Noah's Ark
©Lee Paul

"And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Uratu."

Photo courtesy John Searcher

Another site on Noah's Ark

The saga of Noah's Ark, one of the Bible's most enduring stories, has always been the subject of a tantalizing debate. If scientists could prove the Great Flood theory, might not evidence of Noah's Ark have survived? With that thought in mind, researchers keep combing the mountains of Ararat searching for Noah's Ark. Many actually claim to have seen it. Still others claim to have relics from it. Incredibly, two different modern-day Ark hunters claim they have found it...in two separate places...seventeen miles apart.

The story of Noah and his Ark are recorded in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It says that as God looked upon the earth, He saw only wickedness and corruption. Unhappy with the way mankind had turned out, He decided to destroy the earth. He went to a righteous man named Noah and ordered him to build an ark, "the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits."

(A cubit has generally been described as the distance between the point of a man's elbow and the tip of his middle finger, which seems to have been standardized at 17.72 inches, although another common linear unit was the royal cubit at 20.72 inches.)

Noah was to populate the Ark with two of each animal on earth. It then rained forty days and forty nights, but the waters remained on the earth for more than a year. When the Great Flood finally receded, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Uratu, today known at Ararat---and historians have been searching ever since for the Great Boat.

Contrary to popular belief, the Bible was not the originator of the story of Noah and the Great Flood. In ancient Babylonia---and even more ancient Sumeria---the same story was recorded thousands of years before the Bible was written. The Babylonian poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, has Utnapishtim acting on the instructions of his god, Ea, and building an ark of "seven stories" with "nine chambers" in each story. Utnapishtim then went into the ark with his sons, and his wife, and his wife's sons, before the waters of the flood. "All that I had, I caused to be put on board, the seed of many kinds of living creatures. I brought into the ship my family and all my kindred, herds and flocks of the fields, wild beast of the fields...."

The earlier Sumerian epic recorded that the god, Eki, warned the hero, Ziusudra, that the gods were angry with the people of the earth and were planning to destroy it in a flood. Ziusudra wisely began to build his ark. This tale is somewhat different from the Babylonian and Biblical accounts in that Eki did not warn Ziusudra directly. Since it was forbidden by the other gods for Eki to warn any mortal of the impending disaster, Eki bent the rules a little bit. He ordered Ziusudra to a nearby wall and spoke as the wall:

"O Ziusudra, man of Shurrupak
Pull down your house,
And build a boat.
Disdain your kingdom,
Forsake your goods,
And save your life."

When the early Spanish explorers reached North America, they were startled to discover that the Hopi Indians told a tale that was remarkably similar to the story of Noah's Ark. In fact, no fewer than 200 cultures worldwide tell of the legendary flood upon the earth. Yet in all the cultures, the story of Noah is practically identical in all the different sorts of ancient languages, whether it's Persian, Babylonian, ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Sanskrit, and so forth. The only thing that changes occasionally is the name of Noah. Not only does the story appear in the Christian Bible, but also in the Koran.

Since the Bible goes into such great detail about the construction of the Ark, researchers have seized upon the speculation that the Ark did, in fact, exist. The early editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, around 1770 for instance, printed a elaborate cutaway plan of the Ark. They also included technical discussions of its seaworthiness, layout, and carrying capacity, deciding that the total tonnage must easily have exceeded that of Saint Paul's Cathedral. It remained only for searchers to find the Great Boat, or at least, the final resting place of it.

In the Middle Eastern versions of the story, the Ark was built near the ancient city of Shurrupak, located south of Babylon on the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. According to the Book of Genesis, "the ark rested...upon the mountains of Uratu," a mountain chain renamed Ararat in the 4th century A.D.  This Ararat mountain chain is on the Iraqi border with Turkey. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the account is practically identical: "for a fifth day and a sixth day the mountain of Nisir held up the ship and did not let it waver."

Assuming the mountain of Nisir, which is not on any map, and the mountain of Ararat, which retains its ancient name, are one and the same, then the Ark came to rest in present-day Turkey, 500 miles away from Shurrupak. It is a desolate, sparsely populated region rising above the headwaters of the Tigris River. To further define the area, it is approximately 600 miles east of Ankara in volcanic territory halfway between the Black and the Caspian Seas.

The Book of Genesis, however, specified the "mountains of Uratu," not "Mount Ararat." Conceivably this could refer to the twin peaks of Great and Little Ararat. To confuse the issue even further, it could also mean something entirely different.

The snowcapped peaks of Great and Little Ararat are hard to miss. They tower over three countries: Iran, Turkey, and Armenia. Matter-of-fact, the volcanic cone of Great Ararat rises to a height of slightly less than 17,000 feet, an impressive height for any mountain in any mountain range. But the word "Ararat" was the ancient Biblical name for the ancient kingdom of Urartu, and the boundaries of Urartu corresponded roughly to those of Armenia. That knowledge enlarges the prospective hunting ground from a single (or double) mountain peak in Turkey to an entire country approximately 11,500 square miles in area.

A great many adventurers and amateur archaeologists have decided the Bible meant Great Ararat, mainly because the Turkish government permitted Ark-hunting, whereas Soviet Armenia remained largely inaccessible for political reasons. For years however, no one has come back with anything much more impressive than a few chunks of wood from Mount Ararat, which scholars have determined does not come from any tree that grows in the vicinity of the mountain. As a matter of fact, the area around Mount Ararat is virtually treeless in any direction for about 300 miles, and as far as is possible to determine, no forest has ever grown there.

The timber the Ark-hunters found on the mountain is from trees of the Mesopotamian plains from which Noah is said to have come, and seem to have been cut more than 5,000 years ago. But they have not been authenticated by the carbon-14 dating procedure as coming from Noah's Ark. To undertake further excavation where the discovery was made would necessitate moving an enormous amount of ice...an extremely expensive undertaking considering the circumstances.

Still, the Ark is probably the best known and most debated religious artifact in the world. And there are all those reports of an ancient, wooden ship containing stalls and cages hidden in the glacier on Mount Ararat. Are all these reported sightings the delusions of religious fanatics? How is it that dozens of well-financed expeditions have climbed Mount Ararat, looking for evidence of the Ark, and returned empty-handed? For that matter, how could Noah and his family, a total of eight persons, have fed and cared for all the animals at sea during that entire year? Perhaps, excavating Mount Ararat isn't such a bad idea after all.

While serving in the military as a young man, a French demolition engineer named Fernand Navarra became interested in the Ark. He began the first in a series of expeditions to Mount Ararat in 1952. Since his Kurdish guides abandoned him at a lower level than where he wanted to go, he had to proceed on his own. He did not find the Ark exposed, but he did see a massive dark shape frozen under the glassy ice. He knew he would have to return at a later time and discover what it could be.

In July 1955, Navarra went back to Mount Ararat. It was a warm year, and he believed the glacier had receded, knowing instinctively that if he had a chance of finding the Ark, it would have to be then. He took his young son, Raphael, with him. It turned out to be a smart decision because it was Raphael who spotted something. In a deep crevice at the 13,500 foot level, a dark object could be seen. Navarra lowered himself down. He reported that the wood was easy to see, but it was frozen into the ice. Until then, he had no idea how big it was.

With great effort, Navarra managed to chop a five-foot section of a hand-hewn wooden beam from the ice. He and Raphael were greatly excited. It was extremely heavy and trying to carry it down the mountain across his pack, Navarra could not maintain his balance. He decided to cut the wood in half, feeling badly at destroying part of the ancient relic. But he also realized that he would have to cut it again, anyway, to send out samples for testing.

Navarra had the wood tested in three different laboratories. He was told that the age was more than 5,000 years and of a type that does not grow near Mount Ararat. The scientific tests proved that something old, something mysterious was definitely on the mountain. It was the perfect fuel for other explorers, but Mount Ararat was not for the inexperienced climber.

Mount Ararat is a brutal mountain. From the south side, it looks like a nice volcanic cone, but on the opposite side, it contains an incredible canyon called the Ahora Gorge. It is about 1-1/2 times the height of the Grand Canyon, with vertical rock walls. The mountain is covered with an ice cap year round, and the ice cap is always eroding the volcanic layers, producing avalanches at the lower elevations as it erodes along. Every afternoon there is a storm on the mountain, and the winds are sometimes 100 miles per hour. Some experts are convinced it is not climbable.

Even so, Mount Ararat has been challenging climbers for hundreds of years. Around 475 B.C., a Chaldean high priest visited the site and wrote considerably of the phenomenon he witnessed, stating that it was quite easy to discern the Ark in its resting place high up on the glacier. Heronimous, the Egyptian historian of 30 B.C. who authored the ancient history of Phoencia, mentioned the Ark's existence on Mount Ararat. Also in the same period, Nickolas of Damascus, the biographer of Herod the Great, told of the Ark's landing near the summit of Ararat and reported that the timbers were still there.

There are still other ancient accounts. Many, many celebrated men of antiquity made journeys to the awesome mountain. Epiphaneus, the saintly bishop of Salamis in 360 A.D., was shown an already treasured relic of the Ark---a well-preserved and identifiable piece of a sea-going vessel's structure. In 1264, an Armenian historian (Hithong) said he saw the Ark at the summit of Mount Ararat. And in 1269, Marco Polo wrote in his book, The Travels, that the Ark of Noah rests high in the snowy reaches of the mountain. Plenty of ancient historical evidence spanning nearly 2,000 years states that the Ark is on Mount Ararat.

In spite of the historical evidence to indicate the Ark rests on Mount Ararat, many highly respected scholars are still skeptical. They theorize that the story of Noah's Ark might just be a parable, as so many other stories in the Bible are. They point out, for instance, that there is no known wood called "gopher wood," which is what the Bible says Noah used in the construction of his boat. And they don't believe it is possible for all the species of the world to be represented on the Great Boat---that there is no possible way for eight people to feed and care for that many animals for the length of time the Ark was afloat. The sheer numbers and weight alone would overwhelm a fleet of Arks. They further theorize that a boat the size of the Ark would surely have capsized and sunk from the fury of God's storm. There may be a boat on Mount Ararat, they concede, but it most assuredly cannot be Noah's Ark.

But there are those who disagree. They claim that gopher wood might be a process rather than a species of wood. In the olden days, there was a particular tree that was cut down for its sap. The sap was used as glue to splice wood together. Once hardened, the wood on both sides of the splice might break, but the splice would still hold. "We don't have a ply tree," Dr. Don Shockey, a professor of anthropology states, "but we do have plywood. Suppose gopher wood is a laminated process?"

As for Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives taking care of all the animals, it's entirely possible, too, the Ark supporters maintain. They state the Bible does not claim that every species of animal in the world was on board the Ark. Many were in the oceans and the major insect varieties were not included. There could have been as few as 2,500 animals. Some estimates are as high as 20,000 animals. In the darkness of the Ark, many animals would hibernate, while others would sleep most of the time---requiring very little maintenance and upkeep. Dr. Kenneth Ebel, a professor of biology, states, "Each family of creatures on the earth today have a single pair of ancestors. For example, even though there are over 300 varieties of dogs today, due to selective breeding, they have a single common ancestor. Considering the kinds of animals loaded on the Ark, there would have been ample room to load the ancestors of all the species we know today with room left over for Noah's family, food, and supplies."

And the Ark's stability during the fury of the storm? Everyone agrees the Ark had to be exceptionally strong because of its immense proportions. The Ark was 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits tall or roughly 450 feet by 75 feet by 45 feet. George Williamson, a Noah's Ark model expert, said, "It had one million, five hundred thousand cubic feet of space inside which is the equivalent of 170 railroad boxcars." Putting it into perspective makes the Ark the size of a four-story apartment building almost a block long.

A scale model of Noah's Ark was taken to a marine laboratory and subjected to the kinds of wave action Noah must have endured. The model sustained simulated 200-foot tidal waves, and it remained exceptionally seaworthy and stable. Furthermore, a professor of hydraulics from San Diego, Dr. Henry Morris, stated that the balance between the buoyant force and the gravitational force would be such that the Ark would right itself if it were tilted anywhere from 0-90 degrees. It would be practically impossible to capsize. Noah's Ark could have withstood the storm's fury.

It took Noah many years to build his Ark, and evidence today proves that ancient man had the technology to build such an elaborate vessel. The further back scholars go, the more amazed they are at the accomplishments. They have discovered in the reconstruction of ancient temples that the builders had tremendous abilities, architectural skills, and artistic design. Scholars have discovered that the ancient builders used inlaid stone, natural ventilation and air-conditioning. They were also able to make batteries and generate electricity. Some Egyptian artifacts are electro-plated. Ancient Mayans were able to calculate the solar year to be 365.2420 days---accurate to within two ten-thousandths of a day. Noah's Ark is not a parable.

A Russian born German physician was the first Westerner on record to scale Mount Ararat. In 1829, Friederick Parrot visited an Armenian cathedral, where he viewed a cross which was claimed to have been made from the wood brought down from Noah's Ark in 318 A.D. Parrot wrote that `the carving measured twelve inches high, nine inches across and was brownish in color.' He went to the 7,000 foot level of the mountain, where he reached Ahora Village. In the village was St. Joseph's Monastery and inside the monastery, Parrot claimed he saw ancient relics and manuscripts from Noah's Ark. He continued to the summit of the mountain, but he did not see the Ark.

Eleven years after Parrot's visit, Mount Ararat suffered a tremendous earthquake. In 1840, a huge section of the mountain caved in on itself, creating a devastating landslide. The monastery and all but a handful of the homes in Ahora Village were wiped out in the destruction---leaving the massive Ahora Gorge as a landmark behind.

In 1969, a Turkish businessman named George Hagopian went public with a story that shook the world. He claimed that as a boy in 1902, he actually saw the Great Boat wedged in a glacier from which the ice had temporarily receded. The site was on the northeast side of Mount Ararat...Great Ararat itself...which today lies under a permanent twenty-three square mile glacier of ice and snow. He described the vessel to an archaeological illustrator, Elfred Lee, as looking "like a long box, rectangular, and the corners were kind of rounded a little bit and the sides sloped in slightly. The roof was basically flat with just a slight pitch to it, and there was a stair apparatus at one end."

Hagopian went on to say that the entire boat was exposed, and described the wooden grain along the side containing the beautifully fitted joints with wooden dowels. He said he could see the color of the grain, that it was not a stone formation. It was definitely a man-made wooden construction. He told Elfred Lee that he was an 8-year-old boy at the time, and his uncle had to hoist him up onto the ladder. He then had walked on up under the roof and there, all the way down the middle of the roof, he saw holes. He said he stuck his head in one of the holes, and it was dark. When he shouted, his voice echoed and re-echoed inside---that it was hollow. Hagopian went back a couple of years later, saw the same thing, but ice and snow were beginning to cover it up again.

On June 5, 1985, 17 years after the first meeting with Hagopian, Elfred Lee met a man named Ed Davis. Davis was in the U.S. Army in 1943 and stationed in Iran at the time. Incredibly, he also claimed to have seen the Ark. His sighting was roughly in the same area as George Hagopian's only there was one significant difference. When Davis saw what he thought was the Ark, it had broken into two pieces.

"We waited awhile and the fog kinda lifted and it showed the Ark in the end---you could see in the end of it," said Ed Davis, now a retired Master Sergeant of the U.S. Air Force. "We saw both parts of it, and you'd just stand there with your mouth wide open!"

Ed Davis described three decks inside and large cages on the bottom deck. There were smaller cages on the second deck and on the roof was a venting system with many holes, enabling light and ventilation to reach the lowest deck. However, both Hagopian and Davis were unable to pinpoint the exact spot where they saw the Ark.

How can the Ark, spotted by some, not be found when others go looking for it? The question puzzles the experts. After Hagopian's experience with the Ark, Mount Ararat suffered another tremendous earthquake, and a great crevasse was created by an avalanche. The Ark was split into two pieces, and this appears to be what people are seeing today. Also, Ed Davis took a lie-detector exam for Larry Williams, who publishes a newsletter for treasure hunters. "After 2 really tense hours, the polygraph expert came out and said, `Larry, I can't tell you what mountain Ed Davis was on. I can't tell you if it was Noah's Ark. But I can tell you this: Ed Davis saw a boat and Ed Davis is not lying.`"

Part of the problem of believing in Noah's Ark was that there was only one written account of the story---the Bible---until a British bank clerk put together the Epic of Gilgamesh in 1872. George Smith, an engraver by trade, used to spend his lunch hours in the British Museum. His special interests were the ancient artifacts from Assyria. Since he was so totally captivated by them, he was offered the special position of piecing together and translating the 25,000 pieces of clay tablets unearthed from the ancient city of Ninevah. These pieces dated back to the 6th Century B.C., and he spent all his spare time at the task.

After spending ten years of work restoring the broken shards of clay, he came across an account of a ship surviving a great flood and coming to rest on a mountain---of a dove being sent out and not finding a place to land. The account so paralleled Noah that it suggested the Biblical account was more than just legend. It sent shivers through the scholastic community.

It also led to many explorers trying to climb Mount Ararat. In 1876, James Bryce, a highly regarded British statesman, juror and author, found a four foot piece of partially petrified hand-hewn timber nearly five inches thick at the 14,000 foot level of the mountain. He claimed he had discovered Noah's Ark. He was also largely ignored because Darwin's account of the origin of the species was gaining in popularity, and Bryce supported the traditional religious views.

Turkey decided to investigate Mount Ararat in 1883, after a particularly bad earthquake struck the area. Their expedition recorded the discovery of the foremost part of a very old ship jutting out of the ice at the 14,000 foot level of the mountain. The expedition took measurements, entered the Ark, and reported seeing several stalls and cages inside. Again, it stirred little interest due to Darwin's theory of evolution. The report was soon forgotten.

World War I, however, sparked new interest in the Ark. A Russian pilot flying over the area reported a dark structure about the size of a battleship with a rounded-over top on Mount Ararat. He claimed it was definitely a boat. In 1917, Czar Nicholas dispatched two companies of soldiers to locate and document the extraordinary find. Incredibly in view of failed later expeditions, they had no trouble finding the relic. After measuring it, they made a photographic record of it. Later that year, Russia was in the throes of the Revolution that saw the defeat of Czar Nicholas, and the photographic evidence disappeared. It was seen, though. Anastasia, the Czar's youngest daughter, reported seeing the photographs and reading the report. She also reportedly wore a cross made from the wood of Noah's Ark.

Supposedly in 1944, photographs of Noah's Ark were printed in the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for American servicemen all over the world. The Great Boat was resting on Mount Ararat. Other reports are more recent. Gregor Schwinghammer, a retired United States Air Force F100 pilot, reported flying over the Great Boat in 1959. He said it appeared to be a barge-like structure, similar to a large boxcar in design, and sticking out of the ice in a horseshoe depression about 3,000 feet below the summit of Mount Ararat.

Ron Bennet, an UPI photo-journalist for the White House, claimed the President's Plane flew over the Ark. They were on Air Force One with President Jimmy Carter on their way from Poland to Tehran, Iran, to attend a New Year's Day celebration given by the Shah. While flying over eastern Turkey, the occupants of the plane saw a "large, dark boat clearly visible" below them on Mount Ararat. It was partially covered by snow and ice.

Ed Behling was an American serviceman stationed southwest of Mount Ararat in 1973. He made it his philosophy to see and learn as much about his host country as possible, including the customs, language, and countryside. He made friends with a local man named Mustafa, who said he had a great uncle who knew where the Great Boat was located. At first the uncle was reluctant to take the serviceman to the boat, but finally they set out. After hiking up the mountain, around rocks and below cliffs, as if following a trail, they looked down and saw a huge, awesome ship sitting on a shelf. They climbed down beneath it, noting that it was wider than it was tall. Behling reported that `the sides were jagged and ripped up a little bit, and I could see what resembled planks. Compared to the hill, cliff that it was on, it still looked enormous. It's hard to imagine, and I think about it in my mind's eye, and it's still hard to imagine.'

It was stories like this that helped spark the interest of Don Shockey, author, ark researcher, amateur archaeologist, and professor of anthropology. In 1989, Don Shockey launched an expedition to Mount Ararat. Shockey chose his site because of classified U.S. satellite photographs, which had been analyzed by an expert. The photographs showed two objects on the mountain, one above the other and separated by 1200 feet. The two objects looked as if they could have been joined at one time. "I'm not saying it is the Ark. All I'm saying is, I'm 100 percent sure it is a man-made object," the expert told Don Shockey.

For three days, Shockey and his Turkish guides climbed the south side of Mount Ararat. The whole idea was to cross over the top, enter the glacier at about 16,000 feet, and verify what the satellite information had shown. But there was a tiny problem with the plan: the Turkish government forbids access to the north side of the mountain to foreigners, primarily because the north side is a mass of military installations. When the expedition reached the top, Shockey had to depend on one of his guides to continue on with a camera.

The Turkish guide was named Ahmet, and he had barely started down the north face when he spotted something buried in the snow. Inching as close as he could, he took photographs of an object which seemed to show the end of a rectangular box with a peaked roof. Ahmet estimated he was somewhere around 16,000 feet, 300 yards away, and unable to get any closer. When he returned, he told Shockey that `in all my years, I've never seen anything like it. There's some artifact there.' He further said the outline was easily recognizable in the snow and that it was definitely man-made.

Don Shockey was convinced Ahmet saw the remains of Noah's Ark. On a subsequent aerial photographic session taken on a later expedition, a second square-edged object appeared to be buried in the glacier several hundred yards below the object photographed by Ahmet. Shockey believed the two pieces were what Ed Davis saw in 1943. He decided to undertake another extensive aerial search in 1990. This time he found nothing. Everything around the site photographed by Ahmet was completely covered with snow.

Although Don Shockey was forced to abandon his search, he remains convinced that he has found the final resting place of Noah's Ark. Some researchers, however, disagreed with his findings, pointing out that Shockley probably found the remains of something man-made, all right, but was, in all likelihood, the ruins of an ancient building or abandoned hut.

With so many people claiming to have seen a huge boat buried in an icy glacier near the summit of Mount Ararat, how is it that scholars can entertain the idea that Noah's Ark lies elsewhere?

David Fasold, a former merchant marine officer and a merchant salvage expert, is one such subscriber. He has gathered together an impressive team of experts and made several trips to the mountains of Ararat, combing an unusual mound of dirt on a grassy plain with a metal detector. The area of interest to Fasold is located in a valley a full 17 miles south of Mount Ararat. Beneath the mound, he has found traces of iron which do not appear to be natural deposits.

"Every twenty to thirty inches, approximately, we have the remains of an iron fitting or iron pin of some sort that are still there in the soil," said Fasold in a televised interview. "They are still discernable. We have located 5,400 iron fittings. Of course, we haven't pulled them all out of the boat, but we have some. We cut one in half by a diamond saw, scanned it by an electron microscope at Los Alamos, and the iron fitting is 94.84 percent man-made wrought iron."

Looking at the mound from above, the iron deposits form a distinct pattern of intersecting lines, which Fasold believes is the framework of the ark. From end to end, the lines measure 515 feet or 300 cubits---the length of the ark as recorded in the Book of Genesis, if the royal cubit of 20.72 inches as measurement is used. (The Great Boat on Mount Ararak, by comparison, is estimated at 450 feet, or 300 cubits using 17.72 inches as measurement.) The width averages 85 feet or 50 cubits (again, using the royal cubit), which also corresponds to the Biblical dimensions.

"Given the shape of the thing and the size of the thing and where we found it...if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....Until somebody finds something else, what else could it possibly be, but Noah's Ark?" David Fasold further added, "The expert from the Turkish government, who was in charge, is also a geologist. He says it's Noah's Ark, 200 percent. It is not a geological anomaly. It is a man-made structure."

Scholars disagree with David Fasold's Ark theory, too. They point out that what Fasold discovered could be easily explained as the remains of an ancient Mongol fort. There are still other "disagreers" who are eager to point out that the Ark was constructed of gopher wood and "pitched within and without"---that is, the wooden planks of the ark were caulked with bitumen to make them watertight---and no mention was made of iron fittings holding the planks together. Presumably, metal workings didn't really enter into the shipbuilding picture until the time of the Phoenicians in the days of King Solomon.

There are also those skeptics who believe there may be more than one Ark. What if, they surmise, one of the relics belonged to Noah and the other to Utnapishtim or Ziusutra? Where does that leave historians? Instead of these ancient people being one and the same person, suppose there were many Noahs and many Arks?

There are many unanswered questions leading skeptics to believe that Noah's Ark has not been found. They point out that Mount Ararat was once a cult center for medieval monks who could have positioned wooden crosses and even boats to commemorate the site of Noah's landing. Perhaps what Don Shockey believes is the ark is actually a remnant from that culture. Furthermore, the mound David Fasold excavated, although large and impressive, is located in such a position as to make a convincing fortified stronghold in ancient times.

What really complicates the issue is that the Turkish government has officially declared the unusually shaped mound of David Fasold's to be the official resting place of Noah's Ark. That doctrine effectively precludes any further excavations on Mount Ararat for the relics seen by Navarra, Hagopian, Davis, and the others. Some speculate that this is exactly what the Turkish government intended---to keep foreigners from swarming all over the northern face of the mountain and presumably spying on their military fortifications.

But it's still hard not to be impressed with the testimony of so many eyewitnesses, like Ahmet Ali Arslan, a former Voice of America broadcaster and now the Washington bureau chief for a Turkish newspaper. He grew up around Mount Ararat, making more than 50 climbs to the summit with many internationally recognized explorers like Ferdnand Navarra and American astronaut, the late James Irwin. He knows the mountain like few people do. In 1989, he climbed the north face of Mount Ararat to check a certain area, which was in a satellite photograph as being the site of Noah's Ark. About 2,000 feet below the summit, and after sliding down several hundred feet, he noticed a building-type structure made of wood buried in the snow about 200 feet away. It contained straight beams and almost looked like a captain's cabin. It should not have been there, yet it was.

And one of the most fascinating accounts comes from George Zamal, an unassuming man now living in Southern California. He climbed Mount Ararat three times in search of Noah's Ark, finding it on the third climb in 1984. He was with a friend, Vladimir Zabinski, who would climb every year seeking the relic. The year before, Vladimir had seen a dark cave high on the mountain. Before he could get to it, an avalanche of ice and rocks prevented him. Vladimir was insistent about trying to find it again.

The two men searched for three days, constantly in danger of falling into one of the many deep crevasses that scar the mountain. Finally, George hit the ice with his axe and heard a hollow echo. The men dug and made a hole big enough to crawl into the cave. Using flashlights, they noticed the walls and floor were not stones and dirt, but were made of wood. It was very old, dark wood, and they realized they were not in a cave, but in a man-made structure. Looking around, they discovered pens of the type used to contain animals. They could see other rooms with other pens and railings. All was blocked by ice.

George Zamal said they were terribly excited and wanted to take a piece of wood as proof that they had found the Ark, but the wood was so hard, they had to cut, pry and yank to get it loose. They ended up with tiny chunks of the relic. Since it was their plan to show everyone proof that they had found the Ark, intending on returning with a team of scholars and excavators at a later date, they crawled back outside to take pictures of the exact location on the mountain, using George's camera. When it came time for Vladimir to take George's picture, Vladimir stepped too far back and fell. It made some noise and started an avalanche. The crevasse was too deep for George to get to Vladimir and Vladimir died. After Vladimir's death, George didn't think it was right to capitalize on the discovery. "You see," he said, "Vladimir was the one who insisted we look for the cave. Because of him, we found the Ark. To me, this piece of wood is so precious, and a gift from God."

And there's also the report from Jan vanden Bosch of the Dutch National Television and astronaut James Irvin. They were flying around the Ahora Gorge, when they found a third piece of the Ark on a ledge lower down than the two larger pieces. They took a most unusual photograph of it. It was sticking out of the snowcap. James Irvin didn't want to announce his discovery until he could mount a ground expedition to the photographed site of discovery. Sadly, he died before he could return.

An interesting sidebar to all this is the report from Salih Bayraktutan, head of geology at Ataturk University in Turkey.  He claims the man-made structure on the plains, 17 miles south of Mount Ararat, is more than 100,000 years old; which means it was built 94,000 years before God created the world, which according to one Bishop Ussher, was in 4004 B.C.  In 1984 and 1985, Americans Marvin Steffens and Ron Wyatt visited this site and took samples.  In 1988, Vendyl Jones took actual measurements, showing the 'vessel' to be 515 feet long and 139 feet wide [which goes against the Biblical 50 cubits in width, which would have measured about 86 feet].  It also rests at an altitude of 7000 feet, near the village of Uzengili and immediately below the mountain of Al Judi, named in the Koran as the resting place of the Ark.  Round about lie huge stones with holes carved at one end, said to be 'drogue stones' dragged behind ancient ships to stabilize them.  David Fasold also reported that 'radar imagery at about 75 feet down from the stern is so clear that you can count the floor-boards between the walls.'  He also believed it is the fossilized remains of the upper deck and that the original reed substructure has disappeared.  Unfortunately, since he doesn't mention any control sounding being taken outside the area of the 'Ark,' the evidence becomes useless.

In 275 B.C., the Babylonian historian Berossos said that the Ark of Xisuthros was still to be seen in the Kurdish mountains of Armenia; one ingenious theory holds that this was the same stone simulacrum of a boat that is located on the grassy plains near the village of Uzengili.  If the original 'discovery' made it into the pages of the Bible and the Koran, then in one sense, the Ark of the Bible has been rediscovered.

One thing is certain. Whether Noah's Ark rests on Mount Ararat or the grassy plains 17 miles away or somewhere entirely different, both Fasold and Shockey have discovered something very unique. Only further exploration and detailed analysis will reveal exactly what it is they have each found.

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