Was Noah's Ark Found

QUESTION: Was Noah's Ark found?

ANSWER:

According to the Bible, the global flood occurred approximately 4500 years ago. Furthermore, the Bible says that God caused the earth to be flooded and the waters exceeded the highest mountain by 20 feet or more. "The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet" (Genesis 7:20). Because of this, there was no way that any human was capable of surviving without supernatural intervention.

The Bible states that the Ark was approximately 450 feet long, 45 feet wide and 75 feet high. Noah and his family, along with all of the animals that God had directed to be included, were on the Ark 380 days before it came to rest in the mountains of Ararat, which appear to span a large area of present-day Iran and Turkey. There have been numerous expeditions, reported sightings, photos, and all manner of stories referring to the hunt for what remains of the Ark. If it were in fact found, it would definitely verify and substantiate the biblical account of Noah and the divine intervention that was responsible for saving mankind and the animals from the global flood. Thus, the adventure of the hunt continues.

Ararat is derived from the name Urartu, from the Hebrew Torah, written by Moses (c.1450 B.C.) which only included the consonants "rrt." In recent history, some believe that Mount Ararat is the place where Noah's Ark landed. However, the Bible does not specifically state this. It says that the boat landed in the Urartian Mountains, and there are hundreds of them. Since Mount Ararat is the highest location in Urartu, it's possible that people started using this for the rationale that it was the ark's landing place.

Mount Ararat rises to 17,000 feet from the plains surrounding it. From 14,000 to 17,000 feet, much of Ararat's lava is covered by an ice cap, which is about 17 square miles in size and is up to 300 feet deep. This ice cap is rectangle and is about 31.6 square kilometers. Mount Ararat is a very harsh environment, and thus, survival of a wooden ark for 4500 years would be a miracle there.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam believe in the biblical story of Noah and his ark. In addition, there are hundreds of other religions and cultures that maintain global flood stories from antiquity. Reports of ark sightings have been numerous over the years. Some have seen what they believe to be a portion of the Ark's structure sticking out of the snow and ice near the summit of Mount Ararat. However, despite those sightings and rumors of pictures taken by the CIA (pictures from a Russian expedition at the behest of Tsar Nicholas Alexander in 1918), no scientific evidence of the ark has ever emerged.

"On the one hand, I'm hopeful. On the other hand, I'm very skeptical" of the validity of the satellite images, said Rex Geissler, president of ArcImaging, Archaeological Imaging Research Consortium. "There is no publicly available picture that readily shows a man-made object that has any clarity whatsoever...Some of the photos are outright misrepresentations, non-scientific, and do not prove anything." Stay tuned!