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.
Hope this comes out right--- Later gang --- Spartan
No one has ever told me how the reptiles made it back home, or how the monkeys swam back to S. America.
Noah's Ark was a fable.
:-) and they walked on 2 by 2
There isn't really evidence (outside of the Bible) of a flood that covered the WHOLE WORLD, including the tops of the Himalayas et al) under miles of water (nor is there enough water in the world to do it, unless the oceans were a LOT shallower than they are). But there certainly IS evidence of a lot of heavy flooding all over the world in the same time period, perhaps 10,000, perhaps 15,000 years ago.
There are whole cities underwater on the submerged plain that links Indonesia with Australia and the mainland.
The legends of the eastern woodland Indians include the tale of a great flood, particularly which broke open Long Island Sound and made it part of the ocean.
West coast Indians have similar stories.
Actually, there's a flood legend of one sort or other in all of the world, including the European legend of Atlantis.
Because there really was a flood.
Its source was more mundane, and the effects were not QUITE as dire as the drowning of the ENTIRE world, but they were pretty dire.
The waters never receded from this flood.
It's why the Siberian Land Bridge is still underwater.
The cause: global warming.
In the last ice age, a lot more of the Earth's water was in ice, and a lot more of the Earth was covered in great sheets of ice. Then the climate heated up and that ice melted. Not slowly. The Great Lakes are the inland remains of that ice sheet over America. But when the oceanic ice melted, it raised the level of the oceans. Probably not slowly.
Those were disastrous times. Weather pounding, coastal lands submerging, islands (like Britain), being sundered from the mainland. People used to live on those drowned continental shelves, and they are all around the world. Every culture has a distant myth, a memory in legend of its own Atlantis experience. Because when the Ice Age ended, men were there, and the oceans rose by hundreds of miles.
It probably didn't happen in 40 days, but it probably didn't happen over 4000 years either. Every coastal culture's legends remember "The Flood", or "A Flood", back at the dawn of time. The Mesopotamian culture of Sumeria, whence Abraham came, remembered it too. "Eden" is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
What we have here...is a bunch of godless heathens...LMAO
Are you saying that allegory is beyond God's capabilities?
(chuckle)
Bush's fault, silly!
40 days and nights of rain doesn't cause the world to flood. We've been having that in Boston, and it hasn't hardly flooded the streets.
But you're asking for people to think about the reality of a fairy tale story. I respect those who believe in God, though I don't share that belief, but it's when they expect me to swallow this stuff without question when I think about how many of them laugh at Muslim beliefs here. OK, like two of each animal surviving, including those from the Americas which hadn't been discovered and wouldn't be for centuries, plus a handful of people (their children apparently marrying their cousins to perpetuate the human race, and then somehow founding all of the ethnic types we know) and they somehow got all the animals to the various locations they needed to be in...
Ack, look what happens when you start thinking about it...
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Looks like an outcropping of shale to me.
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?...
I suspicion the time is coming that the ARK will be "found" in the not too distant future...
Since WW1, it has been the subject of photos, 'discoveries', expeditions, articles, etc .
I wonder if, when man is ready enough to believe, God will let it be 'found' -
In the meantime, maybe He is protecting it from what would be a mad melee of faiths and countries fighting over it.
I would imagine, since this was a boat and not a settlement, that the occupants would have taken every article with them down the mountain to wherever they first made a settlement. After all, they couldn't hike on down to a WalMart for replacements anytime soon...I wouldn't have left as much as a small bowl
The Ararat Mountains are where the latest item was found. The other sites have when approaced discovered to be rock formations. No, the latest finding just might be it.
Team believes it found Noah's Ark (In Iran)
WorldNetDaily.com | 6/30/06 | WorldNetDaily
Posted on 06/30/2006 11:26:43 AM EDT by DannyTN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1658435/posts
Noah’s Ark, Pieces Intact, Found
Koenig's International News | 6/14/06 | Bill Wilson
Posted on 06/15/2006 10:56:07 AM EDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1649864/posts
and an oldie:
New photo resparks 'Noah's Ark mania'
WorldNetDaily.com | March 10, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern | Joe Kovacs
Posted on 03/10/2006 2:30:41 AM EST by Tim Long
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1593672/posts
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