Noah's Ark: The Vessel (Feasibility; Resting Place; Remains)

[misterwibble]

Interesting. Verrrrry interesting.

Noah’s Ark PaleoBabble Update
Posted by MSH under: Ancient Sites; Bible; Noah's ark .

This is a sad post for me. Read on and you’ll know why.

Fox News reported today about a joint Turkish-Chinese expedition that claims to have found Naoh’s ark on Mount Ararat. Part of their proof is the picture below, which purports to have been taken inside the ark. Allegedly, the wooden beams carbon-date to 4,800 years old. Would that be cool or what?


Now the sad part. I also got an email today from one of Randall Price’s students. The email contains a message from Dr. Price about this expedition. (Dr. Price, as some of you may recall, has been doing a lot of searching for the ark lately.) Here is an excerpt from his message:

I was the archaeologist with the Chinese expedition in the summer of 2008 and was given photos of what they now are reporting to be the inside of the Ark. I and my partners invested $100,000 in this expedition (described below) which they have retained, despite their promise and our requests to return it, since it was not used for the expedition. The information given below is my opinion based on what I have seen and heard (from others who claim to have been eyewitnesses or know the exact details).

To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake. The photos were reputed to have been taken off site near the Black Sea, but the film footage the Chinese now have was shot on location on Mt. Ararat. In the late summer of 2008 ten Kurdish workers hired by Parasut, the guide used by the Chinese, are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area (where the photos were originally taken) at the Mt. Ararat site. In the winter of 2008 a Chinese climber taken by Parasut’s men to the site saw the wood, but couldn’t get inside because of the severe weather conditions. During the summer of 2009 more wood was planted inside a cave at the site. The Chinese team went in the late summer of 2009 (I was there at the time and knew about the hoax) and was shown the cave with the wood and made their film. As I said, I have the photos of the inside of the so-called Ark (that show cobwebs in the corners of rafters – something just not possible in these conditions) and our Kurdish partner in Dogubabyazit (the village at the foot of Mt. Ararat) has all of the facts about the location, the men who planted the wood, and even the truck that transported it.

In short, Randall was duped. I feel bad about it because I know him. He’s a good guy with real degrees (so please don’t equate him with charlatans like Ron Wyatt). Yeah, he should have known better. But at least he’s being honest here.

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2010/04/noahs-ark-paleobabble-update

Have the locals cottoned on to the fact that there's money to be made out of ark hunters?

 

[Zilch5]

Interesting. Verrrrry interesting.
Have the locals cottoned on to the fact that there's money to be made out of ark hunters?

I think you hit the nail on the head there. :lol:

 

[Bigfoot73]

Heeeeeere's Bigfoot!
Fee fi fo fum, do I smell another BS debunking attempt?

I have only now finished debunking this debunk over on Hidden Mission Forum. Price has probably got some personal beef with the rest of the expedition, if it was all a scam he should have said so at the time.

Are we to believe that this guide and about 10 of his mates dismantled some antiquity on the Black Sea coast and trucked it to Ararat, where they spent weeks rebuilding it as a fake Ark or part thereof, covering it with rocks and getting glacial ice to form over it, all out of a mountain guides' wages? I don't see any other source of remuneration for it proposed.It's often a good starting point with such matters to follow the money: what money?
How did they manage this when there is not one single solitary 'king road anywhere near the summit?
How did they evade the attention of the security operation maintained by NATO's second largest army, not exactly known for it's benevolent attitude to Kurdish people?
Some of the wood has already been carbon dated, at 4800 years old. Offhand I can't think of any 4800 year old wood at any archaeological site anywhere, least of all at oxygen -rich ground level with high humidity in a hot climate zone. Somehow I think if there were any the scientific community would have noticed and the Turkish authorities would have been rather more concerned for it's wellbeing.
Surely if Price knows this to be a scam he can come up with some actual incriminating evidence, such as the location of the fake Ark? A few details possibly, names, origins of plundered timber etc?
Paleobabble has a reputation for ineptitude and this will do nothing to dispel it, and while wider academia and UNESCO have remained non-committal so far, this is the first attempt at denial and not a very credible one.

I can appreciate that people find it hard to believe when there is no clearly apparent explanation for how it got there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't .

 

[Zilch5]

Noah's ark claim doubted

ANKARA, Turkey, April 28 (UPI) -- Archaeologists and others are expressing skepticism a team of explorers has found the remains of Noah's ark on Turkey's Mount Ararat.

"I don't know of any expedition that ever went looking for the ark and didn't find it," Paul Zimansky, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York state, told National Geographic.

"It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's ark, but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it," Yeung Wing-cheung, a filmmaker who traveled with the explorers, told the Daily Mail.

The explorers say they found seven large wooden compartments buried under snow on the mountain at 13,000 feet above sea level in 2007 and 2008, and returned with a film crew last October.

"The structure is partitioned into different spaces," Noah's Ark Ministries International team member Man-fai Yuen said in a statement. "We believe that the wooden structure we entered is the same structure recorded in historical accounts."

Biblical scholar Jack Sasson of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee also says it's doubtful Noah landed on Mount Ararat.

"The whole notion is odd, because the Bible tells you the ark landed somewhere in Urartu," he said, referring to an ancient kingdom in eastern Turkey, "but it's only later that people identified Mount Ararat with Urartu."

So - all animals fitted into seven compartments? And in order to prove the bible correct, they find the arc on Mount Ararat even though the bible tells you it is somewhere else? Rrrrrrrrrrright....

And oh, the film maker bit, that's where the money comes in, if you ask me.

 

[misterwibble]

a lot of people seem to have afound a lot of Arks down the years. Maybe there was more than one? You know, an 'A' ark, a 'B' ark etc.

Wonder which ark the Creationists and Bible literalists were one?

 

[Bigfoot73]

I think the claim that 2 of each of all the world's animal species csn safely be ascribed to mythological exaggeration. It was supposed to have rained for 40 days and nights: how many times is the number 40 used in old myths? Loads.
Urartu is not necessarily somewhere other than Ararat.
So was it the film-maker who funded the hoax? He wasn't even on the first expedition. Quite some long fraud operation if it was. There's still the unfeasibility of it to be explained.

 

[Bigfoot73]

This is nothing more than my own personal febrile moonbat fermentation but I think I've sussed what it is, and where.
A lot of the accounts describe structural - looking objects at two locations, and some describe the Ark as having one end missing.
There was an eruption in 1840 and an earthquake in 1883 or thereabouts.
Perhaps the broken -off section rolled downhill, and this is what they have found. It would explain why there are no external photos - it's been buried under debris from a landslide further up.
FT ran a report on it about 10 years ago, but I haven't got the copy any more.The accounts in it mentioned the Ahora Gorge.

 

[Bigfoot73]

Perhaps there actually was some catastrophic nonsense and Velikovskian twaddle going on .
It has been suggested the Black Sea was formed abruptly only a few thousand years ago, perhaps by such an event. It has also been suggested, usually with regard to the age of the Great Pyramids, that the regional climate was much different then, with much higher rainfall. This would have been conducive to soil formation, and the soil would have borne most of the evidence. The climate change led to the soil depleting and the evidence went with it.

The evidence for the Ark has had a rough time of it: the Czar's expedition returned to Russia proper only to have it's evidence seized by the atheist Bolsheviks ( although movie footage is supposed to have reached America and been shown to servicemen in the war in some forces entertainment programme). The village of Ahora had accumulated a collection of artefacts only for it and the village to be obliterated in the 1840 eruption.

That leaves the testimony of visitors all the way back to Alexander the Great, various explorers and all the local inhabitants, and it isn't easy to mistake a shepherd's hut or a rock for a 500 foot ship that many times, nor to dismantle and rebuild some nameless Black Sea coast antiquity that many times either.

 

[bosskR]

Are we to believe that this guide and about 10 of his mates dismantled some antiquity on the Black Sea coast and trucked it to Ararat, where they spent weeks rebuilding it as a fake Ark or part thereof, covering it with rocks and getting glacial ice to form over it, all out of a mountain guides' wages?

I don’t know if the guides did it to fool the Christians, or if the Christians did it themselves. But what I saw in the video was just a couple of beams of wood, not a re-built fake Ark. Is there a better video? What video are we looking at? And was the video shot on Ararat?

Surely if Price knows this to be a scam he can come up with some actual incriminating evidence, such as the location of the fake Ark?

Have these guys even disclosed the location of the ”real” Ark?

Offhand I can't think of any 4800 year old wood at any archaeological site anywhere

This is probably a good point, I’m certainly no expert but wood that old usually comes from a desert, an airtight swamp (in NZ, you can buy swamp wood that’s TENS of thousands of years old!) or permafrost.

However, it wouldn’t even surprise me if the wood had never been carbon-dated at all – like they just made that up. All kinds of things start making sense if you allow for the possibility that people are in fact lying.

What this story needs is some further evidence from the explorers, such as external photos

I’m glad you admit this. I want to believe, but I don’t yet ... and I don’t think any evidence will be forthcoming.

 

[Bigfoot73]

I don’t know if the guides did it to fool the Christians, or if the Christians did it themselves

You don't know if anybody did anything to fool anybody. The 'hoax' trail has gone as cold as the 'genuine' trail. Price has not produced any substantiation of his claims, which would have had a lot more credibility had he made them a lot sooner than this.
There was a lot more in that video than just a couple of beams of wood. If it was only part of the Ark and it had been at least partially buried by landslide debris after it rolled downhill then there wouldn't be much to see of the outside.
It must have been shot somewhere icy for there to be all that ice around that entrance passage they used, they were in cold weather gear and seemed cold. So wherever they built this hoax must have been sub zero which makes it all the more remarkable that they managed it at all.

Have these guys even disclosed the location of the ”real” Ark?

That could leave the Turkish government with a major security headache, and could jeopardise their find itself. Price, however, has not revealed the location of the fake, which he should know and should disclose if indeed it is a fake.

This is probably a good point, I’m certainly no expert but wood that old usually comes from a desert, an airtight swamp (in NZ, you can buy swamp wood that’s TENS of thousands of years old!) or permafrost.

This isn't wood, it's cut, dressed timber that has been assembled into a structure, and IMO preserved by freezing near the summit of Ararat. It was suggested that it came from a site on the Black Sea coast, which seems highly unlikely for environmental and logistical reasons.
They might be lying about the carbon dating but if they had gone to so much trouble to build this fake Ark would they really have left themselves vulnerable to such easy exposure as frauds?
If this was a hoax, an exceptionally major effort has gone into it,but apparently exceptionally flawed thinking too.
All this just to sell a few DVDs on the web?
Why has Price not proved his case?
Why are they inviting UNESCO to become involved? What evidence for a hoax is there beyond Price's claims?

 

[bosskR]

There was a lot more in that video than just a couple of beams of wood.

Where can I see this video? Is it somewhere on the web ...

 

[Bigfoot73]

It was all over the web, but that was a week ago so it would probably be easier to pack your hiking boots and head for Turkey yourself. Try the Telegraph site or YouTube.

 

[Analis]

The account in the Book of Enoch says,in so many words, that Noah awoke one day to see that the Earth had tilted. Perhaps there actually was some catastrophic nonsense and Velikovskian twaddle going on .

The Earth tilted ? If this was the case, all evidence we would have would be a quote in the Book of Enoch ?

It has been suggested the Black Sea was formed abruptly only a few thousand years ago, perhaps by such an event. It has also been suggested, usually with regard to the age of the Great Pyramids, that the regional climate was much different then, with much higher rainfall. This would have been conducive to soil formation, and the soil would have borne most of the evidence. The climate change led to the soil depleting and the evidence went with it.

There's something I don't understand : do you mean the ark was carried by a kind of wave ? Such a disaster would be a much more powerful shaper of relief than a rainy climate. The evidence it would leave would not be of the kind to be washed away.
Relating to the Black Sea, I suppose you refer to the catastrophe depicted in Pitman and Ryan's book. But they never meant that the Black Sea was "created" by this event. It existed before, only its shores were much lower than now. Geological studies documented that it had previously gone through huge fluctuations. Centuries before, its level had been much higher, even higher than then sea level. This was due to the fast melting of central european glaciers. To the point that it bursted on several occasions into the Sea of Mamara and the Aegean Sea, as evidenced by the presence of freshwater deposits and fossils. Another possible source for diluvial legends. Prior to the disaster, it had retreated because of a decrease of river inflow, due to that glaciers had much reduced.

some of those global flood legends are not versions of the Ark story, they are accounts of other cultures' flood experience - for instance the Yakima indians of western America, who built their own Ark which allegedly came to rest on Mount Jefferson.

Yes. Many people all around the world faced gigantic floods at the end of the last Ice Age, and evolved their own myths. Sometimes similar to Noah's story, sometimes different. It is also possible that human memory was impressed with huge meteoritic strikes, like the one some supposed to have caused the extinction of big mammals.

The evidence for the Ark has had a rough time of it: the Czar's expedition returned to Russia proper only to have it's evidence seized by the atheist Bolsheviks ( although movie footage is supposed to have reached America and been shown to servicemen in the war in some forces entertainment programme). The village of Ahora had accumulated a collection of artefacts only for it and the village to be obliterated in the 1840 eruption.
...
That leaves the testimony of visitors all the way back to Alexander the Great, various explorers and all the local inhabitants, and it isn't easy to mistake a shepherd's hut or a rock for a 500 foot ship that many times, nor to dismantle and rebuild some nameless Black Sea coast antiquity that many times either.

There may be a presence of wood on the Ararat, it would be evidence of an old wooden structure, not of the Ark. The trouble with these stories is that as usual, remains vanish for a variety of motives. It leads to another question : why weren't Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks able to reveal the presence of the Ark along all those centuries ? A proof of the genuineness of the Holy Books...

 

[Bigfoot73]

What I think happened - purely speculation of course- is that Earth had a close encounter with another planet, the gravity from which pulled the Mediterranean and Black Sea into a pile over the Ararat region and that this dissipated as the effect wore off.
Nobody has ever claimed there have been other wooden structures at the top of Ararat. Remains may vanish, but the ancient timber from some un-named Black Sea coast site seeem to have remained untouched, if the hoax claim is to be believed - and I don't believe it.

why weren't Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks able to reveal the presence of the Ark along all those centuries ? A proof of the genuineness of the Holy Books...

They were. The number of witness accounts runs into the hundreds. Some Christian pilgrims visiting the tomb of Saint Jacob would climb further to see it. However neither religion requires pilgrimage to it. Apparently it is only visible during late summer when the snow covering it recedes. George Hagopian, who climbed on it with his grandfather, found it impossible to break any fragments off - maybe due to petrification and not helped by them not actually taking any tools with them.
It would seem that it is only in recent times that Christians have felt a need to prove it's existence, possibly due to the decline in religious belief. In earlier times perhaps religious people were prepared to accept it's existence without proof.

 

[Analis]

What I think happened - purely speculation of course- is that Earth had a close encounter with another planet, the gravity from which pulled the Mediterranean and Black Sea into a pile over the Ararat region and that this dissipated as the effect wore off.
Nobody has ever claimed there have been other wooden structures at the top of Ararat. Remains may vanish, but the ancient timber from some un-named Black Sea coast site seeem to have remained untouched, if the hoax claim is to be believed - and I don't believe it.

I remember a presentation by the late Stephen Jay GOULD that a 17th or 18th century erudite had proposed such an explanation for the biblical flood. I don't recall his name, Gould wrote many books, it would take time to retrace his article. But what could seem reasonable three centuries ago is not anymore today. We know better than that. VELIKOVSKI had no understanding of gravity or celestial mechnaics. He proposed a world without gravity, ignoring everything we know about physics. Velikosky's world is not the world we more or less know.

why weren't Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks able to reveal the presence of the Ark along all those centuries ? A proof of the genuineness of the Holy Books...

They were. The number of witness accounts runs into the hundreds. Some Christian pilgrims visiting the tomb of Saint Jacob would climb further to see it. However neither religion requires pilgrimage to it. Apparently it is only visible during late summer when the snow covering it recedes. George Hagopian, who climbed on it with his grandfather, found it impossible to break any fragments off - maybe due to petrification and not helped by them not actually taking any tools with them.
It would seem that it is only in recent times that Christians have felt a need to prove it's existence, possibly due to the decline in religious belief. In earlier times perhaps religious people were prepared to accept it's existence without proof.

Maybe there was private pilgrimage. But I remain surprised that christian authorities did not try to use remains of the Ark. Orthodox or Catholics, they have always been prone to promote any relic, how dubious they are. St Jacob's tomb lies in the vicinity, and they don't take advantage of a much more interesting relic ? They would have turned Ararat into the greatest religious destination in the world. I suppose they knew that what was up there was not Noah's Ark, nor any kind of boat.

 

[stu neville]

Because there isn't an explanation for the reactions of established Christianity,again it isn't there.

You talking about the alleged Ark now? The established churches are at best rather conservative, and at worst outright reactionary.

I don't think anyone's actually said "It's not the Ark." What they've said is "We'll reserve judgement on whether or not someone's found the Ark when we know more, preferably from an unbiased third party that didn't schlep up Ararat with the sole intention of finding the Ark."

...To which I would counter that the accumulated evidence was sufficient even before the recent expedition, and both of you have a lot of homework to do.

Evidence of what? Noah's Ark (primary source - Genesis), Venus swinging by in a celestial game of Boules (Velikovsky), or something else?

 

[Bigfoot73]

http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive....explorer-claims-have-found-noahs-ark-remnants

An interview with one of the Turkish members of the expedition. English is not the first language of either him or the interviewer but it's clear enough. He explains that they think there are parts of the Ark at three sites, the subject of the latest find being at site B. He says the Ark was broken into 3 pieces by the 1840 eruption.

 

[stu neville]

I read Rynner's and Analis's comments as meaning it couldn't possibly be the Ark because there's no way it could have got up there.
There are plenty of witnesses who did not go up Ararat , or fly over it, with the sole intention of finding it. However most explorers who go looking for anything do so because they believe what they seek exists.

Can't argue with that, but I would add the rider that there's a subtle difference between the search for geographic areas or zoology, and religious artefacts - faith adds another dimension to it.

Evidence of what? Noah's Ark (primary source - Genesis), Venus swinging by in a celestial game of Boules (Velikovsky), or something else?

There is far more to the evidence for the Ark than Genesis , and it was originally a Sumerian story anyway.

I think you misunderstood my point ... With the Ark, what we have is a lot of very old anecdotal evidence (I know there's lots of similar motifs in a number of cultures), and an unverified claim that it's been found. That's the difference.

I'd love it to be Noah's Ark. Just as much as I'd have loved the thing in the freezer touted about by Biscardi to be the corpse of a Sasquatch, or Santilli's film to be genuine - but deep down, most of me suspected they probably weren't. I'm not saying that the Ararat team are deliberately faking it, but as I said earlier faith can by definition eclipse non-biased thought. There's no point in rolling out the bunting until any discovery is authenticated by independent parties with the requisite expertise.

 

[Bigfoot73]

The explorers may well be searching for it so as to validate their religious beliefs but they have at least taken account of the available evidence rather than going by faith alone. There's more to it than just a lot of very old anecdotal evidence, a good proportion of it isn't all that old. The accounts of the American pilots stretch from the late 1940s to the mid 60s. they were reconnaissance pilots, spotting things was their job, an they were all seeing what one of them described as a"500 foot box car". Not a rock outcrop or boulder, highly unlikely in volcanic geology anyway. The photos Porcher Taylor secured the release of are of what they were seeing and I find it very hard to interpret it as a rock.

The other witnesses describe the same thing in the same place, in detail. The Czar's engineers, the Turkish government inspectors, the (atheist) English mountaineers. The really old anecdotal evidence pre-dates Christianity.

There's no point in rolling out the bunting until any discovery is authenticated by independent parties with the requisite expertise.

Which is exactly what the explorers are calling for by inviting UNESCO to become involved. So far it doesn't seem to have responded and other scientific bodies aren't exactly trampling each other in the rush for verification either, which does none of them any credit.

 

[stu neville]

Oh, I'm well aware of the huge and venerable oral and written tradition surrounding the Ark - as I said, I'd love this latest discovery to be the genuine article.

There's no point in rolling out the bunting until any discovery is authenticated by independent parties with the requisite expertise.

Which is exactly what the explorers are calling for by inviting UNESCO to become involved. So far it doesn't seem to have responded and other scientific bodies aren't exactly trampling each other in the rush for verification either, which does none of them any credit.

Playing Devil's Advocate, have UNESCO etc publically responded in any way at all? Or do they perhaps know something we as yet don't?

 

[Bigfoot73]

Playing Devil's Advocate, have UNESCO etc publically responded in any way at all? Or do they perhaps know something we as yet don't?

I don't think they have. Apart from a few 'here we go again' comments from the press and coverage of Randall Price's hoax claim there doesn't seem to have been any other reaction.
Prof. Ertegrul claims in the video that they will be searching at the other two sites in future and opening a museum in Dogubayazit, so maybe UNESCO et al are playing wait and see.

 

[stu neville]

...Prof. Ertegrul claims in the video that they will be searching at the other two sites in future and opening a museum in Dogubayazit, so maybe UNESCO et al are playing wait and see.

As, indeed, am I .

 

[rynner2]

Part of a National Geographic piece on this latest 'discovery':

"Noah's Ark" Wood "Way, Way, Way Too Young"

Skepticism of the new Noah's ark claim extends to at least one scholar who interprets the Bible literally.

Biologist Todd Wood is director of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College in Tennessee, which pursues biology in a creationist framework.

As a creationist, Wood believes God created Earth and its various life-forms out of nothing roughly 6,000 years ago.

"If you accept a young chronology for the Earth ... then radiocarbon dating has to be reinterpreted," because the method often yields dates much older than 6,000 years, Wood said.

Radiocarbon dating estimates the ages of organic objects by measuring the radioisotope carbon 14, which is known to decay at a set rate over time. The method is generally thought to reach its limit with objects about 60,000 years old. Earth is generally thought to be about four and a half billion years old.

Across the board, radiocarbon dates need to be recalibrated, Wood believes, to reflect shorter time frames.

Given this perceived overestimation in radiocarbon dating, the wood the Noah's Ark Ministries International team found should have a "traditional" radiocarbon date of several tens of thousands of years if the wood is truly 4,800 years old, Wood said. 8)

"I'm really, really skeptical that this could possibly be Noah's Ark," he added. The wood date is "way, way, way too young."

Wood thinks Noah's ark will never be found, because "it would have been prime timber after the flood," he said.

"If you just got off the ark, and there's no trees, what are you going to build your house out of? You've got a huge boat made of wood, so let's use that," he said. "So I think it got torn apart and scavenged for building material basically."

(Related: National Geographic's search for Noah's flood.)

"Noah's Ark" Found in Right Country, on Wrong Mountain?

Another reason scholars are skeptical of the latest Noah's ark discovery claim is that Genesis—the first book of the Bible—never specifies which peak the vessel supposedly landed on in Turkey.

"The whole notion is odd, because the Bible tells you the ark landed somewhere in Urartu,"—an ancient kingdom in eastern Turkey—"but it's only later that people identified Mount Ararat with Urartu," said Jack Sasson, a professor of Jewish and biblical studies at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Stony Brook's Zimansky agreed. "Nobody associated that mountain with the ark" until the tenth century B.C. [?], he said, adding that there's no geologic evidence for a mass flood in Turkey around 4,000 years ago. (See "'Noah's Flood' Not Rooted in Reality, After All?")

The Noah's Ark Ministries International explorers are "playing in a very different ballpark than the rest of us," Zimansky said. "They're playing without any concern for" the archaeological, historical, and geological records.

Better Explanations for "Noah's Ark" Structure?

Even if the Noah's Ark Ministries International team did find a wooden structure or even a boat on Mount Ararat, there are other explanations for what the structure might be.

For example, it could be a shrine constructed by early Christians to commemorate the site where they believed Noah's Ark should be, Zimansky said.

Even in that speculative case, it wouldn't be 4,000 years old. "The Bible hadn't even been written yet," he said.

Bible scholar Sasson said he thinks biblical writers intended the story of Noah's ark to be allegorical, not a true recounting of historical events. By presenting a scenario in which humanity is punished for its wickedness, "they were trying to draw us to the notion of a God who asks us to be acceptable," Sasson said.

(Related: "Bible-Era Mystery Vessel Found—Code Stumps Experts.")

UN to Consider "Noah's Ark"?

On its Web site, Noah's Ark Ministries International says the Turkish government plans to apply to the United Nations to put the Noah's ark discovery site on the UNESCO World Heritage list, a designation given to places of special cultural or physical significance.

But the agency hasn't received any official requests from Turkey for "the inscription of 'Noah's ark'" into the list, UNESCO spokesperson Roni Amelan said in an email.

Such a move would take time, Amelan added. "This cannot be done overnight."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... n-culture/

(I can't find any mention of Noah's Ark on the Unesco website either.)

 

[Bigfoot73]

I really don't know what Wood the wood expert is on about with his carbon dating theory.
Accepting that there necessarily cannot be an Ark up there becaause the occupants would have had to have useed it for building houses is an example of the not exactly watertight reasoning to be expected of a creationist.
Sasson and Zimansky have a point, but nobody has ever claimed it was anywhere else except Bill Cornuke, who claimed it was in Iran but has not produced a splinter of evidence.
Perhaps the association with Ararat arose because of reports of it being there. After all there must be some reason for the specific claim of Ararat, something Sasson and Zimansky have neglected to consider.

But the agency hasn't received any official requests from Turkey for "the inscription of 'Noah's ark'" into the list, UNESCO spokesperson Roni Amelan said in an email.

I saw one report where it seemed that Turkish central government officials were unaware of what the local officials involved in the expedition had been up to.The verification process hasn't even got as far as convincing Ankara yet. Sadly this is turning into yet another Fortean slow burner.

 

[bosskR]

I’m sorry, now I see there indeed was a lot more than just a couple of wooden beams in that video. I must have watched it only halfway through before.

 

[Bigfoot73]

I’m sorry, now I see there indeed was a lot more than just a couple of wooden beams in that video. I must have watched it only halfway through before.

That's the media for you! I mean it's not as if the full video is all that long, but they still have to chop it so they can squeeze in some more Jedward/Gaga/Cole stuff. That shot of the curved wall at the end of a room is the most intriguing to me - definitely not a shepherd's hut. It might be the end that broke off and rolled downhill, so could that be part of the bow?

 

[AMPHIARAUS]

How does this wooden structure fit in with the Mesopotamian story, which became the account in the Old Testament of Noah's Ark in the Book of Genesis?

In that the ark is round and made of reeds.

 

[Bigfoot73]

In that the ark is round and made of reeds

Now how could anyone be expected to fit a breeding pair of every last species of fauna on the entire planet into something as flimsy as that?

That's just absurd.

 

[Peripart]

Now how could anyone be expected to fit a breeding pair of every last species of fauna on the entire planet into something as flimsy as that?

That's just absurd.

And what's with all this "two of each" nonsense?

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

It was one heck of a tight squeeze in there, you know...

 

[Bigfoot73]

http://www.noahsarksearch.net/eng/content03.php

Expedition member Panda Lee debunking Randall Price's debunk attempt.
I can't provide a link to this I'm afraid but apparently the Turkish government has claimed it knew nothing of the expedition and that the evidence found was removed from the country without permission.
Perhaps the Chinese took it on good faith that the local government officials had authority.
This could be a major obstacle to the verification process.