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Noah's Ark: Myth or reality?
Noah's Ark is a legendary biblical ship, allegedly built by a descendant of Adam in the ninth generation by Noah at the command of God to save his family and animals from the Flood sent by God on depraved people.
You can read more about the construction of the Ark, the flood and all the details of the journey that lasted 200 days in the article "The Flood", the purpose of our article is to listen to the opinions of all parties, both those who believe that Noah's Ark existed, and those who believe that this is another fairy tale...
So, let's recall the dimensions of this ancient ship:
* length 160 m.;
* width - 25 m.;
* height 15 m.
What arguments do the supporters of the version that Noah's Ark existed and is a historical artifact have in their arsenal?
275 BC .
A Babylonian historian, whose testimony is preserved in the works of later Greek authors, wrote that the ark of Xisutros, this Babylonian Noah, can still be seen in the Kurdish mountains of Armenia and "people tear off the resin to use it as an antidote or amulet."
In the cathedral of the monastery in Etchmiadzin, the residence of the Armenian Catholicos, there is a small piece of wood — a relic brought from an expedition undertaken by a monk during the time of St. Gregory the Illuminator.
It is said that he made several attempts to climb the mountain, but each time he climbed to a certain height, he fell asleep in a strange way, and when he woke up, he found himself already in the monastery below.
In the end, a voice from above informed him that the top of Ararat, where the ark lies, is a forbidden territory.
But at the same time, as a reward for his perseverance, he was promised a small piece of wood from which the ark was built.
This piece, which he subsequently received, is today the main relic of the monastery in Etchmiadzin.
In 1829, the Frenchman Friedrich Parrott climbed Mount Ararat.
He did not look for the ark and did not find it, but he left his mark on science, called "arkology", breaking an old taboo that forbade local residents to climb the mountain, thereby opening the way for further research.
In 1840, a Turkish expedition, which was equipped to study snow slides on Ararat, discovered a giant frame of almost black wood sticking out of the glacier.
Having got inside the ship, the members of the expedition stated that it was arranged for the transportation of livestock and consisted of several compartments.
The inhabitants of the settlements closest to Ararat reported that they had known about the existence of this structure for 6 years, but did not dare to approach it, because they saw some kind of terrible spirit there, which appeared in the upper window.
In 1876, Lord Bryce discovered on a mountain ledge at an altitude of 13 thousand feet a piece of processed wood about 4 feet long (perhaps it was the same pine or spruce tree from which Noah built his ark.
Lord Bryce cut himself a small piece as a souvenir.
1887 Prince of Persia and Archbishop John Joseph Nuri reported that he had found the remains of the ark on Ararat.
As the magazine "English Mechanic" wrote on November 14, 1892, Nuri with a sinking heart went around the "big wooden ship", which five or six of his companions also had the opportunity to observe.
The magazine continues: "He was almost ecstatic with the feelings that overwhelmed him.
According to Nuri, the sight of the ark filled him with joy and gratitude to the Almighty: after all, the truth of the Holy Scripture was confirmed, which he did not doubt, but which needed confirmation to convince the unbelievers."
Six years later, he tried to organize an expedition to disassemble the ark and deliver it to the World's Fair in Chicago, but did not receive permission from the Turkish government.
1905 The writer Charles Berlitz in his book "The Lost Ship of Noah" cites the testimony of the Armenian George Hagopyan.
He said that in 1905, as an 8 year old boy, he climbed Mount Ararat together with his grandfather.
I found the ark and visited it inside.
On the upper deck, I saw a superstructure with many windows.
The body of the ark was huge and hard as a stone.
In 1916, during a reconnaissance flight over Turkish territory, a pilot of the Russian tsarist army, Lieutenant Roskovitsky, allegedly discovered the ark.
After the report to Tsar Nicholas II, an expedition consisting of 150 people was equipped.
In two weeks they reached the ark.
According to Roskovitsky, the ship looked like a giant barge and a freight car at the same time.
There were many rooms inside, large and small.
Moreover, the small ones were covered with a metal mesh.
1940s In the Middle East, an amateur historian Leonard Simmons (Leonard Simmons) discovered a Babylonian clay tablet with about 60 lines of cuneiform, the age of which is estimated at about 3700 years.
Researcher Irving Finkel from the British Museum was able to read on this plate a description of a ship that was fleeing from the flood There are several dozen cuneiform tablets that tell the story of the flood, which apparently served as the basis for the biblical legend.
However, this is the first one that describes the appearance of the vessel.
In this account of the Akkadian flood myth, God tells King Atrahasis to destroy his house and build a boat, as well as to neglect property in order to save his life.
The boat, according to God, should have walls made of reeds and be round: its width and length should be the same.
Further in the plate, it is recommended to use palm fibers bonded with bitumen for water resistance for the construction of the vessel.
The text ends with the words of Atrahasis, said to the builder of the ark, who had to stay overboard and die: the hero of the myth orders him to seal the entrance to the boat after he himself enters inside.
Finkel noted that the ship, which wanted to escape from the flood, did not need to swim anywhere at all, but simply stay on the surface of the water.
According to him, such round boats are still used in Iraq and Iran.
1949 On August 31, the French newspaper "France Soir" published a sensational message under the headline: "We have seen Noah's Ark... but not on Mount Ar Arat."
The article was about Mount Judy, where a very impressive size (500 feet long, 80 feet wide and 50 feet high) was found, along with the bones of marine animals and the grave of Noah nearby.
This story belongs to two Turkish journalists, who also mentioned a local legend that says that from time to time the ark appears in the local area in the form of a ghost ship covered with a layer of dirt.
It is not entirely clear from the newspaper's report whether the journalists saw the actual ark or its ghost.
In the summer of 1953, six very clear photos of the ark were taken from a helicopter that flew at an altitude of about a hundred feet above Mount Ararat.
The pilot was an American oilman George Jefferson Green.
The photo clearly shows the outlines of what seemed to be Noah's Ark, half sunk into the rocks and ice that covered the edge of the mountain ledge.
After this flight and receiving photos, Green tried to assemble an expedition to Ararat, but his plan failed.
After his death in 1962, the photos disappeared.
On July 6, 1955, French mountaineer Fernand Navarre and his 15 year old son Gabriel found Noah's Ark and made this discovery the property of the whole world.
From under the glacier and from under the ice of the frozen lake on the top of Ararat, he extracted several planks of the ship's skin and a bar carved in the shape of the letter "G".
The radioactive method was used to analyze a meter long piece of wood (the ship's frame) brought by Fernand Navarre.
Studies have shown that the tree (oak) is 5 thousand years old.
The tests were carried out in two laboratories: in Cairo and in Madrid.
1959 Turkish lieutenant Kurtis captured the remains of a huge ship on the slope of Ararat from an airplane In 1969, Fernand Navarre led another expedition, the funds for which were collected by the American organization "Serch"; as a result, several more boards were discovered, samples of which the expedition took with them.
1974 Before the Turkish authorities closed this area as a strategic one in 1974, at least eight expeditions in search of the ark took place at once in the summer of the same year.
One of the leaders of the rival expeditions is Tom Krotser.
a veteran of four previous ascents of Ararat, he stated the following: "The dates of this tree are seventy thousand tons, I swear on my head" (San Francisco Examiner, June 29, 1974).
According to him, the age of the wood already found varies between four and five thousand years, as evidenced by the data obtained using the radiocarbon method of research.
1989 American astronaut James Irwin (James Irwin) during an expedition to Ararat filmed a brown object on videotape, which many experts took for the wreckage of an ancient ship.
In 1995, the US CIA released images of the so called "Ararat anomaly".
Moreover, it was stated that these pictures were taken back in 1949 from an airplane.
In 2000, very fuzzy images of the artifact were obtained from the Icon satellite.
In the summer of 2003, images of a significant part of the artifact on Mount Ararat were taken from the Quick Bird commercial satellite launched by Space Global Imadging.
April 2004 At a press conference held on April 26, 2004 in Washington, Dr. Daniel McGivern announced that when studying photographs of Mount Ararat taken by a space satellite, it was absolutely proved that a known anomaly on the slopes of the mountain, at an altitude of 4725 meters above sea level, having a length of about 183 meters, is"the creation of human hands".
"There is no doubt about this," the doctor says, " and now we have started negotiations with the Turkish government to allow us to conduct excavations here in the summer.
Then we will be able to say for sure whether this is the legendary ark on which the pious Noah and his relatives survived the Great Flood, as described in the Bible."
In 2007, American scientists announced that they had discovered an object similar to Noah's Ark in the Elburs Caspian Mountains in northwestern Iran.
The opponents of the Noah's Ark theory have their own arguments, for example, such as those of Sergei Ponomarev: "Of course, you can make up anything.
That it rained for forty days in a row and the icebergs melted (apparently, they had global warming in the Ancient World?).
That Noah conceived his first child at 500 years old, and only lived for 950 years (and why are gerontologists now struggling so hard over the problem of longevity, and pharmacologists are inventing "Viagra"?).
And that in the process of the flood, this activist of sex for the elderly shoved "every creature in a pair" into his ark, and everyone who did not get into this watercraft was washed away (I wonder if bacteria and microbes as representatives of the living world were also located in pairs in the ark?)...
This is from what kind of hangover you need to be in order to continue searching for the remains of the ark on the basis of such "scientific data"?!
So I imagine: another 300-400 years will pass, and the descendant of the enthusiast, having studied the manuscript called "The Lord of the Rings", will organize an expedition in the footsteps of hobbits, elves and goblins.
And what, druids are also made of wood.
Like Noah's ark...".
And then what about all the statements that allegedly Noah's Ark was seen on Mount Ararat?
Think about the fact that these statements are so mysterious that no one has been able to verify them for hundreds of years.
Charles Fort responded to Archdeacon Nuri's ascent to Ararat and the subsequent discovery of the ark with the following comment: "I admit that anyone who is convinced that there are relics on the top of Mount Ararat should only climb the mountain to find exactly what can be said: here are the remains of Noah's Ark, even if they are fossilized.
If someone else is convinced that a mistake was made here and it was necessary to climb another mountain, say Pikes Peak, then he only needs to climb it and say that this most virtuous of all lands was once the holy land."
4  As for the photos taken from satellites, skeptics, as usual, believe that in this case we are talking about the play of light and shadow, which creates "out of nothing" strange outlines.
According to Vadim Chernobrov, the head of the Kosmopoisk group, who has repeatedly explored the slopes of Ararat, all the samples previously found there have nothing to do with Noah's Ark and are natural formations.
There is not and cannot be a giant ship on Ararat.
Even if it had been preserved, the fossilized remains of the ship were burned to the ground during the eruption of the volcano in 1840...
It should be noted that the Bible speaks about the mountains of Ararat, and in the Old Testament times the term "Ararat" did not mean mountains, but an area corresponding to the territory of Armenia.
And only traditional interpretations of later times connected the location of Noah's ark with Mount Ararat...
So, if we assume that Noah's Ark really existed, then how could it have survived to this day and where is it still located?
Sources of information:
1. Wikipedia website
2.
Lyashevsky S.
"The Bible and the science of the creation of the world"
3.
The results of Ron Wyatt's research
4.
Michell, Rickard "The phenomena of the Book of Miracles"
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