Has Noah's Ark Really Been Found?
Introduction
Since as long ago as the 19th century, people have claimed to have discovered Noah’s Ark. Searches have commenced all over the world, from Alaska all the way to Turkey, and it seems that until someone actually finds firm evidence, more sightings will continue to pop up and everyone will have their own opinions on the subject.
Throughout history, many people have said that they’ve found the ship, specifically, most of the reports have come from Mount Ararat, the mountains that are mentioned in Genesis as the ark’s final resting place.
Specifically, Genesis 8:4 mentions it. It says, “and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.”
Others have bizarre stories of seeing the remnants of the ark. In 1902, on the Porcupine River of Rampart, Alaska, the Indians of the lower Yukon claimed to have seen an “immense petrified ship”.
Whether or not any of these are true, they are very interesting stories, and that is what we’re going to be writing about today, all the discoveries of Noah’s Ark, and if the latest one is true or not. The question to be asked is, Has Noah’s Ark Really Been Found?
Earlier Sightings and Reports
According to the “Searches for Noah’s Ark” Wikipedia page, many sightings, and reports have been mentioned since as early as the 5th century. Most of these have included Mount Ararat, so they don’t seem too far off from being the real thing.
In the 5th century, there was a legend that said Jacob of Nisibis had scaled the mountains in Armenia in search of Noah’s Ark. Near the summit, it is said an angel came to him in his sleep, telling him he shouldn’t climb any further. It is also believed that this angel gave him a beam from the ark, which he brought back to the city, which preserved the relic.
These sightings continued on, all mentioning Mount Ararat as the resting place. Some have claimed to have seen a black object there many centuries ago and some mentioned surviving ark fragments.
According to this Wikipedia page, the first ascent of the mountain that was recorded was by Friedrich Parrot in 1829. He wrote, "all the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it.”
In 1883, an avalanche was reported to have happened on Mount Ararat, and it destroyed villages there. George McCallaugh Reed, a writer for his opinion collum at the New Zealand Herald, “claimed that the avalanche had revealed the remains of Noah's Ark.”
He even mentioned that an American traveler wanted to buy the boat for an expedition in the US and that a fictional captain named “Captain Gascoyne” had submitted to the Sultan and the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
However, newspapers around the globe picked up this story and relayed it. Some did it as a joke, and others took it seriously. McCullough Reed later apologized for the joke.
John Joseph Nouri, who was born in Baghdad in 1865, claimed to have seen Noah’s Ark on the summit of Mount Ararat. However, he was taken into custody as a patient at the Napa Insane Asylum. In 2014 though, there were claims made that he was a completely sane person. We don’t know for sure whether or not his claims are true though.
Many others, like Russian aviator Vladimir Roskovitsky, claimed to have seen a shipwreck “on the shore of a lake on the mountain”. The government then sent 150 soldiers to the sight, and info was sent to the tsar. However, the report was suppressed and destroyed.
In 1948, Edwin Greenwald of the Associated Press reported that Kurdish villagers discovered a large, petrified wooden ship, on none other than Mount Ararat. Shukra Asena, a landowner around the area claimed to Edwin that a farmer by the name of Reshit discovered the ship’s prow.
Beginnings of the Durupınar Site
In the mountains in the Doğubeyazıt district of the Ağrı Province of Turkey, heavy rain and 3 earthquakes occurred on May 19, 1948. This exposed an unusual formation in the rocks, and this was discovered by a Kurdish shepherd by the name of Reshit Sarihan.
Image Courtesy of Quora.com
11 years later, the site was again identified by Turkish Army Captain Ilhan Durupınar in an aerial photo for the Turkish Air Force. This was on a mission for NATO, and he informed the Turkish government of this discovery as well.
1 year later, George Vandeman, Ilhan Durupınar, and Arthur Brandenberger did a survey of the site, and this was their news release after two days of digging and dynamiting. “there were no visible archaeological remains" and the boat shape “was a freak of nature and not man-made.”
Ron Wyatt’s Re-Discovery
In 1977, Ron Wyatt, an adventurer who’d claimed to have found many Biblical objects, re-discovered the site and advocated for it being the place of Noah’s Ark. He also tried to interest more people in the site as well and well-known people like ark hunter James Irwin and creationist John D. Morris, but they both didn’t believe it was the ark.
Here’s what the Wikipedia page says:
“Wyatt was joined by David Fasold and geophysicist John Baumgardner for the expedition recounted in Fasold's The Ark of Noah. As soon as Fasold saw the site, he exclaimed that it was a shipwreck. Fasold brought along state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radar equipment and a "frequency generator", set it on the wavelength for iron, and searched the formation for internal iron loci (the latter technique was later compared to dowsing by the site's detractors). Fasold and the team states that the ground penetration radar revealed a regular internal structure and measured the length of the formation as 538 ft (164 m), close to the 300 cubits (157 m, 515 ft) of the Noah's Ark in the Bible if the royal Ancient Egyptian cubit of 20.62 in (0.524 m) is used. Fasold believed the team found the fossilized remains of the upper deck and that the original reed substructure had disappeared.”
David Fasold also interviewed a man named Ali Oğlu Reșit Sarihan, who they believed to be the Reshit that found the ark’s plow. According to David, the object that Reshit discovered was actually the site itself.
In the village of Kazan, they examined large standing stones found near the site, and Wyatt, along with the help of Fasold, came to the conclusion that they were drogue stones. They believed that because of the hole at the top, they were used to be tied with a rope and used on the ark. (Drogue stones were like storm anchors)
Image Courtesy of Postost.net
An investigation of samples on these stones found that these rocks were actually of local origin, and could not have been taken from Mesopotamia, the place believed to be where the ark was constructed.
Today’s Evidence of the Site
Modern researchers from America and Turkey are now claiming today that they have evidence that Noah’s Ark is at the Durupınar Site. The Noah’s Ark Discovered project claimed that using 3D scans of ERT and GPR technology, they discovered a man-made structure shaped like a boat beneath the ground.
According to the team, the formation matches the dimensions mentioned in Genesis. Specifically, the verse is Genesis 6:15, and it says, “This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.”
On NoahsArkScans.com, they will do excavations around 2022, and this may truly reveal once and for all if the formation is the real Noah’s Ark.
Conclusion
There are many stories through centuries and centuries, that claim to have found Noah’s Ark. The most interesting of these is undoubtedly the Durupınar Site. The question that was asked was whether or not the ark had actually been found.
The answer to that question is unproven, and hopefully, throughout the years someone will come along and prove it. We will certainly be waiting to update this interesting story.
Works Cited:
Durupınar site. Wikipedia, 2021.
Noah’s Ark Scans, 2022.
Labrisch, Hadas. Has the location of Noah’s Ark finally been proven using 3D scans? Jpost Inc, 2022.
Rocking the boat: Noah in narrative-historical perspective. Postost.net, 2022.
Genesis 8 NIV. Bible Hub, 2022.