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”.
I rather favor the Gilgamesh connection, which may or may not be founded on the flooding of the Black Sea.
It will be profoundly informative when good archaeology can be done on the Black Sea bottom, but the cold, depth, and inky water strains current abilities.
Anyway, as the Mediterranean waters flooded in to the former location of a land-locked lake, people who had settled around the shores of that lake were forced to migrate to higher ground. It's possible that a large vessel which had already been started was used to transport settlers and their livestock on an impromptu voyage.
Consider: the ark had no means of locomotion, not even sails. It was only designed to ride out a flood, and settle down again when the slow inundation had come to an end; Exactly the conditions of the Black Sea flooding of about seven thousand years ago.
Yes, I saw the Discover special on the rapid flooding of the black sea, it’s been well documented. The bottom water wasn’t quite as inky as you may think, it looked pretty clear to me. That bottom water is also nearly devoid of oxygen and so ships/artifacts are better preserved than in other oceans(like the rusticles on the titanic). Lake Van in eastern turkey has been pinpointed as the origin area of almost all languages(by russian linguists)and so it would seem normal that the floor of the black sea was settled before the channel opened up to the mediterranean, thus the origin of a FLOOD story.
As you may know there are plates meeting between arabia and asia. There is a “zipper” effect wherein stress is released point to point along the shear zone. The “zipper” has been moving steadily toward istanbul, it’s due for a major quake right off the coast any moment now. This same “zipper” effect was probably responsible for the channel being opened 7000 years ago, as was the walls of jerico tumbling down, it sits on a “zipper” fault line too.
There never was a noah’s ark as big as the Queen Mary, it was a RAFT that rode out a hurricane; bed time stories for pakistani children.
Another myth : the unicorn. The early greeks were great explorers. One went to africa and saw a rhinoceros, a horse with a single horn on its head. On the 10th tellng/fantasizing it became the UNICORN.
Another myth : the vampire. Person in the last stages of rabies, fear of light and water. Funny how people see and yet do not PERCEIVE, why is that?
The bible says your heart should sing for joy when you hear the truth.
Because, though most people have eyes on their heads, very few have eyes in their heads.
"... and the eyes in his head, see the world ...
... spinning round."
++++++++++++++==
After reading Genesis,
It sounds like you are saying that there was a hurricane that lasted a month and a half, then this old guy and his family floated on the sea for a year.
You buy into the myth, the children’s story, this is why so many reject the bible as nothing more than that. Know thyself, saith the Lord.
Actually it was Galileo that knew the earth spins and said so. The catholic church put him under 8 years of house arrest for telling the truth. Jesus was crucified for telling the truth too.
Lets see if we have any common ground, OK
Do you believe there is a God.
Oh course there is a God, the supreme being that did the Big Bang 13.7+/- billion years ago, going on blind faith alone in the darkness. I’ve come to believe that HE was crucified by the 24 “elders” in much the same way Jesus was. These “elders” were prior idea-entities like POINT(1st elder), then 2 POINTS infer a LINE(2nd elder), then area, volume, etc, etc; geometrical concepts becoming ever more evolved/convoltuted(like fractals, etc).
Thus over countless eons this academic body of knowledge grew ever more elaborate but like academics everywhere : teachers, not DOERS. They were USELESS when it came to DOING anything REAL. Along comes the 25th in the series, young yahweh, with some rather novel ways of DOING something REAL. Instead of being welcomed as a saviour thy treat him like a heretic, spit upon him, whip him, crucify him as an outcast and into the garbage dump.
Thus the crucifiction of Jesus on the cross was the final lesson of father to son : only with great sacrifice, going on faith alone, can something GREAT be done. This why SACRIFICE has always played such a large role in all religions; God sacrificed himself to make the universe.
Thus Jesus was an in vitro implant in the host mother Mary, sent as a missionary by this cosmic PETA group and left as our ambassador to these trillions of intelligent societies in the universe. Soon enough the human race will be exterminated as a virus exploding out of control, Jesus saves a few from that inevitable destruction. Running around on Mt Ararat looking for an ark that never was(the raft rotted away on a pakistani beach 5000 years ago)won’t get you out of the coming destruction, HE will, if you’re worth it...
thank you for sharing.
It makes sense, yes? Our Lord Jesus sweated BLOOD that dark night in the garden(please Mr Custer, I don’t want to go-a song from a few years ago). As the righteous soul he is, he wanted to end all the unrighteousness of the Roman Empire, the hypocrisy of the pharisees in a holy jihad. Instead, our holy father told him it was HE that must get whacked, killed. It didn’t make sense, thus his words : Nevertheless, not my will but thy will be done.
This then was the final lesson of father to son, only by self sacrifice can something truly GREAT come about. This I know in my heart was what happened to God, the Supreme Architect of the Universe, before the big bang. He was rejected, whipped, spat upon for his heretical ideas, finally crucified by the 24 elders. Going on blind faith and raw courage alone, plus strong right arm : KA-BAM the BIG BANG/seed as the origin of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. The crucifiction of Jesus was an echo of that long ago creation moment.
Obviously then within 3 to 4 billion years later there were intelligent aliens flying around in UFOs, this is some 5-6 billion years before the sun/solar system/earth even formed from the mother molecular birth cloud 4.5 billion years ago. And if the entire earth’s history is compressed into a single year, we as intelligent monkeys don’t even appear until the last second at midnight on dec 31. To wit, have a bit of humility here, see how small we really are.
From an empty womb to an empty tomb, God visited us 2000 years ago, and will come again : Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come....
See why I don’t argue with this guy?
Perhaps you can explain how floodwaters 15 cubits deep, about 22 feet, cover a mountain 16,000 feet high. Go ahead, take your time....
So why on earth do you believe in Christ?
It isn't my contention that they did. I propounded the Black Sea theory, remember?
However, maybe they were previously dehydrated mountains, and they only got to the size they are now because of all the water they absorbed. It had to go somewhere, didn't it?
The SPONGE theory? Come on, you can do better than that. Actually that brings to mind the Magellan Mission to the planet Venus. Venus has an excess of dueterium in its atmosphere. Since earth-water is one part in 6000 Du, it was thought that this excess Du in venus’ atmosphere is evidence for a long lost venusian H2O ocean.
Then the Magellan Mission discovered that the mountains are far too steep(angle of repose)vs terran mountains. That in turn means venusian surface rocks are super HARD, ie, no water-as-lubricant in them. Thus venus never did have H2O oceans, and since it has no appreciable magnetosphere, solar and cosmic radiation over 4.5 billion years easily accounts for the excess Du.
My point : occam’s razor. Sure, the Black Sea was quickly created by a massive flood when the channel opened up, thus one FLOOOD story that became folklore, this has been well documented, no dispute there. What I’m saying is : look at Bangladesh, it routinely gets hammered by cyclones and the surge washes away thousands of people living on those low-lying islands in the delta region of the Ganges River. Something very similar happened to Noah living in the Indus River delta-region 5000+ years ago. His descendents jinned up this old but true story of cyclone survival into the myth that’s in Genesis, that’s all. How many died because of hitler’s aryan superiority myth?
Blind faith has gotten a lot of people killed over the centuries, that’s why we’ve developed SCIENCE, using our minds to think things thru; there’s a lot of con artists, flim-flam types out there, or false prophets as the bible says. Know the TRUTH, and be FREE. And forget that piece of wood on Mt Ararat, it’s nonsense, pure wishful thinking. Those pakistani sheepherders are still laughing about their fish story. I had a T shirt once : Einstein laughing : THEY BOUGHT IT!
Cute. What does it mean?
susie
It does when I do. When will that be?
susie
Yes, she’s quite strange.
susie
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.