New photo resparks 'Noah's Ark mania'

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | March 10, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern | Joe Kovacs

[Tim Long]

Digital image of 'Ararat Anomaly' has researchers taking closer look

A new, high-resolution digital image of what has become known as the "Ararat Anomaly" is reigniting interest in the hunt for Noah's Ark.

Satellite image of 'Ararat Anomaly,' taken by DigitalGlobe's QuickBird Satellite in 2003 and now made public for the first time (courtesy: DigitalGlobe)

The location of the anomaly on the northwest corner of Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey has been under investigation from afar by ark hunters for years, but it has remained unexplored, with the government of Turkey not granting any scientific expedition permission to explore on site.

But the detail revealed by the new photo from DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite has a man at the helm of the probe excited once again.

"I've got new found optimism ... as far as my continuing push to have the intelligence community declassify some of the more definitive-type imagery," Porcher Taylor, an associate professor in paralegal studies at the University of Richmond, told Space.com.

For more than three decades, Taylor has been a national security analyst, and has also served as a senior associate for five years at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

"I'm calling this my satellite archaeology project," Taylor said.

Space.com reports the project has been combining the photographic resources of QuickBird with GeoEye's Ikonos spacecraft, Canada's Radarsat 1, as well as declassified aerial and satellite images snapped by U.S. intelligence agencies.

While it's quite possible the item of interest could simply be a natural ridge of rock, snow and ice, Taylor says there's also a chance it could be something manmade.

"I had no preconceived notions or agendas when I began this in 1993 as to what I was looking for," he said. "I maintain that if it is the remains of something manmade and potentially nautical, then it's potentially something of biblical proportions."

The anomaly remains ensconced in glacial ice at an altitude of 15,300 feet, and Taylor says the photos suggest it's length-to-width ratio is close to 6:1, as indicated in the Book of Genesis.

The U.S. Air Force took the first photographs of the Mt. Ararat site in 1949. The images allegedly revealed what seemed to be a structure covered by ice, but were held for years in a confidential file labeled "Ararat Anomaly."

The new image was actually taken in 2003, but has never been revealed to the public until now.

Arking up the wrong tree?

Meanwhile, there are others who believe Noah's Ark has already been found, and tourists can actually visit it on a mountain next to Ararat.

Some believe this is Noah's Ark, already found on a mountain next to Mt. Ararat (courtesy: wyattmuseum.com)

The late Ron Wyatt, whose Tennessee-based foundation, Wyatt Archaeological Research, purported the ark has already been found at Dogubayazit, Turkey, some 12-15 miles from Ararat, noting Genesis states the ark rested "upon the mountains of Ararat," not mountain.

Is this a hair from a large cat aboard Noah's Ark? (photo: Richard Rives, wyattmuseum.com)

Wyatt's website is filled with on-location photographs and charts promoting its case with physical evidence including radar scans of bulkheads on the alleged vessel, deck timber and iron rivets, large "drogue" stones which are thought to have acted as types of anchors, and even some animal hair inside, possibly from a large cat like a lion or tiger.

A flood of doubt

However, there's been no shortage of critics from both scientific and Christian circles who think the Dogubayazit site is erroneous.

Lorence Collins, a retired geology professor from California State University, Northridge, joined the late David Fasold, a one-time proponent of the Wyatt site, in writing a scientific summary claiming the location is "bogus."

"Evidence from microscopic studies and photo analyses demonstrates that the supposed Ark near Dogubayazit is a completely natural rock formation," said the 1996 paper published in the Journal of Geoscience Education. "It cannot have been Noah's Ark nor even a man-made model. It is understandable why early investigators falsely identified it."

The Answers in Genesis website provides an in-depth report attempting to debunk any validity the Dogubayazit site has, and concludes by stating:

"[A]s Christians we need to always exercise due care when claims are made, no matter who makes them, and any claims must always be subjected to the most rigorous scientific scrutiny. If that had happened here, and particularly if the scientific surveys conducted by highly qualified professionals using sophisticated instruments had been more widely publicized and their results taken note of, then these claims would never have received the widespread credence that they have."

Officials with Wyatt Archaeological Research remain unfazed in the face of such criticism.

"The site ... is actually something that you can look at. Not some made up story that no one is quite able to reach but something that is really there," said president Richard Rives. "It is a 'boat-shaped object' composed of material containing organic carbon, which is what is found in petrified wood. ...

"While there is more research that needs to be done at the site, there is a substantial amount of evidence that would indicate that the Wyatt site is not a natural object. ...

"Today, everyone wants to tell us how to think. We, at Wyatt Archaeological Research, do not do that. We just present the evidence that we have and let each individual make his own decision."

In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible speaks of Noah and the ark, and Jesus Christ and the apostles Paul and Peter all make reference to Noah's flood as an actual historical event.

'Noah's Ark' by Pennsylvania artist Edward Hicks, 1846

According to Genesis, Noah was a righteous man who was instructed by God to construct a large vessel to hold his family and many species of animals, as a massive deluge was coming to purify the world which had become corrupt.

Genesis 6:5 states: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

Noah was told by God to take aboard seven pairs of each of the "clean" animals – that is to say, those permissible to eat – and two each of the "unclean" variety. (Gen. 7:2)

Though the Bible says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, it also mentions "the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days."

The ark then "rested" upon the mountains of Ararat, but it was still months before Noah and his family – his wife, his three sons and the sons' wives – were able to leave the ark and begin replenishing the world.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Got an answer?

Or just smartass remarks?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Is it worse to toss out 150 years of "science" or 5000 years of religion? Modern science though nothing of tossing the previous several hundred years of science out on its ear when it came time to reject God and his Providential Governance of the world.

As to my lumping disciplines under evolutionism, that is what Lyellism in geology does, for example. Unprovable uniformitarianism of rates (no one was there to observe if the rates were the same even 20,000 years ago, let alone 20,000,000 or 2,000,000,000) and a sophistic rejection of catastrophism are part and parcel of the evolutionary theory. Evolutionism is not confined to Darwin and Co. in the Biology Dept. The other atheistic sciences are just as firmly committed to seeing that no evidence ever surfaces to question this neo-Orthodoxy of a religion.

[kinsman redeemer]

A remarkable feat of shipbuilding.

You missed by this much, but you are getting closer to the truth.

It was, "a miraculous feat of shipbuilding.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I have no idea what history books you read but there is no question that the use of metals is what gave the name to eras. Daniel had nothing to do with it since his model is even more vague that that you object to.

[It's me]

A little snippy?

It never ceases to amaze me how angry unbelievers are.

Relax...

[Central Scrutiniser]

Again, you have no answer.

[Auntie Dem]

Only if you can explain how Noah and his family kept two of every wild animal and 7 of every domesticated animal on a boat 450 feet long by 75 feet wide for 8 months.

Double bunking?

Time/space shifting?

3:1 File compression (zip)?

And last, but not least, Bose noise-canceling headphones.

[Auntie Dem]

So if we accept that then where did the additional moisture come from to cause enough rain to cover the earth to a depth of at least 15000 feet. And where did all that moisture go afterwards?

What if the tail of a comet, composed entirely of ice, were to pass close to the earth? Wouldn't that create a huge rainstorm? I think the Bible mentions the waters under or within the earth, and we do know about ground water and artesian wells. Couldn't a lot of water flowed under the earth's crust if a large earthquake created a deep crack?

Just a couple of possibilities.

[Auntie Dem]

Would 1300 BC put it in the right period Biblically?

Not being an expert I can't say so with any authority, but I think the Tower of Babel, which is post flood time period, was somewhere around 2,500 B.C. Even Biblical scholars don't know for sure, but that's an approximate guess.

[VadeRetro]

Actually, if you want a map with lots of water area and not much land area, you want this one.

I don't see what good it does you. Let's cut to the key premise of your marvelous flood geology.

Now we can see our major disagreement is not the mechanism of widespread flooding (so lets not hear anymore about how its impossible for the world to be flooded), because we both believe that it happened, but at what time it occurred, and why.

We have no agreement on mechanism that I know of, which you acknowledge by adding the "and why" at the end. You also forgot to include "for how long."

You also forgot to include "How do we know which one?" You see, my region has at least three periods of being underwater, of which that in the Silurian is but the latest. None of them match up in any way with your Cretaceous inundation out west. None of them individually look like the flood of Noah.

Masking all the "floods" throughout history in a big Boolean AND to try to cover more ground will not fly for people with a brain, either, since I have three of them just in my part of the geologic column. They clearly did not happen at the same time if superposition means anything.

There seem to be at least that many out west. The Grand Canyon's very top layer is already too old to be from your Cretaceous inundation. Nevertheless, the top two levels (the Kaibab and Toroweap Limestones) are marine sediment, but the younder is 250 million years old. There are dry-desert sandstones and dry-land shales before the next marine limetones. Then you get more shales, etc.

Let me anticipate a dumb-bleepism from somebody or other. How do we know the top layer isn't young? Aside from any fossil and radiometric character, if you continue away from the canyon itself the "top" layers vanish under other layers. Stratigraphically, they're quite far down the column as the canyon is a very eroded region. Note the graphic on that page and where the Kaibab limesone falls. But here's the stratigraphy of the canyon itself.

Now, limestone is from lots of calcium-shelled critters dying and dropping to the bottom in a process usually thought to take lots of time. (Otherwise, ridiculous numbers of the little buggers need to be alive and struggling for room/food/love all at once.) Shales are hardened mud, often very finely layered to suggest some sort of periodic deposition and hardening. How one flood puts a few million years worth of fossil sea critters into a layer of limestone with fine layers of hardening mud over that, then some more layers of fossil sea critters, then some more layered mud, then a big thickness of desert sandstone, then some more limestone .... That's some flood story you got there. What those lavas are doing interspersed with your flood sediments is another question, since they aren't pillow lava from underwater extrusion. What that crazy tilted unconformity is doing in there is another question.

Again, since no one was there according to the millions of years ago theory...

That's right, there was nobody there. Nobody. Eyewitness testimony is a tad below physical evidence in reliability anyway.

...I don't see how there is certainty that the flooding wasn't simultaneous...

I don't see how that's anyone else's problem. I've already caught you totally misstating the evidence for the geological ages in common use. You are obviously unfamiliar, no doubt militantly so, with those parts of science which you are throwing out, which is most of it.

No doubt you will continue to think it unfair but you don't have a horse to put in the race just now. Pig-ignorantism won't run.

[VadeRetro]

Me: "That is, the world looks old because IT IS old."

You: Why does the world look old?

Hello? Read it again, OK?

So massive horizontal worldwide sedimentation ...

Looks like a description of the geologic column. No way that's one great flood, no.

... with essentially unidirectional paleocurrent indicators isn't indication of a world-wide flood?

Looks like gibberish. "Unidirectional paleocurrents?"

Except that we usually don't.

"You" don't seem very reasonable.

[js1138]

placemarker

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Eyewitness testimony is a tad below physical evidence in reliability anyway.

What physical evidence? Where has anyone ever actually observed sedementary rocks made to know that it took X years to do so? You are just grasping at straws of suppositions that you are claiming no one is allowed to question.

[HamiltonJay]

That looks like a cliff face to me...

I'm more interested in that mountain I believe its in Syria, where the top half of the mountain is all blackened... that seems a much more interesting study...

[It's me]

My faith is my answer.

I thought you'd have figured that out with your scientific mind.

[fanfan]

Maybe the water seems lower now because the land is higher.

Could it be that through volcanism the land masses are now higher, but we have the same amount of water on the planet?

[safisoft]

BCE is a meaningless contrivance and immediately tells you that it'll be hostile to any reporting on the Flood.

Not so. I believe in the Flood of Genesis 6, and use it.

Also, if you are refering to meaningless contrivances, add BC to it. "Before Christ"? So, since every known scholar has the birth of Jesus at 6-4 BCE, that would mean that BC means nothing other than that is the mistake of a 5th Century monk.

[DaiHuy]

You said: "Wyatt Archaeological Research claimed they had a sample fo Christs' blood."

I would like to see the DNA analyisis of that one.

[george wythe]

This tinfoil trash pops up every year. Even CBS once broadcast a "fake but accurate" documentary about finding Noah's Ark.

[Tokra]

The IRON AGE has nothing to do with the discovery of Iron, it is called the IRON AGE because of the relationship of what countries are world powers compared to the prophecies in Daniel and what Nebudchannezer's dream was: Gold = Babylon Silver = medio-Persia Bronze = Greece Iron = Rome

Sorry - the Iron Age was called such because mankind began using weapons and tools made of iron - which were much harder than the previous weapons and tools made of bronze - from the Bronze Age, which in turn had replaced the earlier Copper Age with it's even softer copper weapons and tools.

None of these names have anything to do with Nebuchannezer's (or anyone else's) dream.