Hurrah. After years of searching for it – in exactly the place that it is supposed to be – the evangelical search team named “Noah’s Ark Ministries International,” a Hong Kong-based documentary outfit, has discovered Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat in Eastern Turkey.
Kind of. In fact, they found a large wooden structure at about 13,000 feet, mostly buried under ice. It MUST be the ark, rather than anything else, they reason, because no human settlement has ever been found that high. They conclude that they are 99.9% sure that this is the boat God commanded Noah to build, which saved all of the animals from God’s wrath. (By the way – WTF? God wants to destroy humanity, so he floods the earth, but he doesn’t have a failsafe plan to protect all his other creatures, so he decides to spare one family so they can save his own creation from his own destruction? That’s some messed up planning.)
At any rate – besides the fact that the group is named after the ark, are Evangelicals, are specifically trying to find the ark (if they’d have found anything else up there, that might have been the ark, too) there seems to be a horrendous gap in adequate research standards on this expedition.
Moreover, proving that this thing is the ark should be all-too-easy. They say they carbon tested it to about 4800 years (although, some scientists have challenged that dating, and other tests put it at only 1,400 years ago – click here for that story).
They’ve also found small, wooden compartments (pictured below) which “could have been used to harbor animals”. There’s a great video of the team exploring – click here to watch it – and it really is a neat site, with lots of wood.
For it to be the ark, however, I’d like them to go into these little wooden compartments and scrape the floorboards for the impressive amount of hair and shit that you’d expect to find after keeping animals locked up for a long sea voyage. This biological matter could be DNA tested and wala – we’d know the species of animal (and the sex – to see if there really were a pair of each). This kind of test should be obvious, and easy to do.
Hell – if you looked long enough, you could find some human debris in there as well (next to the as yet undiscovered steering wheel?). We could bring back Noah through cloning. Now that would be a newsworthy feat.
They should also check the surrounding area to find the site where, after Noah reaches land again, he burns some of the animals that God commanded him to save in a ‘sweet-smelling burnt offering’ that God enjoyed.
This is certainly an interesting and magnificent discovery – however claiming that it is a magical boat, which rose to impossible levels because God flooded the earth (despite all evidence to the contrary) a long time ago, and not a fortified city, town or military complex (what better place than high in the mountains?) is nothing short of quackery.
Unfortunately – the team probably knows exactly what it is doing. There are many quacks among us. The Turkish government is eager to support the claim (they too believe it is Noah’s ark) because it will bring in millions of religion-tourists annually, significantly bumping up tourism and the economy. They’re also trying to get it made into a UNESCO World Heritage site. Not a bad idea – and definitely possible. But somebody besides the nuts is going to have to take a good look around and find out what it really is.
January 8, 2011
Since beginning of time recorded (persia and egypt) the jews were slaves, as they went along they co-opted stories from their owners cultures and incorporated them into a book (testament) and so as most repressed cultures do, they created reasons for their plight that alleviated their anguish at having no great collective works or civilization.
They as desert nomads and slaves were country-less and barbaric (backwards) even until the late 18th century when they for the most part having been rejected by almost every country formed as sons of zion.
Indirectly asking their people to come out of hiding and try to compete within the more advanced, far WEALTHIER western cultures in order to secure a place for themselves and perhaps a home country.
They have done well in certain parts and especially the new world of humanistic rights (USA.
There are so few of them and they are without cultural wealth that they must continue to spin stories in order to relieve the anguish of the past.
They now have a small country given to them by westernerns, hoping they will relocate there.
Always at war or raising socialistic and marxist ruckus, they generally have a bigger bark then bite and thus gravitate to media and story-telling (religion)(law)(snake-oil salesmanship) to paint a false picture of the past and to manipulate the facts of the present.
They are good people and good story-tellers but in considerable denial of the past! the words infidel, barbaric, backwards and people of lie have been used to describe them. The Hitler and Joseph Stalin (both jews) killed more jews then anyone.
The books of karl marx have resulted in more death and misery (see mao,hitler,stalin,etc) then all the wars of nationalism and religion combined since they were laid down.
They are welcomed in the world as are all of humanity but they spin falsehoods in your face.
Who said tell a lie often enough and soon you will begin to believe it! This is the creed. ….
Gelo
January 9, 2011
I’m not quite sure how this anti-Jewish diatribe is related to this post; while I agree with you that the modern Jewish cultural identity – as the people of the book tied to the land of Israel – is lacking historical basis, I don’t share the same anti-antisemitism. This is mostly because my Jewish friends are not very religious and don’t think or care much about Judaism, and I’m not familiar enough with Judaism to have any negative views about it.