NOAH'S ARK... Is search
real or stunt?
By Sola Fanawopo
Monday, September 27, 2004
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Mount
Ararat, perhaps the biblical resting place of Noah's
Ark, entices many curious archaeologists and explorers.
(Courtesy: National Geographic Society)
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In April businessman and Christian activist Daniel McGivern
announced with great
fanfare a planned summer expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey.
The project, he said, would prove that the fabled Noah's ark
was buried there.
Explorers have long searched for the ark on the Turkish mountain.
At a news conference in Washington, D.C., McGivern presented
satellite images, which he claimed show a human-made object—Noah's
ark—nestled in the ice and snow some 15,000 feet (4,570
meters) up the mountain.
"We are not excavating it," McGivern told the audience.
"We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're
all going to see it." If successful, he said, the discovery
would be "the greatest event since the resurrection of
Christ."
The announcement received generous news coverage. But the
U.S. $900,000 expedition quickly hit a snag: The Turkish government
refused to grant the explorers permission to climb the mountain.
Soon, the mission itself was put on ice.
But how credible was the expedition in the first place?
McGivern may have been more interested in generating publicity
than mounting a serious search, critics now suggest. By making
an early announcement, he may have tried to persuade the Turkish
government into granting him a permit. Few expeditions have
actually obtained clearance to climb Mount Ararat, which is
located in a military zone.
The choice of expedition
leader—a Turkish academic named Ahmet Ali Arslan, who
claims to have climbed Mount Ararat 50 times in 40 years—also
raised a red flag with those familiar with previous expeditions.
Arslan was involved in a 1993 documentary, aired on CBS television,
which claimed to have found the ark. Some of the evidence
presented in that documentary turned out to be a hoax, raising
concerns about Arslan's testimony.
Some archaeologists charge that Noah's-ark expeditions like
McGivern's are nothing but wild-goose chases. Even if the
ark existed, these scholars argue, it is unlikely that the
wood from the boat would still be preserved today, thousands
of years later. Moving ice is likely to have swept away any
wooden structure, experts say.
"These expeditions are a waste of time, energy, and money—all
of which could be put to much better use by supporting existing
scholarly excavations around the world," said Eric Cline,
a historian and archaeologist at the George Washington University
in Washington, D.C.
Ararat Anomaly
The story of Noah's ark is found in the Bible's Book of Genesis.
It says God saw how corrupt the Earth had become and decided
to "bring floodwaters … to destroy all life under
the heavens."
God reportedly told Noah to preserve life on Earth by building
an ark and filling it with two of every species on the planet.
The rains unleashed by God are said to have lasted for 40
days and 40 nights. The Bible says that water came from under
the Earth as well. When the waters receded, the ark landed
in the region of Mount Ararat, according to the biblical account.
Reports of ark sightings have been common. Witnesses have
described an old wooden structure sticking out of the snow
and ice near the summit of Mount Ararat, which is located
in Turkey near its border with Armenia and Iran. Because of
Soviet complaints that explorers were spying, the region was
off limits until 1982. Since then, scores of climbers have
scaled the mountain but failed to substantiate what the object
is.
In 1997 the U.S. government released images taken by its Air
Force in 1949 that were believed by some to show a structure
covered by ice on Mount Ararat. These photographs had reportedly
been kept in a government file labeled "Ararat Anomaly."
However, experts deemed the images inconclusive.
While no scientific evidence of the ark's existence has emerged,
the Turkish government has reportedly documented cases of
expeditions bringing wood up to Mount Ararat and "finding"
it the next year.
In the CBS documentary, The Incredible Discovery of Noah's
Ark, a man named George Jammal displayed what he claimed to
be an ancient piece of wood from inside the ark. Jammal, an
Israeli actor living at the time in Long Beach, California,
later said the wood was actually from some railroad tracks
in Long Beach. He admitted he had never set foot in Turkey.
The documentary also dramatised a 1989 solo expedition by
Ahmet Ali Arslan in which he claims to have come within 200
feet (60 yards) of the ark and photographed it. But experts
have questioned the authenticity of the photos and Arslan's
story.
"Ahmet is a big talker," said one well-known ark
researcher, who asked that his name be withheld so as not
to jeopardise his own chances of obtaining an expedition permit
from the Turkish authorities. "In one conversation he
will say that he has 3,000 photos, and in another conversation
ten minutes later 5,000 photos."
No Proof
For years, attempts by McGivern to have satellite images taken
of Mount Ararat failed. In the summer of 2003 he recruited
DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite-imagery firm, to try
again. This time, a heat wave that hit Europe that year had
partially melted the snowcap on top of the mountain.
McGivern claimed the new images showed a large structure,
with vertical beams and one horizontal beam, buried on the
mountain. He said he was 98 percent sure it was the ark.
Most experts, however, were skeptical. The object in the images
could easily be a rock formation, they said, adding that some
of the photos were nonscientific and fuzzy.
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