Noah's Ark - or just an old boat?

[naomi24]

A group of evangelical archaeologists claim to have found Noah's Ark. Your thoughts?

http://www.dailymail....-mountain-Turkey.html

[sandyRoe]

Those planks don't look as though they have been buried in the earth for almost 5000 years.

[redcrx]

hasnt the Catholic church been saying they know its location for years?

i loved this reader's comment "I have a piece of the True Cross in my garden. It may have been used since as a railway sleeper, but it definitely started out as the cross"

[snags]

And the straw has lasted amazingly well too...

[razza]

This was on a documentary a couple of weeks ago,however another group reckoned they found noahs ark 27 miles away from this one.A load of tosh if you ask me.

[sandyRoe]

And where's all the animal dung? You'd think they'd be neck deep in it if this really was the Ark.

[Davethedog]

My thoughts are its a hoax. A wooden boat on a mountain for 4,800 years and its still coompartmentalised? The Viking long boat at Sutton Hoo (?) was deliberatley buried and they found the keel and a few slats that was 1200 years ago.

[askyourgran]

The ark was supposedly found years ago on Mt Ararat, I remember watching a TV programme about it. So this is ark #2, it looks as if it was put there a couple years ago it is in remarkable condition considering it must be around 2000 years old, there was hardly any physical evidence of the first Ark.

[jake-the-peg]

There are many flood stories - most notably Gilgamesh.

One of the best theoories I've heard is that the breaching of the black sea to the Mediterranian is a memory that was preserved in folk tales and verbal stories and made it's way into these tales.

As for the Ark, hmmmm

[naomi24]

askyourgran, it's supposedly almost 5000 years old. Incredible!! Yes, 'incredible' indeed!! :o)

[sandyRoe]

The floor of the North Sea was once dry land and inhabited. Myths of lands lost under the sea may have a basis in fact.

[naomi24]

Sandy, I think many legends have a basis in fact.

[redman41]

Waterboatman has beaten all these archaeologists to it........

[jake-the-peg]

You can always find a fact that roughy meets some myth but the flood one is remarkable

take a look here http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htm

[askyourgran]

My apologies, I didn't read all the article properly, So the Ark was 5000 years old, give or take a decade or two and It seems all religions have the similar stories which I find interesting. But God promised that there would be no more flooding to kill man. So with that in mind what was the boat found up on Mt Ararat about 8-10 years ago I doubt it was its sister ship.
This new find seems to be a little 'set up'. As snags said the straw looks pretty well preserved and I don't suppose there is evidence of animal poo anywhere. as sandywroe points out. The wood and features of the ark are also very well preserved

[naomi24]

True Jake. Stories come from all over the world, and some pre-date the bible by a long way.

[RATTER15]

It would be interesting to know the dimensions of this boat, how long it took to find two of every species, how they seperated them to stop them all killing and eating each other, how much room it took to keep all these animals and enough food for 40 days, wnen you imagine that they had to round up 2 elephants 2 rhino 2 hippo 2 lions 2 tigers 2 girraffe 2 crocodiles, (no Steve Irwin to call on) and thousands more species, and what happened to all that water when this flood subsided, where did it all go? But im sure that faced with the stark reality of this ark the christians will dig themselves out with more nonsense.

[naomi24]

Don't forget Noah took 7 pairs of some species into the ark. Even worse!

[birdie1971]

I think the very fact that the people who have 'discovered' this site are described as '[a] 15-strong team of fundamentalist Christians... ' should tell you all you need to know about the validity of their findings.

Fundamentalists of any persuasion are want to leap to any fantastical claims that uphold their beliefs.


Luckily for rational people, wood is an organic material that contains copious amounts of the radioisotope carbon-14. Carbon dating techniques could very easily verify or disprove the wood's age.

I wonder if they'll be submitting a sample to an independent laboratory any time soon...

[beso]

Engineers will tell you that a wooden boat cannot be built to the dimensions suggested by the story of the Ark.

Moreover the explicit instruction of one window about two feet square surely tests the credibility of the Biblical account. Can you imagine the smell inside the Ark?

[beso]

Forthy days and forty nights with an every worsening odour of every type of poo on Earth?