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Scientists to search for Noah's ark on Turkish mountain

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  • Scientists to search for Noah's ark on Turkish mountain

    Guardian, UK
    May 2 2004


    Scientists to search for Noah's ark on Turkish mountain

    Expedition will study 'man-made object' shown by satellite photos

    Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow


    The CIA calls it the "Ararat anomaly". Mountaineers call it the peak of
    the unforgiving range on the Turkish-Armenian border. But some
    scientists think it might hold a far greater historical significance as
    the great archaeological mirage - the remains of Noah's ark.
    Ten explorers and scientists from the US and Turkey will embark on an
    expedition on July 15 to scale Mount Ararat, 4,700 metres (15,000ft)
    above sea level, to determine what is behind the image that has been
    picked up by spy satellites in the past two decades.

    New satellite pictures suggest a huge 14-metre-high structure that was
    exposed when the heatwave that hit Europe last summer melted the
    snowcap that had obscured it for years.

    The expedition will be led by Ahmet Ali Arslan, an English professor at
    Seljuk University in Turkey. An experienced mountaineer, he has already
    scaled Mt Ararat 40 times and grew up around the mountain range.

    "The slopes are very, very harsh and dangerous on the northern face -
    it is extremely challenging, mentally and physically," said Mr Arslan,
    who was once a prime-ministerial aide.

    The expedition can only occur with the consent of the Turkish
    government, and Mr Arslan will meet the prime minister next week to
    discuss the proposed trip. The estimated cost is £500,000 and will be
    met by Daniel McGivern, a businessman and Christian activist from
    Hawaii.

    At a press conference to announce the trip this week he said: "We are
    not excavating it. We're going to photograph it and, God willing,
    you're all going to see it."

    "These new photos unequivocally show a man-made object," he added. "I
    am convinced that the excavation of the object and the results of tests
    run on any collected samples will prove that it is Noah's ark."

    Mr McGivern's Trinity Corporation last year used Quick Bird, the
    world's highest resolution satellite, to photograph the anomaly.

    He has said he is 98% sure that the object is the ark, because of beams
    of wood he said were visible in the images.

    The Bible says that the ark, packed with either seven or two of each
    creature, male and female, on earth, came to rest on the mountains of
    Ararat after the great floods - thought to have occurred in 5,600BC,
    when the Mediterranean flooded into the basin where the Black Sea now
    sits.

    Sceptics have pointed out that Noah would have had to load 460
    organisms a second to fill the ark with two of each species in 24 hours
    as the Bible suggests.

    The object on Mount Ararat was first noticed by the CIA in 1949 from a
    spy plane.

    Turkish pilots saw it again 10 years later, and the pictures began to
    reinforce the myth around the vessel, giving Christians apparent
    archeological evidence that part of Genesis could be physically
    substantiated.

    The region was off limits until 1982 because of Soviet complaints that
    explorers were spying. Since then, teams of explorers have tried to
    reach the ark, but failed to substantiate what the object is.

    Geologists have discovered evidence of a flood in the region known as
    Mesopotamia in Sumerian times (6,000 years ago), yet have maintained
    that it is not possible for a ship to have made landfall at an altitude
    as high as that of Mt Ararat.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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