Posted on 02/17/2008 5:05:48 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Dogubayazit (Turkey’s Iran-Armenian Border) • For the first time in the seven decade-long history of the search for the legendary Noah’s Ark, a Turkish-Hong Kong exploration team on Tuesday came out with “material evidence”, to prove that the Ark was nestled on Mount Ararat, Turkey’s highest mountain peak bordering Iran and Armenia.
A panel of experts, comprising Turkish authorities, veteran mountaineers, archaeologists, geologists and members of Hong Kong-based Noah’s Ark Ministries International, also displayed an almost one-metre-long peice of petrified wood before the media and specially invited international experts.
The experts claimed it to be a part of a long structure they had unearthed during their February-August 2007 exploration. “It is for the first time in the history of the Ark search that an exploration team is getting a material evidence and graphic documentation. This makes it not only a the significant breakthrough in the Ark-search, but one that is supported with the most substantial evidence in recent history,” the panel said.
The revelation is expected to open up a fresh chapter in the ongoing debates in the scientific community on the search for Noah’s Ark.
Narrating the genesis of their exploration on Mount Ararat, the mount which has a direct reference in Holy Quran (Mount Judi) and Bible, the panel said the search team had made several foiled attempts before unearthing the evidence at an altitude of 4,500-metres of the estimated 5,165 metre volcanic mountain.
“The structure was discovered in the interiors of an unusual cave. The 11.5m wide and 2.6m high white wooden texture was revealed after removing thick layers of volcanic ash on the cave wall,” panel members said at a press conference.
One of the underlying issues in the search for the Ark is the proper identification of its wood fragments. A petrographic examination carried out by the Applied Geoscience Centre of the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Hong Kong, identified the object as a petrified wooden structure, the panel said.
“Some of the big holes found on the structure indicate the locations where branches used to grow on tree. In places, original holes are partly or completely replaced by individual minerals and crystalline materials that can be found in rock materials,” said Dr Ahmet Ozbek, a panel member, who is also a faculty of Geology Engineering Kahramanmara Suctcu Imam University.
Dismissing the possibilities of the structure being wood that could appear naturally around the discovery site, Professor Oktay Belli, director, Eurasian Archaeology Institute, University of Istanbul, said researches have proved that there was no vegetation on Mount Ararat ever since 2000BC, because of the asperities of Ararat’s climate.
Talking to The Peninsula, Cemalettin Demircioglu, Dogubayazit City Governor, under whose jurisdiction the mount is located, said the civic body will invite more international experts to conduct further scientific studies on Mount Ararat.
“History has more than one times corroborated the legendary evidence that the ark was nestled on Mount Ararat. We will introduce the latest findings to the world and continue the scientific study. All interested scientists and NGOs can join our missions” he said. However, he said, those who are involved in the project must ensure the findings are not used politically, religiously, or for any vested interest.
Located in the Far Eastern Turkey, Ararat is great prize for mountain collectors. Ark sighting has often been reported from this mountain. The observation of Vessel-shaped features in aerial photograph of Ararat had caused a stir in the late 1950’s. However, this is the first time an exploration team is coming out with “material evidence”.
Incest causes multiple heads and arms? Who knew...?
susie
Me either, but I’m humoring Bob. I was just referring to the gator I caught on video today and put a link on my about page. I didn’t get a chance to taste him because he went by really fast.
susie
I find it best to humor Bob, too. Why not?
Was this a gator close to your house?
Heck no, he was at Green Cay Wetlands on Hagan Ranch Road.
And yes, I don’t know Bob, but he seems best to humor.... ;)
susie
Well, I’m glad you don’t have gators in the yard!
Bob has an original perspective, and isn’t always series. Life needs more humor, imo.
I have plenty of humor, but most of it is at my expense and unintentional! :0
susie
Just extrapolating on what we find in those communities in which the breeding populations are small and closely related, like the appalachian mountains and British Royalty. :)
Youngest petrified wood I’ve ever heard of; all the rest is at least antediluvian.
Aren't you confusing Fossett with Howard Hughes? :')
"One way or another" being the operative phrase. If history, the Bible's in particular, can teach us any lessons, it's that Man's nature is such that he will almost always choose the easy path in the world; sacrificing his soul in the bargain. The desire by so many to be as high as God is just too great.
Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to keep the faith and spread the word. Few will respond.
Stuff happens.
Those people who made it back to the surface from the center of the earth had lost their cameras too.
So did the ones who made it alive of the big plateau full of dinosaurs in the middle of the Amazon rain forest.
...and what about all the film the @**&^$$#^*)*@( aliens fog & blur whenever anyone tries to get a good shot of UFOs?
My comments were not in reference to any religious issue, but in response to someone questioning the time it took for wood to petrify. Apparently under the right circumstances, wood can petrify with astounding speed.
I was in error in my assumption on wood petrification as previously pointed out on this thread, but it is an error to assume I had any religious overtone in my comment on an archaeological thread. I know some threads become food fights on religious/scientific themes, but that is a topic of zero interest to me and I do not enter into that debate. I was simply and erroneously assuming wood took much longer to petrify that the time frame of any wooden vessel’s presence on Ararat would support.
The Word of God is inerrant; Man’s translations of it are another matter.
Ok, just checking. You know tho, you can type much faster with 5 arms.... ;)
susie
Incest isn’t so bad; as long as you keep it in the family.
Try being Sherlock Holmes instead of a 5 year old in sunday school. Obviously this Noah biblical account was a myth built around a true story of survival in a hurricane. In 1900 there were similar stories of people being washed out to sea in Galveston and yet miraculously surviving. They told their stories to the press and then it was all glossed over by later news, nobody remembers now...
5000 years ago there was no press, no literacy; the only way this “Readers Digest” book section about an ancestor surviving a hurricane in a unique way, that could even be remembered, was by family history telling. Thus little embellishments get thrown in here and there, generation by generation, and a MYTH grows in this little pakistani tribe : WE are the most famous and special people in God’s eyes because of NOAH! Young ABRAM swallows it whole...
Hitler understood the power of MYTH very well : aryan superiority. Millions of people, many of them jewish children, died in WWII in part because of that MYTH. This then is why many pass the bible off as mere stories for children. The ocean never did cover all the land, it was just Noah’s limited perspective on being out in the middle of it. 15 cubits = 22’ deep water = storm surge in a type 4 hurricane(cyclone in those parts). His raft washes up on an outer sand bank, they have to wait for low tide to wade back to the true shore.
So, re-read Genesis, this time learn to separate the truth from fantasy. Although a mythical character himself, Sherlock Holmes routinely did that, the master detective...
Well, I might accept that Noah's story was mythical, but you'll never convince me that Bill Cosby lied to me.
Riiight!
Old COS? A liar? Really though, the Noah story is a small grit of truth wrapped in a lie, like a pearl begins as a piece of grit in the clams mouth, that it surrounds with nacre, a beautiful pearl. People SAY they want to know TRUTH...until their own religious myth is shown for what it is, a myth.
Think of it though, all these centuries pakistani children, ie, arabs, jews, all who claim descent from abraham, have been taught this myth as if it was truth. Bible pounders insist that everything herein is TRUTH. Yes, mostly right but the noah myth is just that : a myth cooked up by pakistani sheepherders around a campfire in iraq 5000 years ago, based upon an old but true story of a hurricane survivor. They themselves would be astonished that this fish story they cooked up(Mt Ararat, animals 2 by 2, etc)would be taught in christian sunday schools 5 millenia later. If they had known about Mt Everest, noah’s ark hunters would be climbing all over its peak now.
Truth is where Sherlock Holmes finds it...
Try having intelligent discourse instead of insulting people without having a clue what their opinion is.
susie
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