NOAH'S ARK
Has the Ark
Itself been Found?
From time to
time theories are put forward as to the finding of the ark, one such
having been investigated by Turkish Army authorities in the late
1960’s. It was a huge object some five hundred yards long, but wood
found in the area proved to be relatively recent. What was believed
to have been a huge man-made object turned out to be a natural
formation after all.
Remains of
ARK
10 Points
of this discovery
Another claim
was that two World War II airmen saw the ark high up on one of the
mountains inside Russian territory, but this particular “sighting”
has been authoritatively denied. Similar claims have been made from
time to time, without denials, and it certainly is not impossible
that the ark has been or will be both seen and found.
There are well
attested records relating to a Roman Catholic monastery destroyed by
an avalanche at the beginning of this century. There were many
ancient objects in this monastery which were supposed to have come
from the ark, having been gathered over the centuries in times of a
hotter than usual summer when the ice-line was higher than in other
seasons, thus loosing some of the treasure normally bound in
impenetrable ice.
Certain it is
that Fernand Navarra, a Frenchman, believes that he has found
evidence of Noah’s ark, and following one of his visits to Mount
Ararat in 1955 he wrote his best-seller, I Found Noah’s Ark.
Carbon-dating
has shown that some of the wood he found near the summit of this
17,000 ft. mountain was over 4,000 years old, and to Navarra the
logical explanation was that this was part of the wood from Noah’s
ark. Others challenged this conclusion, pointing out that in very
early times the region around Mt. Ararat was thickly forested, and
that tribes in the area built log huts and in doing so displayed
real skill in their primitive woodwork. Others have suggested that
Navarra actually found part of an ancient wooden temple dedicated to
gods in the region, this being a real possibility on the summit of a
mountain such as Ararat.
However, this
is not without problems, for when the late Ralph E. Crawford,
President of the Search Foundation Incorporated of Washington, D.C.,
U.S.A., reported on this finding he stated that the timbers
recovered appeared to be white oak. As there is no white oak within
hundreds of miles of the mountain it is hard to see how this timber
could have been transported to high up the mountain for the purpose
of building a temple.
The Frenchman
Navarra estimated that the timbers he saw embedded in a frozen lake
in 1955 would have weighed about 50 tons. The “proof” piece he
chopped out at his first sighting was about five feet long — and, as
we have already said, it was carbon-dated as being over 4,000 years
old.
The Turkish
Government constantly receives requests from those who want to climb
Mt. Ararat, but these are usually turned down — one reason is that
the Russians object to the area being visited because of the very
real possibility of spying, and also because the region is part of a
N.A.T.O. restricted area.
Some, though
not all, pieces of wood found recently are reported to be identical
to those found 14 years before. One of the expedition listeners is
reported as saying that the main part of a great man-made wooden
construction which could be Noah’s ark was buried in 900,000 cubic
yards of ice and debris left by earlier glaciers. He reported that
modern techniques would be essential if the ice and debris were to
be removed.
A number of
Americans, including John Warwick Montgomery, Eryl Cummings and
Ralph A. Lenton, have continued separate activities towards finding
the ark. Another who believes he has seen the famous old vessel is
Mr. Hardwick Knight.
This author
has talked at length to Mr. Knight, a well-known New Zealand
archaeologist who has no special brief to “prove the Bible”. He saw
a man-made wooden structure high up on Mt. Ararat, and revisited the
area with an American investigation team. At the time of his
“sighting” he was moving away from the area as fast as he could, and
did not stop to photograph what he saw, nor did he take a sample of
the wood. In fact, it was not until a few minutes later that it
registered that what he had seen was at least unusual, but his
immediate circumstances did not allow him to retrace his steps. It
was a particularly hot summer, and he believed that what he had seen
would be uncovered only in such a season, when the ice-line was
higher than usual.
When this
author talked at length with Mr. Knight, he certainly impressed by
his objective approach to what he had seen. He believes it is
possible he stumbled on Noah’s ark, but he does not insist
dogmatically that he has done so.
He described
the object as resembling the framework of a large wooden
gun-carriage. I rather doubted if such a description would fit
Noah’s ark, unless it were only a part of it. However, Mr. Knight’s
“find” was some distance from Fernand Navarra’s sighting, and it
could be that time and the elements have broken this “object” into
sections. Only time will tell as to whether the ark has in fact been
found.
