Lots of people have been emailing me with this story of yet another Ark expedition. It’s a routine lunacy that comes up all the time—probably the most irritating part of it all is the way MSNBC filed it under their tech/science section. It’s nothing of the kind: it’s mere pareidolia, the product of a loon biased by a desire to confirm a silly story from the Bible, a misplaced myth that claims a big boat landed on Mt Ararat, and a willingness to stare at satellite photos of rock and ice formations until one convinces oneself that a piece looks like a big boat. It also helps if one is willing to draw the shape of a boat in big red crayon on top of the random rock formation.
I wrote about this before, with the same dismissive tone of disgust. These people are fools; this is practically a yearly ritual with a series of indistinguishable fundamentalist kooks trotting off to Turkey, wandering about cluelessly on some hills, and coming home with handwaving testimonials to sell to the faithful and raise more money to troop off to the same sere brown mountains the next year.
Just read archy. He summarizes the whole crazy nonsense well enough. The ark story is one of those things that is so painfully stupid that it makes me lose all hope in humanity.
Did someone light the ark shaped beacon again? We’ll have to spank them all, and then… (Just a little bit of peril!)
How considerate of you to stress the stupidity of ark-hunting, not ark-hunters. I’m sure you’d have no qualms with voting for a candidate who diverted public funds to expeditions searching for the remains of the ark, despite your opposition to the expeditions themselves.
According to a literalist-type chronology, the Flood would have happened about 5,000 years ago. If there actually was an Ark, wouldn’t it have rotted away by now? Searching for it would be pointless even by fundie standards. But I don’t really care what they do, as long as they aren’t getting public funding for it.
On the other hand, using Google Earth to identify hitherto-unnoticed fossil impact craters is a great idea.
That is obviously not an ark but a scouting ship for the Atlantis Royal Navy. What a bunch of dimwits. Just look at the bow. It’s classic Atlantean craftsmanship.
“… 27 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.”
At least the assertion that a given rock formation in Turkey is actually a giant boat is falsifiable.
I’m surprised at you, PZ. For once the Bible makes an actual prediction, and credulous fundies run out to *test* it, and you’re dumping on them. We know how big the boat is supposed to be, we know what it’s made of, we know how old it ought to be in radiocarbon dating, it’s prime fodder for a harsh test of the old testament.
If they don’t find it, that’s evidence against the old testament. Of course, there are all kinds of ad hoc explanations for why it can’t be found, but I think we ought to encourage the fundies in developing and testing biblical predictions. If only to divert funds away from PACs.
This is the tack I’ve started to take. For example, the Old T states that some of the patriarchs traveled among the Moabites and Edomites, among others. However, none of these tribes existed until the 7th century BCE. How could men who supposedly lived between 1000 and 2000 BCE have traveled among tribes that didn’t exist? Coincidentally, textual analysis (the JDEP theory) suggests that the bible was written in the 7th century BCE, under Josiah.
The fundies are fond of pointing out holes in the evidence for evolution. I think we need to counter with both a defense of evolution and an evidence based attack on the literal truth of the Bible. Thanks to the internets, we might be able to route around the pulpit.
I once knew an old fellow, now dead, with whom I shared an interest in Swedish folk fiddling and not much else. He was a retired electronics parts salesman and would-rather-have-been preacher. One day he asked me if I knew about the van Allen radiation belt. When I nodded, he told me it was the residue of the water that had inundated the earth in the Noahic era. Exactly why water would leave radiation in its wake I don’t know, and I didn’t ask, because I was too stunned by his assertion to think of a retort. I also failed to ask what happened to the water when the flood was over. Did God pull the plug and watch it go down the drain?
That guy got it all wrong. The real Ark is here, on the Turkish-Armenian border.
http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=linesongoogle7bh.jpg
After a lifetime of research on Google Earth, I have discovered the real resting place of the ark. Notice the 4 parallel trackways formed by the animals leaving by the 4 exits of the ark. ( Males and females left the ark separately ).
After a short distance, the tracks abruptly end, or perhaps join together, presumably because that’s when the animals realized that they had actually left the ark, and the prohibitions on predation and procreation no longer applied.
I would bet that if you could zoom in further, you would find a gang plank associated with (perfectly preserved in the ice) two sets of platypus tracks headed southeast (Pangea of course), two sets of Emperor Penguin tracks headed due south, two sets of Panda tracks headed east, two sets of bison tracks headed west, etc, etc, etc. (Or is that seven sets? I forget.) But (and this is strictly my opinion) you wouldn’t see any orangutan tracks. It would be MUCH easier for them to just brachiate back to Borneo.
They have their hypothesis. Let them test it. Then, watch them fail to acknowledge that it’s nothing but a big chunk of glacial ice “pouring” over a cliff.
http://www.space.com/news/060309_ark_update.html
The link above has more vague-picture goodness. There is also constructive use of labels to obscure a lineament in the “ark” that continues laterally into the glacier where there is no such “ark” (second image from the top).
Just as with the “face” at Cydonia Mensae on Mars and
with the Nasca plains glyphs, people look at these things
and see what they need to see.
Religion is Religion.
Seem to recall Durant in “Our Oriental Heritage” saying that the flood tale long predates the old testament and jews being borrowed from an earlier (Assyrian?) society.
I wonder how many pairs of animals would fit on this ship?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/14/emerging.shipwreck.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories
True, it’s a little out of place, but …
But read this on Archy:
The laws of hydrodynamics and water action and reaction were the same then and now.
Now if only we could get more YEC advocates to accept this principle!
Oops, I was quoting from the Bible Probe website, not Archy. I apoligize for the slander.
Scam!…the Ark has already been found!
http://www.anchorstone.com/content/view/131/51/
Oh, she’s there alright!…just needs a bit of dusting…some polish…some new planking…but, other than that,she’s ready to go!
Wow!…this sound found everything from the Ark to the Ark of the Convenant! Maybe we should send them after Binladen
The heck of it is, the myth of Noah’s ark may actually represent a folk memory of the gigantic flood that apparently occurred when the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus and flooded into the Black Sea, which was a separate lake (like the Caspian) at the time. There have already been some very exciting archaeological discoveries associated with villages, etc. inundated by this very historic flood. What a shame that money that could go to fund real research is being wasted on this foolinshness instead.
If they don’t find it, that’s evidence against the old testament.
That’s the problem. It’s not. In fact, to these guys, nothing could ever qualify as evidence against the old testament. Their answer will forever be ‘we haven’t found it yet, but we’re just about to!’ To us it’s reconfirmation that they’re superstitious buffoons, to them it’s fodder for a fundraising pitch to show they need money to do it again.
And of course, to Turkey, it’s a welcome source of tourist hard currency that they must find very humorous.
But I agree, I heartily applaud these guys spending all their time and money on something other than American politics.
Perhaps a case of seeing design in nature?
It looks like a rock ridge to me, but then I only spend thirty or forty hours a week looking at aerial photos.
Has anyone ever identified gopherwood as a species? Would they know it if it wasn’t wearing a sign saying ‘Hi, I’m gopherwood from Noah’s Ark?’
The heck of it is, the myth of Noah’s ark may actually represent a folk memory of the gigantic flood that apparently occurred when the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus and flooded into the Black Sea, which was a separate lake (like the Caspian) at the time. There have already been some very exciting archaeological discoveries associated with villages, etc. inundated by this very historic flood. What a shame that money that could go to fund real research is being wasted on this foolishness instead.
I remember when that idea first started to get publicized, there was an article in some magazine, I think National Geographic, that had a lead in that read something like “Evidence for Noah’s Flood?” The article itself was actually quite good, and didn’t go off into any OT silliness, but it was telling that they felt the need to hook readers with something that tabloidish.
Ironic that the Black Sea flood is dated at something like 7,000 years ago, IIRC, while ‘Noah’s Flood’ was a mere 5,000-6,000 years ago supposedly, and FAR BIGGER, and yet we have abundant evidence for the former but none for the latter. Hmmm.
Ararat. Field trip!
This is just what we as a country need, don’t you see? Dozens of fundamentalist Christians stumbling around the arid mountainscapes of another country, hacking randomly and fruitlessly at rocks.
Desirable on humor value alone.
There are earlier claim of finding tree residue from an ark, which tops Taylors claim so far.
Of course, as archy explains, it’s an old and profitable industry to make fake archeological or pseudoarcheological stuff. The mass of saints bones, christs bones, and christ crosses easily outweighs the supposed original weight, so it can be true for this legend too. It’s especially easy for religious stuff, since churches tend to want any ‘proof’ to support their beliefs.
“The heck of it is, the myth of Noah’s ark may actually represent a folk memory of the gigantic flood that apparently occurred when the Mediterranean broke”
I thought the explanation for that is that this legend is supposedly a common catastrophic tale in all parts of the world. Ie Noah’s flood, Atlantis et cetera are basically the same stuff. All it takes to start that tale is that some village were destroyed in a flood, or even that people were afraid of that from smaller events. What say the archeologists?
Oops. I meant ‘What say the anthropologists?’
Seem to recall Durant in “Our Oriental Heritage” saying that the flood tale long predates the old testament and jews being borrowed from an earlier (Assyrian?) society.
Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh contains a flood story that has a number of parallels to the Genesis flood myth. The best-preserved tablets (Assyrian) date ca. 600 years BC, but the story itself is also recorded in older Sumerian and Akkadian sources. Fundies, of course, believe that these accounts represent corruptions of the true account presented in Genesis.
Any chance we can get to use science to debunk religious foolishness is an excellent day.
We have found remains of seafaring ships from approximately 4,500 years ago:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/custom/space/orl-bk-ship031306,0,3345853.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-space
Certainly, if the Ark existed, they would find some evidence. Of course, if they go to this location on Ararat, all they’ll find is a rocky ridge, because, well, there IS no Noah’s Ark.
I just laughed at the guys assertion yesterday that he’s going in with no preconceived notions of finding an ark. Oh, sure. Sorta like when I married my wife, I had no preconceived notion that we’d live in the same house. Sorta like that.
As an aside, I’m going to Grand Canyon in a few weeks, and I’d really like to tell the bookstore there what I think of their stupid “Different View” book. Does anyone have any thoughts about what to tell them? I refuse to buy the book, even as a joke. But I want to tell them something. Any ideas?
Of course Ron Wyatt already found Noah’s ark (after other people did, but he claimed it as his find) and you can go visit it today. He found the ark of the covenant as well.
It’s really all just saints’ relics when it comes down to it. Why not display both the skull of John the Baptist and the skull of John the Baptist as a child? Why not an ark where Wyatt claims to have found it, and at this other geological formation as well? You going to tell God that this is impossible for Him?
It’s kind of fun to watch Carl Baugh and others talk about various “ark finds”, because the “explanation” for the ark appearing in different locations is that it was split by earthquakes, fell and slid quite a long way (across a valley, even, in some versions), and remained completely intact except for the first split (should I point out the obvious fact that the boat would be weakened considerably by breaking in two?). That’s one tough boat. But then it would have to be magic to house all the animals of the world and to survive nearly all of earth’s cataclysms which creationists compress into one year of the “flood”.
And of course all of us godless evolutionists impede investigation and/or hide the truth about the ark, according to the other stories.
The ark is what best shows the lack of sanity among creationists. There never was any reason to look for a boat on Mt. Ararat (not even a “Biblical reason”, fwiw), and the various bits of wood and the like that have been found have failed the best radiocarbon tests (including tests which are usually successful in avoiding contamination effects). But there’s nothing to prevent new hopes with each little ridge that is photographed.
On the other hand, it is fun to watch each pathetic little expedition going out to “prove the Bible”. I think I’m not just laughing, even, since hopeless dreams can be endearing, and this is about as hopeless as it gets. At least it’s not ID–with its PR, no feinted attempt at real research, and a diabolical hatred of science. By comparison, these are real, but doomed, attempts to gather evidence (never mind that they almost always misinterpret the evidence–what else could creationists do?), with each new photograph of a ridge renewing hope in those who can’t or won’t understand the world without first checking with their a priori “truths”.
I only wish IDists would focus more closely on undermining their own claims, as the more honest sort of creationist does during his ark expedition. The IDist is aware enough of his poor standing against the standards of science that he puts his efforts into trying to make science (or at least science education) stupid enough to include ID.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
I think it looks like a giant squid.
“The heck of it is, the myth of Noah’s ark may actually represent a folk memory of the gigantic flood that apparently occurred when the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus and flooded into the Black Sea, which was a separate lake (like the Caspian) at the time. ”
Yes, the pre-existing lake is called (by the palentologists) the Euxine lake – it was approx 200 metre lower than the present Black Sea, and the flood took place in approx 5650BC.
There’s quite a lot of literature on the subject.
National Geographic had a whole special on Robert Ballard (finder of Titanic) looking for evidence of ancient settlements that had been drowned when the Black Sea flooded. I’ve seen it a couple times and found it very revealing. The website for the project is http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/.
You will probably just end up annoying whoever is working the bookstore. I doubt the NPS people like having it there, but they have to stock it because of pressure from farther up. It’s sad the way our country is run.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ is merely confusing. First they confirm that almost every culture on Earth includes an ancient and similar flood story. They include the pristine Americas.
Then the theory is, that would become the christian flood in particular comes from the Euxine lake flooding. That doesn’t explain the preponderance of stories from cultures who never knew about that flood.
Perhaps their references explains this apparent problem with their theory, but I doubt it. The theory I would get from this is that if anyone survived nearby from such a vast catastrophe, they would probably confirm earlier myths, not start them.
That is, onfirm or substitute earlier myths.
John,
I think I’ll probably just leave a comment in their comment box, not actually pester some poor employee who also hates the book, and hates it when geeks like me tell the same story for the 18th time that week. But just to counter some of the “Thank you for carrying this great book!”-comments they also inevitably get, I think it’d be great to ask them to not carry it any more.
It doesn’t surprise me that various cultures have flood myths. I’d be surprised to find a culture that never experienced a flood. But Christians can’t offer a watertight answers to the questions, “Where’d the water come from? Where’d it go?”.
I think it would be great if they found the ark and it was full of dead animals.
AAAGH! Year after year we hear of another “expedition” and year after year no-one goes and climbs to the various “anomalies”. It is not very high (only 5166 meters) and not all that technical (if you know how to climb glaciated peaks). It is close to the border with Iran, but there are several groups that guide the mountain, so much for all the “closed mountain” “banned area”. It is the highest point in Turkey and people get a kick out of climbing high points. I know several people who have climbed the peak, including one asshat (yes a fundamentalist) who was constantly wondering if each crevasse or gorge could be the resting place of the ark (and yes all of the places he was convinced was a good candidate was “inaccessible”!). Very low marks for MSNBC, “science” indeed!
Can someone forget about Genesis, Bible, religion, Mars etc etc and tell me if there’s any evidence at all of a “flood” or extended rainfalls or river floding etc? I’m not talking about Noahs, Arcs and chosen animals, but of some local tribe finding a way to escape an extended flood and folk stories later distorting the facts. You know how oral history distorts facts, but some archaeological discoveries were based on sources from mythology.
Oh boy. It looks like the giant amoeba from Star Trek has found a home on Mount Ararat. Run for your lives!
You heard it here first, folks.
“I think it would be great if they found the ark and it was full of dead animals.” My co-workers are wondering why I’m laughing at my desk.
Did anyone see the episode of “Robot Chicken,” in which the unicorns and dinosaurs don’t make it onto the ark, so they all build their own raft, which starts sinking, and while they’re aruging about who’s fault it is the mermaid couple pops up to laugh at them, only to get chomped by the Tyrannosaur? A real Jurassic Park ending.
david wrote:
Who needs to find an ark? It should be no problem finding those kangaroo and penguin fossils around the base of that mountain…
Wyatt also found chariot wheels from the pharonic army that drowned chasing Moses across the Red Sea.
A real carny, that guy.
Note – There is also a nearly identical tale centered in Summeria. It involved a merchant king, who one day got a briliant idea to make himself richer. He would put several of the boats used back then. This would let him put lots more animals, grain, etc. on board and make a mint. The day before he was to ship out, the *then* far wetter valley was hit by a huge storm. He scrambled around, got many animals on board, and his family, then got washed down stream. 40 days later is stopped constantly on and off raining, he landed some place like Syria or something, got hunted down by creditors, went into hiding and is assumed to have been buried, *with* his great boat, some place in the south. I can’t remember the exact place, but its one hostile to archeologist right now and has a lot of tombs on the island.
We have a 40 day flood, a huge boat, animals of the “clean” type, since it was a trade vessel, being loaded on board, him rescuing his family and a morality tale about greed and hubris. The only thing the Judeism added was a big and conveniently well known mountain, and declairing “everyone else” to be the greedy slobs. The Christian version is actually a distortion, which ignores the original version, which, even in the Torat, makes it quite clear that only those animals considered “clean”, where put on the boat and the list in another part of the OT that describes like 4-5 types of animals as “clean”. Or in other words, Noah would have only needed something the size of a small yacht, even if you discount the possibility that the Summerian version isn’t the original story.
A pastor is building an ark in Maryland.
No, really, it’s true.
http://www.godsark.org/index.html
At least current Ark hunters won’t have to worry about being attacked by KGB commandos like the Death Merchant did back in ’77 when he lead an expedition up Ararat. See Death Merchant #25, The Enigma Project, for details. :-)
Joseph Rosenberger, who wrote the Death Merchant books, apparently wrote for Fate Magazine at some point. In any case he loved to throw all sorts of ’70s pseudoscience like the Bermuda Triangle, spontaneous human combustion, and Noah’s Ark into his violent, often shrilly right wing and borderline racist, action adventure books.
And here I’ve spent my whole life looking for those damned stone tablets.
“A pastor is building an ark in Maryland.
No, really, it’s true.”
They started in 1976 and that’s as far as they’ve gotten??? So much for that “Jesus is coming back soon” message they’re trying to get out. I think that’s even slower than Noah was supposed to have built his.
Then again, think of all the homeless shelters they could have built with as much money as they’ve sunk into it… nah.
But wait a minute! If Noah landed at an elevation of 4,663 meters, as stated in the article, then how did he ‘drop off’ all the native Australian fauna (the highest peak in Australia, Mount Kosciuszko, is only 2228 meters)?
Don’t tell me all those Koalas swam across the ocean!
That myths with a “flood” theme–with the fortunate or prescient survivors as the founders of the current populace–are globally widespread furnishes no support for there having once been a worldwide flood, at least not one of Biblically-literal proportions.
The Euxine/Black Sea flood–though Ballard’s investigations are cool, interesting, and thought-provoking–is just one of many “local” instances of what happened to sea levels, and to broad areas of continental plain/tundra, when the ice caps from the last glaciation finished melting, relieving the continents of an emormous overburden, filling the oceans with water and–at various times in various places, depending on isostatic rebound (the unburdened landforms flexed up, but sometimes the edges of the landmasses flexed down in response) and the vagaries of local topography and geology, blah, blah–the coastlines either were submerged, the coastal plains and “land bridges” were drowned, the interior plains became large shallow lakes or outwash channels, etc.
And that’s if you really require some relatively global-scale phenomenon as a predicate for these widespread myths. Surely every locality in which people live has watersources which have occasionally flooded in a locally-catastrophic and dramatic manner. Surely most coastal areas have received seismic flooding from subduction quakes occurring near or far. In a tribal time, when the only “history” was oral myth-telling, how would the Indian Ocean tsunami have been remembered and retold?
P. J. Evans:
It looks like a snow and ice-covered rock escarpment to me, maybe perched just above a large glacier moat or headwall–glaciers naturally break open into yawning crevasses because the downward-flowing ice isn’t quite plastic enough to conform perfectly to the changes in slope angle.
But what the heck would I know–I’ve only taught mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest (Mt. Rainier anyone?) for the past fifteen years…
These people…!
That myths with a “flood” theme–with the fortunate or prescient survivors as the founders of the current populace–are globally widespread furnishes no support for there having once been a worldwide flood, at least not one of Biblically-literal proportions.
Well, no. I think the argument here is that the Biblical Flood story is adapted from pre-existing legends, not that there “actually” was a world-wide flood.
Am I the only one here who remembers that the Middle East is called the “Cradle of Civilization” because most of the world’s great civilizations started there? Because that’s the case, it makes perfect sense that a Babylonian legend would get conflated into Greek, Roman and (yes) Jewish stories and legends.
Gee, I think this is the fourth time the ark has been “discovered” that I can remember and I’m not all that old. The pictures look sort of familiar, maybe they are using the same photos from last time? Although why they think a boat shaped object could be Noah’s ark is beyond me. If you read the bible literally like a good fundamentalist should you’ll realise that God told Noah to build the ark in the shape of a giant rectangular block.
“Can someone forget about Genesis, Bible, religion, Mars etc etc and tell me if there’s any evidence at all of a “flood” or extended rainfalls or river floding etc? I’m not talking about Noahs, Arcs and chosen animals, but of some local tribe finding a way to escape an extended flood and folk stories later distorting the facts. You know how oral history distorts facts, but some archaeological discoveries were based on sources from mythology.”
Yes, there is evidence – it is (was) the rise of sea-levels after the last Ice-age ….
The sea-level rose, even, in the period after 10 000 BC byat least 50 metres – that’s a LOT.
What would help would be if someone were to post some useful URL’s for the geology/Palentology of this period – especially the times 15 000 > 5 000 years BP.
Help, anyone?
MikeM, when you get to the Grand Canyon, be sure to check out the formation called “The Battleship.” It dominates the view from the South Rim village and looks . . . well, almost exactly like the photograph at the top of this page.
Steviepinhead:
Mnemosyne:
You are, of course, free to construct and respond to whatever “argument” you have discerned as being expressed “here,” while I am free to do the same. I don’t disagree with your notion that the proximate source of the Biblical flood myth may well have been other, handy “Cradle of Civilization” flood myths.
But that’s far from the only issue or question that has been raised in the thread: other commentators have speculated regarding various real-world events that may, in turn, have inspired those other Middle Eastern myths in the first place.
Still others have noted that structurally-similar flood myths are found world-wide, not just in the Middle East. Yet other commentators have asked what archaeological and geological evidence there may be which might underlie the various local myths and/or the more globally-distributed myths.
Try allowing your point to stand on its own merits, without unnecessarily entangling it with mine. Unless, of course, you have some actual disagreement with it, and some evidence with which to back that disagreement up.
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