The missing Scotsman and the deadly hunt for Noah’s Ark
Explorers and evangelical Christians are still searching for the mythical ship in Turkey
Sat, Oct 1, 2016, 02:00 Updated: Sat, Oct 1, 2016, 09:40
Its Turkish name translates as “mountain of pain” and, according to legend, somewhere around Mount Ararat’s summit, buried under ice thousands of years old, is Noah’s Ark.
Since antiquity, explorers and evangelical Christians from around the world have descended on this mountain in eastern Turkey in a quest for answers to one of history’s biggest myths: is Noah’s Ark here? Does it really exist?
The Book of Genesis says that the ship came to rest on Ararat mountain after seven months and 17 days of a torrential flood ordered by God as punishment for man’s faults.
Modern expeditions to Ararat began in the mid-1800s when locals would tell passing travelling expeditions and merchants of the ark’s presence on the mountain.
A century later, a wave of wealthy American evangelicals and missionaries began flying out to the isolated mountain to try to find the ultimate proof that God created the Earth.
By the early 1980s, the New York Times noted ark-hunting around
Mount Ararat had become a local cottage industry.
The potential for a historic discovery drew believers from all walks of life.
Donald Mackenzie was an average Scotsman from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides where he worked on building sites, got drunk at weekends and fought local bullies.
He wandered aimlessly through his 20s and 30s, but when a fight left him in hospital, he paused.
His brother Derick persuaded him to turn to God, and he began reading the Bible. Soon enough Mackenzie became infatuated with Noah’s Ark.
Again and again Mackenzie travelled out to Mount Ararat, spending weeks in a local town, taking tours up the mountain, often alone, and even chiding foreign trekkers for not going to Mass and for drinking on Sundays.
He would try to convince local Kurdish villagers to convert to the word of the Bible and to give up Ramadan fasting.
Early-season blizzard
Six years ago this month the born-again Christian went up Ararat to check out a gorge he suspected could offer some clues buried among the ice.
Just months before, a team from Hong Kong claimed it had found a fragment of the ark. Mackenzie, having spent years searching across the mountain, had to go see for himself.
He was soon caught in an early-season blizzard.
“Again, the weather has turned against us; it’s a case of returning, no choice,” he said in one of the last recordings of him alive.
“Apparently there is much more bad weather forecast so I’m going to head down today.”
A sewing kit, a pocket telescope and a business card with an Isle of Lewis address were later found at an abandoned campsite above 13,000 feet. Donald Mackenzie was never seen again.
Did he freeze to death in a blizzard or fall into a crevasse and die of his injuries? Was he attacked by wolves? Or was he kidnapped and murdered by Islamist extremists? ...
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...-and-the-deadly-hunt-for-noah-s-ark-1.2812234