of the Armenians (then living in the United States) and one of the British scientists independently reported they had found the Ark.
3. James Bryce • Sir James Bryce, a noted British scholar and traveler of the mid-nineteenth century, conducted extensive library research concerning the Ark. • He became convinced that the Ark was preserved on Mount Ararat. • Finally, in 1876, he climbed Ararat and found, at the 13,000-foot level (2,000 feet above the timberline), a piece of hand-tooled wood, four feet long, that he believed might be from the Ark.
4. Turkish Commissioners • In 1883, a series of newspaper articles reported that a team of Turkish commissioners, while investigating avalanche conditions on Mount Ararat, unexpectedly came upon the Ark projecting out of melting ice after an unusually warm summer. • They claimed they entered and examined part of the Ark.
5. George Hagopian • In an unusually warm summer (about 1904), a 10-year-old Armenian boy, George Hagopian, and his uncle climbed Mount Ararat and supposedly reached the Ark. • The boy climbed on top of it and described the structure as a flat-bottomed, petrified barge without nails. • It had many windows on top, each “big enough for a cow to walk through.” • Two years later, Hagopian again visited the Ark. • Shortly before his death in 1972, his detailed testimony was tape recorded. • This recording has undergone voice analyzer tests which indicated his account was quite credible.
6. Russian Pilot • A Russian pilot flying over Ararat in World War I (1916) thought he saw the Ark. • News of his discovery reached the Czar, who sent two large expeditions to the site. • The soldiers found and explored the boat, but before they could report to the Czar, the Russian Revolution of 1917 began. • Their report disappeared, and the soldiers scattered. Some eventually reached the United States and Canada. • Although a much later magazine account had a few fictional elements, further investigations have confirmed the primary details. • In February 2000, Joseph Kulik, an alleged expedition member, was interviewed. • Details he provided duplicate those in other accounts.
7. Ed Davis • In July 1943, Ed Davis, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, was stationed in Iran. • There he developed a close friendship with some Lur tribesmen who said they knew the location of Noah’s Ark. (The Lurs are related to the Kurds.) • When Davis asked to see the Ark, they first took him to their village. • There Davis claims he saw items from the Ark: a cage door, latches, a metal hammer, dried beans, shepherd staffs, oil lamps, bowls, and pottery jars still containing honey. • This Muslim tribe considered it a religious duty to prevent outsiders from seeing the Ark, even if killing was necessary. • However, their close friendship with Davis made him an exception.
Ed Davis with Elfred Lee in 1986. Artist Elfred Lee (right) drew this picture based on the claimed eyewitness account of Ed Davis (left). In 1970, Lee also drew a picture of the Ark in the presence of another claimed eyewitness, George Hagopian. Because both Hagopian and Davis were present as Lee made each drawing, they requested many on-the-spot changes. As Lee was completing Davis’ drawing, he suddenly realized that each man was describing the same object. This, Lee said, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Tribal leader Abas-Abas and his seven sons took Davis on a three-day climb up the northeast side of what Davis thought was Mount Ararat. (Based on Davis’ description of his trip, he probably was on a mountain in northwestern Iran.) • Steep, slick rocks, made worse by cold rain, prevented them from getting closer than one-half mile from the Ark. • Two broken portions of the Ark, lying on their sides and one-third of a mile apart, were visible during moments when fog and clouds lifted. • Wooden beams, three decks, and rooms were seen. • Abas-Abas told Davis other details: the Ark’s wood was extremely hard; wooden pegs were used in its construction instead of nails; its large, side door opened from the bottom outward (like a garage door); and the human quarters consisted of 48 compartments in the middle of the top deck. • In 1986, several dozen Ark researchers questioned Davis extensively, and in 1989 he passed a lie detector test.
The CIA’s “Ararat Anomaly” • In 1974, during a private meeting with William Colby, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he was asked if he was aware of the claimed sightings of Noah’s Ark. He said he was not. After summarizing several “sightings,” It was told him that a dangerous and expensive search, for an object with profound international importance, could be done safely and cheaply with technology Colby controlled. Perhaps the CIA already had information in its files that could help in this search.
Weeks later, there was contact by a man I will call H.S. He said that Director Colby asked him to see if any information could be provided. In the discussions, H.S. asked many questions. About a year later he called to tell that his work was completed and to invite them to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In his office, H.S. said he had examined all photography of the Mount Ararat region. He could not be sure if an object he was seeing was the Ark or a rock. H.S. was asked if, after studying the information on the various claimed sightings, he thought the Ark was on Ararat. He said, “Yes.” He was asked why, because he had just told that no photographs clearly showed the Ark. H.S. responded, “There is too much smoke for there not to be fire.” There was great confidence in his candor. Suggestions that any agency of the U.S. government would (or could for long) withhold conclusive evidence that Noah’s Ark exists are implausible.
The CIA calls this object the “Ararat Anomaly.” • It was first photographed by a fixed-wing aircraft in 1949 and later by a U-2 in 1956. • Satellites photographed it in 1973, 1976, 1990, and 1992. • Some of the low-resolution, 1949 photographs have been released to the public, thanks to the efforts of law professor Porcher Taylor. • In 1999 and 2000, private funds paid for the best private sector satellite (IKONOS) to photograph the object at a resolution of 1 meter. (Some CIA photographs had a 6-inch resolution—enough magnification to see a soccer ball from space.)
Insight asked seven diverse photo analysts to independently study the available low-resolution photographs. • Two analysts said it was likely a rock, four said it could be a man-made object, and one called the evidence inconclusive. • Some factors considered were: shape, dimensions, shadows, color, thermal characteristics, nearby snow and rock patterns, and possible movement of the object.
I suspect it is not the Ark, because it has too little in common with the most credible sightings, especially its specific location on Ararat. • Nevertheless, whenever the Turkish government finally gives permission, an expedition needs to go to the location of the “Ararat Anomaly” (39.703°N, 44.275°E) and dig into the ice. • Unfortunately, during recent years, the Kurdish rebellion in eastern Turkey and the Turkish military’s iron control have prevented access to important areas on Mount Ararat.
8. George Greene • George Greene, an oil geologist, reportedly took several photographs of the Ark in 1953 from a helicopter. • After returning to the United States, Greene showed his photographs to many people but could not raise financial backing for a ground-based expedition. • Finally, he went to South America where he was killed. • Although his pictures have not been found, more than 30 people have given sworn, written testimony that they saw these photographs that clearly showed the Ark protruding from melting ice at the edge of a precipice.
9. Gregor Schwinghammer • Gregor Schwinghammer claims he saw the Ark from an F-100 aircraft in the late 1950s, while assigned to the 428th Tactical Fighter Squadron based in Adana, Turkey. Schwinghammer said it looked like an enormous boxcar lying in a gully high up on Mount Ararat. He said U-2 pilots had photographed it. • Note: Many others claim to have seen the Ark. Some stories are of questionable, and others are inconsistent with many known details. Only the most credible are summarized above.
Many of the Earth’s Previously Unexplained Features Can Be Explained by a Cataclysmic Flood.
The origin of each of the following is a subject of controversy within the earth sciences. • Each has many aspects inconsistent with standard explanations. • Yet all appear to be consequences of a sudden and unrepeatable event—a cataclysmic flood whose waters erupted from interconnected, worldwide subterranean chambers with an energy release exceeding the explosion of 10 billion hydrogen bombs. • Consequences of this event included the rapid formation of the features listed below. • The mechanisms involved are well-understood.
The Grand Canyon and Other Canyons Mid-Oceanic Ridge Continental Shelves and Slopes Ocean Trenches Earthquakes Magnetic Variations on the Ocean Floor Submarine Canyons Coal and Oil Formations Methane Hydrates Ice Age Frozen Mammoths Major Mountain Ranges Overthrusts Volcanoes and Lava Geothermal Heat Strata and Layered Fossils Metamorphic Rock Limestone Plateaus Salt Domes Jigsaw Fit of the Continents Changing Axis Tilt Comets Asteroids and Meteoroids
The Seemingly Impossible Events of a Worldwide Flood Are Credible, If Examined Closely.
10. Water above Mountains? • Is there enough water to cover all the earth’s preflood mountains in a global flood? • Most people do not realize that the volume of water on earth is ten times greater than the volume of all land above sea level.
Most of the earth’s mountains consist of tipped and buckled sedimentary layers. • Because these sediments were initially laid down through water as nearly horizontal layers, those mountains must have been pushed up after the sediments were deposited.
If the effects of compressing the continents and buckling up mountains were reversed, the oceans would again flood the entire earth. • Therefore, the earth has enough water to cover the smaller mountains that existed before the flood. (If the solid earth were perfectly smooth, the water depth would be about 9,000 feet everywhere.)
11. Shells on Mountains • Every major mountain range on earth contains fossilized sea life—far above sea level and usually far from the nearest body of water. • Attempts to explain “shells on mountain tops” have generated controversy for centuries.
An early explanation was that a global flood covered these mountains, allowing clams and other sea life to “crawl” far and high. • However, under the best conditions, clams move too slowly to reach such heights, even if the flood lasted thousands of years; besides, the earth does not have enough water to cover these mountains. • Others said that some sea bottoms sank, leaving adjacent sea bottoms (loaded with sea creatures) relatively high—what we today call mountains. • How such large subterranean voids formed to allow this sinking was never explained. • Still others proposed that sea bottoms rose to become mountains.
Mechanisms for pushing up mountains were also never satisfactorily explained. • Because elevations on earth change slowly, some wondered if sea bottoms could rise miles into the air, perhaps over millions of years. • However, mountain tops erode relatively rapidly—and so should fossils slowly lifted by them. • Furthermore, mountain tops accumulate few sediments that might protect such fossils. • Some early authorities, in frustration, said the animals grew inside rocks—or the rocks simply look like clams, corals, fish, and ammonites. • Some denied the evidence even existed.
The means by which mountains were pushed up in hours during a global flood will soon be presented. • The mechanism is simple, the energy and forces are sufficient, and supporting evidence is voluminous—not just sea shells on mountains.
12. Flood Legends • A gigantic flood may be the most common of all legends—ever. • Practically every ancient culture has legends telling of a traumatic flood in which only a few humans survived in a large boat. • This cannot be said for other types of catastrophes, such as earthquakes, fires, volcanic eruptions, disease, famines, or drought. • More than 230 flood legends contain many common elements, suggesting they have a common historical source that left a vivid impression on survivors of that catastrophe.
Chinese Word for Boat. Classical Chinese, dating to about 2500 B.C., is one of the oldest languages known. Its “words,” called pictographs, are often composed of smaller symbols that themselves have meaning and together tell a story. For example, the classical Chinese word for boat, shown to the left, is composed of the symbols for “vessel,” “eight,” and “mouth” or “person.” Why would the ancient Chinese refer to a boat as “eight-person-vessel”? How many people were on the Ark?
13. Was There Room? • Could the Ark have held all the animals? • Easily. • A few humans, some perhaps hired by others, could build a boat large enough to hold representatives of every air-breathing land animal—perhaps 16,000 animals in all. (Of course, sea creatures did not need to be on the Ark. Nor did insects or amphibians. Only mammals, birds, reptiles, and humans. Much plant life survived the flood in a surprisingly simple way.) • The Ark, having at least 1,500,000 cubic feet of space, was adequate to hold these animals, their provisions, and all their other needs for one year.
Since the flood, many offspring of those on the Ark would have become reproductively isolated to some degree due to mutations, natural genetic variations, and geographic dispersion. • Thus, variations within a kind have proliferated. • Each variation or species we see today did not have to be on the Ark. • For example, a pair of wolf-like animals were probably ancestors of the coyotes, dingoes, jackals, and hundreds of varieties of domestic dogs. (This is microevolution, not macroevolution, because each member of the dog kind can interbreed and has the same organs and genetic structure.) • Could the Ark have held dinosaurs and elephants? • Certainly, if they were young.
Ark in Football Stadium. This sketch shows how the Ark would fit into a football stadium. The Ark is frequently depicted as a small boat by those who have not bothered to check its dimensions. It was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall. While there were several ancient cubits (generally the distance from a man’s elbow to the extended fingers), a cubit was typically 1.5 feet or slightly longer. The 450-foot-long Ark would snugly fit in a football stadium and would be taller than a four-story building. This sketch of the Ark is based on George Hagopian’s credible account. The Ark did not look like a boat. It had a flat bottom, was not streamlined, and had windows in its top. The flat bottom would have made loading on dry land possible. Streamlined shapes are important only for ships designed for speed and fuel efficiency—neither of which applied to the Ark. Windows in the side might be nice for the passengers (or for the proverbial giraffes to stick their necks out), but side windows limit the depth of submergence and the maximum load. Riding low in the water gives a boat great stability. Actually, the Hebrew word for Ark does not mean boat; it means box, coffin, or chest—an apt description unknown to Hagopian.
Special Thanks to: • ICR – Institute For Creation Research • Center For Scientific Creation • Dr. Ray Bohlin, Probe Ministries • Dr. Tim Standish, University Professor • AIG – Answers In Genesis • Origins Resource Association • Northwest Creation Network • CRSEF – Creation Research, Science Education Foundation
