Posted on 07/07/2006 10:05:17 PM PDT by 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.
Maybe the flood only killed believers in the Judeo-Christian God. Those who didn't, stayed dry. ;)
There is a reference book by a fellow named John Woodmorappe
(I believe) called: "Noahs Ark: a feasibility study"...
you may want to check it out to see if it helps you
or gives you different ideas...
How did they get home? Probably the same way they got there. NEWS FLASH! I wasn't there, and neither were you. Do you know exactly what the land masses were like back then? How do you know if there was swimming involved for the land animals? How did they eat? Probably what they eat now. You obviously prefer the "glass half empty" method of thinking. If something seems unlikely to you, then it must be a fairy tale and anyone who believes it a fool. You are the one who has chosen to limit his thinking, not me.
That's nice did that happen over 5000 years?
BTW, what did the animals eat after they ark landed? Carnivores needed meat and there was none, herbivores needed plants and there was none. No matter where the ark landed in any scenario you make up, the floods destroyed all the plant life and the surviving animals had nothing to eat.
And since it was a world wide flood, why wasn't there banana plants all over the world until man planted them? Same goes for corn, rice, and any number of crops. Where is the fossil data of marsupials on any other continent other than Australia? Did the kangaroo just learn how to swim back to Australia?
Admit it, its a fable. And every time you attempt to bend logic just makes your story more laughable.
There may be rapid development of character traits in
the same kind (e.g. humans/cats/dogs/flowers).I guess this
is seen quite easily with dog, cat, or plant breeding...
Are you saying that all the different human groups that we
see now are from the same stock? Or do the different groups
have different ancestors, like they thought about the
aborigines in Australia, and were considered not quite human?
I don't believe in God so I don't know, but seems to me that is what all this talk of humans having the choice is about. Seems kind of strange he would give us these brains and logic and reason, and then when we put 2 + 2 together and they make 4 and not "5, because someone told me so," that he would punish us for not having "faith".
Why would The Lord give humans the ability to learn about the universe He supposedly gave us, when all the really wants is for us to sit around and say "Well, the Bible says something else, so forget what science tells us."
I guess that makes sense, because we built an entire civilization didn't we?
I dunno, maybe Noah's family did all that in a week after leaving the ark. Seems they didn't keep very good records about their time in the big ship, though...
But the Ark supporters want us not to think, not to reason, not to question a fable, so I guess they shouldn't be on the evil devil influenced internet, or living in a home, or having clothes on their back (except for the naughty bits). How dare we think! We all must stop thinking and move into a cave and not use brains! Brains bad!
NOW you've got it--the Internet is obviously a product of Evil...it was created by humans the perfect God made, though, using logic, which leads to questioning His word, so I guess logic is a product of the Devil, who was also created by God, so I guess God created Evil...
See, the more you look into it, the faster it unravels.
Denial is no answer.
How did they get home? Answer me. You have your story, I am challenging your story, you have no answer.
What did they eat? The flood destroyed the world, surely there were no crops for the herbivores to eat, the carnivors had nothing to eat except for the other animals.
You have a million holes in your story and you can't answer or address a single one with a single ounce of truth, science, or evidence.
Keep yammering, its great to see your ignorance on parade.
You don't have an ounce of proof or data for your side and you want me to disprove you? Laughable.
Show some actual proof, not a bunch of jabbering, its 2006 and our maps show a round world and "there be monsters" doesn't show up on our maps.
LOL
Every culture has a story of a family surviving a global flood, a golden age before the flood followed by a silver age after the flood.
October 31st is a day of death celebrated by cultures all over the world.
I said no such thing. My point about stories passed from generation to generation (whether in writing or not) still stands. If you can't understand that some details could be altered on the way down, then you are willfully ignorant. Were you absent from school the day the teacher did this very experiment by whispering something in one kid's ear to see what that would be by the time it got to the other end of the room? If so, I'll tell you how it goes. The last thing said is a bit different than what was first said.
YOu really do have a reading comprehension deficit, huh?,
I copied my two posts that were previous to your first diatribe to me - both of which would "answer" your question. YOu either choose to ignore them or have something blocking your ability to understand what you read. Maybe hate or fear?
Once again now - here are my posts no 15 and 25:
(#15) Does it not occur to people that the Bible was written by people who knew nothing of the existence of of other continents? That the 'all the world' flood covered their known part of the world...therefore, it was "all the world" to them?...
(# 25) The "WHOLE WORLD" to the people who wrote Genesis was a whole lot smaller than the Whole World -
They hadn't an inkling about most of the other continents, After all, if you sailed too far to sea, you would fall off the edge...there was no North/Central/South America to them, nor Australia - as far as they were concerned.
They probably had no idea there was a land that would become England...etc In other words, their WHOLE WORLD could flood without it affecting the Whole World
Bye
That Noah was a very progressive thinker, having a family like that. I wish people like Bob Jones would read their Bible more, maybe they'd follow in his footsteps.
Oh, and don't mention the "E" word!
Hey you're right--Elvis must have been on the ark, too!
Still waiting to hear how the sloth and koala made it home and all the snakes, etc. LOL
They rode home on the backs of friendly dinosaurs.
They all--ALL of them--had that "special homing beacon sense" someone mentioned on the thread. And they somehow all found exactly the nutritional requirements they needed on the way, somehow.
Yep. The Bible was written by man, not by God. Humans make mistakes, wrong assumptions, they invent stories. The fairy tale of Adam and Eve is another one - a nice explanation how human life was created. Today, we know (ok, most of us know it) that evolution brought us human life, but that doesn´t exclude the possbility that God gave life and the rules how it evolved (survival of the fittest, etc).
Mere co-incidence...a statistcal anomoly...mass hypnosis...
move along..nothing to see here...
*grin*
If you're looking at the flood story from the Bible, it
says that the the animals which were destroyed were those
that had the "breath of life"...it didn't talk about all
the fishes, or plants being destroyed.
As far as when the land masses were altered, I don't know.
I do know that after the Mount Saint Helen blast occured
in 1980, there was a small canyon that was formed complete
with sedimentary layers, in a period of months to years
post the eruption. It is in National Geographic magazine.
It would be an interesting study to see what fossils are
in those geological structures, or how radiometric
dating dates those structures...I would guess that a major
shift in the land masses would cause lots of destruction and
erasure of its pre-cataclysmic state, especially if it occured quickly. No?
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.
You folks always leap to the personal attacks when you can't supply facts to back up your BS.
It's interesting how you cut out my entire post except for one sentence, never addressing why the folks who survived the ark's journey never bothered to keep a record--a consistent record--for their followers. If Noah's small family went off to populate the world, wouldn't their children be engaging in incest, since the couples didn't stick together but went off to begin what we know as the various races around the planet?
If four or how many it was couples left the ark, to restart the whole human race, they couldn't be bothered to scribble down the names of the other few people on the ark, somewhere, at some moment in the rest of their lives?
They didn't have the opportunity to scribble down "Noah is my father, and these are the names of my brothers and sisters-in-law, who went here, here, and here"?
I guess that was too much to ask of the handful of people who started the world from scratch again.
Yet thousands of years later, all their childrens' childrens' children all started vague stories about some flood, and THAT, though, is your "evidence>"
But since your logic is limited by your own admission to school games, this is too complicated for you to grasp. Sorry I assumed you were up to the task.
What are some of the author's findings and ideas?
Blather all you want.
How did the animals make it home?
What did the eat?
How did they get to the ark?
If there were 2 of every species, they would all be inbred by now and extinct.
How did Noah build a ship out of wood that was big enough to support all the animals yet not crack under its own weight?
What about the dinosaurs?
Insects?
What did the animals eat upon landing when the earth was ravaged?
I assume all the humans on the ark were white, how come we have so many races today?
When did this happen?
Where are the fossils of the animals at the landing spot (many animals only live a few months, so there must have been lots of dead generations, all inbred, around the landing site)
What did the koala eat? They only eat euacaplyptus leaves, did Noah send his sons out to australia to get a few thousand pounds of leaves that somehow didn't rot and put them on the ark?
I am asking you specific pointed questions for a reason, because you can't answer them without making up a fable. The only way you can answer these questions is to make stuff up and make assumptions and spout myths and miracles and outright BS.
If you want to believe in a world that is so simplistic that it was explained in its entirety 2000 years ago by men that lived in stone huts and crapped in the bushes, fine, you go ahead and use that as your science text.
The rest of the the world will move on, we won't miss you.
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