Pics, Video from Alleged Noah’s Ark Find
Photograph of Mount Ararat courtesy of Henri Nissen
The Sun, Fox News and others are reporting that a group of Chinese and Turkish Christians claim to have found the remains of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat about 13,000 ft up.
From Fox News:
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say wooden remains they have discovered on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey are the remains of Noah’s Ark.
The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.
Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah’s Ark Ministries International research team that made the discovery, said: “It’s not 100 percent that it is Noah’s Ark, but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it.”
There have been several reported discoveries of the remains of Noah’s Ark over the years, most notably a find by archaeologist Ron Wyatt in 1987. At the time, the Turkish government officially declared a national park around his find, a boat-shaped object stretched across the mountains of Ararat.
Nevertheless, the evangelical ministry remains convinced that the current find is in fact more likely to be the actual artifact, calling upon Dutch Ark researcher Gerrit Aalten to verify its legitimacy.
It will be interesting to see what additional substantiation comes from this. Several claims have been made of finding Noah’s Ark in the past, with little to support each one. The allegation of carbon dating at about 4,800 years is notable, but carbon dating is notoriously unreliable; freshly killed organisms have been dated at thousands of years old.
Could part of the ark have remained relatively intact for 4,800 years? It’s quite possible if it was encased in ice and snow, preventing weathering and the natural breakdown of the wood.
We’ll be keeping a watchful eye out for more information and future developments on this story…
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