Noah's Ark Discovered in Iran?

National Geographic ^ | 7/7/06 | Kate Ravilious

[freedom44]

High in the mountains of northwestern Iran, a Christian archaeology expedition has discovered a rock formation that its members say resembles the fabled Noah's ark.

The team discovered the prominent boat-shaped rocks at just over 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) on Mount Suleiman in Iran's Elburz mountain range.

"It looks uncannily like wood," said Robert Cornuke, president of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute (BASE), the Palmer Lake, Colorado-based group that launched the expedition.

Photos taken by BASE members show a prow-shaped rock outcrop, which the team says resembles petrified wood, emerging from a ridge.

"We have had [cut] thin sections of the rock made, and we can see [wood] cell structures," Cornuke said.

Cornuke acknowledges that it may be hard to prove that this object was Noah's ark. But he says he is fairly convinced that the rock formation was an important place of pilgrimage in the past.

The BASE team has uncovered evidence of an ancient shrine near the outcrop, suggesting that this was an important place to people in the past, Cornuke says.

"We can't claim to have conclusively found the ark, but it does look like the object that the ancients talked about," Cornuke said.

Noah and the Flood

The story of Noah's ark is told in three major world religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

The Book of Genesis describes a great flood created by God "to destroy all life under the heavens."

But before the flood, God told Noah, one of his human followers, to build an ark and fill it with two of every species on the Earth.

But this location doesn't fit the description given in Genesis of the ark's passengers journeying from the east to arrive at Mesopotamia.

Cornuke and his team think that Mount Ararat might be a red herring.

"The Bible gives us a compass direction here, and it is not in the direction of Turkey. Instead it points directly towards Iran," Cornuke said.

Pilgrim Shrine?

Using the Book of Genesis and other literary sources, the BASE team journeyed to Iran in July 2005 to climb Mount Suleiman.

They chose Mount Suleiman after reading the notes of 19th-century British explorer A. H. McMahan.

In 1894, after climbing Mount Suleiman, McMahan wrote in his journal, "According to some, Noah's ark alighted here after the deluge."

McMahan also spoke of wood fragments from a shrine at the top of the mountain where unknown people had made pilgrimages to the site.

"We found a shrine and wood fragments at 15,000 feet [4,570 meters] elevation, as described by McMahan," Cornuke said.

Subsequent carbon dating of samples from the shrine showed the wood fragments from the site to be around 500 years old.

Lower on the mountain, expedition members came across the ark-like rock formation, which they estimate to be about 400 feet (122 meters) long.

Rocks From the Sea?

Not everyone is convinced by the BASE team's claims.

Kevin Pickering, a geologist at University College London who specializes in sedimentary rocks, doesn't think that the ark-like rocks are petrified wood.

"The photos appear to show iron-stained sedimentary rocks, probably thin beds of silicified sandstones and shales, which were most likely laid down in a marine environment a long time ago," he said.

Pickering thinks that the BASE team may have mistaken the thin layers in the sediment for wood grain and the more prominent layers as beams of wood.

"The wider layers in the rock are what we call bedding planes," he said.

"They show fracture patterns that we associate with … the Earth processes that caused the rocks to be uplifted to their present height."

The boat-shaped structure can also be explained geologically, says retired British geologist Ian West, who has studied Middle Eastern sediments.

"Iran is famous for its small folds, many of which are the oil traps. Their oval, ark-like shape is classical," he said.

Meanwhile, ancient timber specialist Martin Bridge, of England's Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, is doubtful that a wooden structure would have lasted long enough to petrify under ordinary conditions.

"Wood will only survive for thousands of years if it is buried in very wet conditions or remains in an extremely arid environment," he said.

Bible scholars think that Noah built his ark somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, making preservation highly unlikely except in extreme environmental conditions.

And even if the wood had petrified, there seems to be little evidence of Noah's carpentry, according to Robert Spicer, a geologist at England's Open University who specializes in the study of petrification.

"What needs to be documented in this case are preserved, human-made joints, such as scarf, mortice and tenon, or even just pegged boards. I see none of this in the pictures. It's all very unconvincing," Spicer said.

Bridge, the Oxford timber specialist, points out that it would also be impossible for a boat to run aground at 13,000 feet.

"If you put all the water in the world together, melting both the ice caps and all the glaciers, you still wouldn't reach anywhere near the top of the mountain," he said.

[gandalftb]

Yup, it's shale, no doubt. Wood cannot petrify in 7,000 years and would not do so on an exposed mountain side. It take a lot of external pressure to drive minerals into wood and can only happen by being buried.

Nice try. Send it to Art Bell.

[sine_nomine]

It is good to read books, too. Rehwinkel - The Flood, published by Concordia Publishing House. That book is dated but has plenty of interesting information.

[CarolinaGOP]

Ping for reading later.

[proudpapa]

You probably don't believe that Moses parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites out of Egypt.

And that the pursuing Egyptians and their chariots were wiped out by the sea once the Israelites reached safety.

You probably wouldn't believe it if you saw it with your own eyes: http://www.wyattarchaeology.com/red_sea.htm

[MineralMan]

What is sad is that so many folks are so easily duped. Anyone with any background whatever in geology would see those photos and recognize a shale outcropping. If I saw it, I'd be interested to know what fossils might be found in that shale, and whether there were small crystals of pyrite in it.

Yet, let some YEC website publish a photo of something that looks vaguely like wood, and so many people are so eager to accept that. It's amazing.

We're apparently failing, in our primary and secondary schools, to teach even the basics of geology.

[proudpapa]

A funny thing keeps happening when people come up with theories that stories from the Bible are really just unrealistic fables. Researchers prove them wrong.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/soc/EDOM.asp

[Theo]

Your saying that the animals left the ark "2 x 2." This tells me that you are ignorant of Scripture. Perhaps you should read the biblical account before you trash it.

FWIW, Noah brought 7 pairs of each "clean" animal. It's likely that in the year or so that Noah and his family were in the ark, the animals had offspring.

Why has your knowledge of Scripture not changed since you were a child?

[bmwcyle]

This is a Conservative web site "Liberalartian".

[Coyoteman]

"Who was there to remember this flood that killed every human except the ones in Noah's ark?"

The decendants of Noah and his children.

In southern Alaska there is a cave, from which an individual was recovered. He was dated over 10,000 years old.

mtDNA shows some of his descendants can still be found on the west coasts of North and South America, and a few places elsewhere.

How do you explain that? No replacement by Noah's mtDNA.

And this is only one of the findings of archaeology in the western US that disputes the notion of a global flood at the generally appointed date ca. 2300 BC.

[null and void]

Yup. Ask someone form New Orleans about the hurricane.

They'll likely as not tell you everything was covered with water.

[norton]

regarding "carnivores must eat meat..."

You might check out what Purina is selling you as dog food (dog = carnivore) & toss that back at the debate as well.

[Theo]

If there were 2 of every species, they would all be inbred by now and extinct ...

You, too, suffer from biblical illiteracy, instead choosing to rely on something you heard in a children's song or a TV sitcom. Perhaps you should read Scripture a bit more thoroughly before you ridicule it.

Your being wrong about how many of each "kind" of animal Noah had in the ark tells me that you very well may be wrong about what you believe Scripture says about other things. Wouldn't it be prudent of you to study this book before forming negative a priori opinions of it?

[null and void]

Global warming. Bush's fault!

As a side note: today, something like 80% of the world's population lives within 200 ft of sea level...

[Coyoteman]

After all, don't many geologists believe in Pangondwondea (spelling?) where most of the earths land mass was once joined together. Suppose the ark was somewhere in that area, some animals migrated to specific area more suitable for themselves, and then the land split off? I am not sure, but is that a possiblej scenario?

That was many millions of years ago. The commonly accepted date for the flood was about 2300 BC (with some estimates a little earlier; see below). Does not compute!

The date of the global flood:

2252 BC -- layevangelism.com

2304 BC -- Answers in Genesis (+/- 11 years).

2350 BC -- Morris, H. Biblical Creationism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993.

2370 BC -- TalkOrigins.com

3537 BC -- Setterfield (1999)

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

He was writing a myth that had been drummed into pakistani children's heads for generations,...

Moses, a prince of ancient Egypt, wrote a Pakistani myth? Interesting...

[mdmathis6]

Genesis says the "mountains of Ararat" not mount Ararat!

[Coyoteman]

If we evolved here as presented , from a common ape ancester....then one would assume that our closest genetic cousin would be the apes....but they arent...or closest genetic cousins are dogs and pigs...

??? Did you actually say "o(u)r closest genetic cousins are dogs and pigs"???? Wrong! Try chimps.

Our elemental make up is also way off from other indiginous life...

Wrong!

Look it up...there is no missing link...

No need to "look it up!" See below for a transitional (or missing link). Note its position in the chart which follows (hint--in the upper center).

Where do you do your research, the creationist websites?

---

Fossil: KNM-ER 3733

Site: Koobi Fora (Upper KBS tuff, area 104), Lake Turkana, Kenya (4, 1)

Discovered By: B. Ngeneo, 1975 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.75 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal, paleomagnetic & radiometric data (1, 4)

Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7), Homo erectus ergaster (25)

Gender: Female (species presumed to be sexually dimorphic) (1, 8)

Cranial Capacity: 850 cc (1, 3, 4)

Information: Tools found in same layer (8, 9). Found with KNM-ER 406 A. boisei (effectively eliminating single species hypothesis) (1)

Interpretation: Adult (based on cranial sutures, molar eruption and dental wear) (1)

See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=33

Source: http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/environment/eePages/eeDating/HumanEvol_info.html

[orionblamblam]

> (Take a close look at the variety of geographies represented on the x-axis of the below chart.)

Interesting chart. However, two of the lines are bogus:
* Destruction by water
* Humans saved

Both of these are simply inheirant to the whole notion of a flood. If it was a flood, of *course* there was destruction by water. Since we're here, clearly humans were saved. Take those two lines out, and the chart looks substantially less newsworthy.

[GarySpFc]

Your problem is quite obvious. You are heavily invested in the hope that the Bible is a collection of fables, so you think of every possible reason why it can't be true because you don't like the implications of being wrong.

Correct! We cannot explain everything regarding what we believe to be true, but we do not have a blind faith which is a leap in the dark. The majority of believers have looked at the preponderance of evidence and decided the Bible is true.

[Coyoteman]

It's likely that in the year or so that Noah and his family were in the ark, the animals had offspring.

Q. What's harder than getting a pregnant Brontosaurus into the ark?

A. Getting a Brontosaurus pregnant in the ark!

(Noah! Make them stop. I'm getting seasick!)