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Is Noah's Ark a fiction or a miracle of ancient engineering?
04.08.2012
Is Noah's Ark a fiction or a miracle of ancient engineering?
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The mystery of Noah's Ark is one of the oldest mysteries in the history of mankind.
Legend has it that a giant wooden ship during the flood transported the family of the Old Testament Patriarch Noah and "every creature in a pair" to a safe place, which allowed to revive life on earth.
Noah's ark was at sea for five months, after which it stood on the mountain, protecting its numerous inhabitants for more than one year.
Noah and Utnapishtim
At first glance, it is obvious that it is almost impossible to write seriously about Noah's Ark and at the same time avoid being accused of an attempt on Christianity.
However, this is not the case; most Christians, if we do not take into account their interfaith differences, will agree that the story of Noah and his ark should not be taken literally.
And, as has been noted many times, the Bible is far from the only sacred text that contains a mention of the flood and the miraculous salvation of the righteous.
Various versions of the story of Noah can be found in other sacred texts, the most famous of which, of course, is the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In it, one of the many Babylonian gods called the righteous Utnapishtim (in Sumerian mythology, Ziusudra corresponds to him) and ordered him to build an ark to escape from the universal flood sent by the gods to the human race as a punishment for disobedience and impiety.
On the advice of God, Utnapishtim built a large ark, loaded a couple of all living things on earth on it, and together with his family he boarded the ship himself.
The elements raged for seven days, all living things died, but the reliable ship of Utnapishtim was washed up on Mount Nazir, and all who were on it survived the flood.
The gods regretted what had happened and left Utnapishtim and the inhabitants of the ark alone, life was saved and reborn again on earth.
The parallels in the stories about Noena - the ambiguous but sympathetic patriarch and Utnapishtim are obvious; they coincide in all the main details and in most small things.
It is likely that all such stories are based on a real event, the details of which are lost to history, but which we can judge from the ancient stories we know about the ark and the flood.
It is interesting how possible the construction of Noah's Ark is from a technical, engineering point of view.
Was it possible to build an ark
As far as can be judged, Noah's ark was a large rectangular box made of gopher wood, or perhaps a combination of several types of wood, which at that time was colloquially called gopher wood.
Dimensions of Noah's ark: length 133.5 meters; width 22.25 meters; height 13.35 meters.
This is a very, very large box; it would be the longest wooden ship ever built by man.
Moreover, these dimensions raise Noah's Ark to the rank of one of the greatest achievements of engineering, but they also mark the beginning of human exploration of the water element.
Is it possible that such a vessel was actually ever built and launched?
And how was it possible to find enough material to build Noah's Ark?
For the construction of another famous supership, the "Great Michael" (launched in Scotland in 1511; its length was 240 feet, width – 35 feet), according to contemporaries, it took "all the forests of Fife".
Fife is a county in Scotland, which is famous for its shipbuilding.
Wood for the construction of the "Great Michael" had to be bought and transported not only from other parts of Scotland, but also from France, from the Baltic Sea, and even from Norway.
However, the length of the "Great Michael" was only 73 meters, i.e. it was half the size of Noah's Ark.
Obviously, it took many times more wood to build a ship twice as long as the Great Michael, and larger in all other respects.
The sources do not clearly indicate where exactly Noah's Ark was built, but, according to historians, it must have happened somewhere in Mesopotamia, probably on the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates.
Currently, these territories belong to Iraq, which has never been famous for the abundance of shipbuilding wood.
In 2003, Jose Solis, a doctoral student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, recreated an engineering model of Noah's Ark using proven methods of naval architecture.
He assumed that the ship's own weight – the weight of the wooden structure itself, minus the cargo and ballast is equal to 3,676 tons.
In a fully loaded state, such a vessel was able to hold 13,000 tons.
For comparison :the "Great Michael", the construction of which took "all the wood of Fife", could carry only 1000 tons.
Where would Noah get the wood to build the ark?
In his model, Solis simply did not consider this issue; he only assumed that in terms of American dollars, the wood would cost 16.472 million.
It turns out that tens of thousands of huge trees with the highest quality wood had to be transported to the territory of modern Iraq.
Did Noah have the opportunity to "import" wood from France, Norway or other countries?
Hardly.
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Thank you for your sound thinking, mathematicians are beginning to consider what size it was, And it was not the size for the preservation of all living things, but for the continuation of the life of mankind: domestic animals and what we would take for further life after the flood.
Fiction is only what a modern person, who is not properly educated, invents and interweaves.
As a result, the gossip grows more and more incredible "contours".
And there was actually a" Great Flood", even FIVE times already.
And the "ark" was real, not fabulous, "made of wood brought from France."
And not at all like it was inflated, and it was the most ordinary floating vehicle as long as it kept on the water.
In order to understand the very serious things described in the so called "mythology", it was not necessary to turn the original texts into a fairy tale, but to translate them as it should be.
And the second.
a person must know the physical foundations of the material world in which he lives.
And he, thanks to the "prestigious education", does not know anything real.
So he wonders, and is surprised by all sorts of invented "miracles".
And there are no miracles in nature.
There is only nothing, even after graduating from "prestigious" universities...
I believe that oil and coal are the work of the world flood, large round stones on the planet, the death of mammoths is also the work of the world flood and many other secrets of the planet earth that scientists around the world do not even think about
Yes, it still remains a mystery, lost in time...
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