Noah’s ark enthusiasts excited by Durupınar Formation findings

Researchers claim they have found “evidence” of artificial structures resembling an ark buried beneath a rock formation near Mount Ararat in Turkey.

Evangelical* tour guide and founder of the Noah’s ark Scans project, Andrew Jones has expressed excitement over whether the formation could be the fabled ark depicted in the biblical tale of Noah and the floods.

Now, a joint investigation with Professor Cenker Atila of Sivas Cumhuriyet University in Turkey has added to the speculation.

“Current data increases the likelihood that it is Noah’s ark with each passing day,” the archaeology professor told the Turkish news agency iHA.

He has been leading an international team of 20 researchers to the Durupinar Formation* in eastern Turkey, which began surveying the site on June 28. They’re due to finish on September 11.

“These studies will yield definitive results within two to three months. Then we will provide more illuminating information,” Prof Atila said.

Mr Jones has been more enthusiastic, acknowledging on Fox News that he is a Christian and therefore hopeful the site proves to be the real thing.

“We’ve moved from asking ‘Does it look like a boat?’ to ‘Why is there a three-layered, right-angled inside structure, carbon-rich boat formation the exact length of Noah’s ark given in the Bible, buried in the middle of a mountainside in the mountains of Ararat?’” he told the Fox News anchors.

His Noah’s ark Scans project has been presenting what it claims is compelling evidence of an ark, such as a “fossilised” rivet*, a “petrified*” timber plank, radar-mapped “deck plans” and carbon-rich soil. However, these items have not yet been verified.

“(This is) exactly what you’d expect to find if this were a man-made boat, consistent with the biblical specifications of Noah’s ark,” Mr Jones said in a Christian Broadcasting Network interview.

Prof Atila said the team used a ground-penetrating radar to look for structures suggestive of a ship.

“We were looking for cavities, wooden remnants, or remains that could form a ship’s shape underground,” Prof Atila said.

“We noticed many anomalies* on the Durupinar formation. These are gaps. The presence of anomalies intersecting at right angles raised the question of, ‘Was there a ship here’? Could these be the gaps of that ship?’”

He also pointed to efforts to gather 1000 soil samples from the site and its surroundings. Initial results suggest the rock cavity contains 40 per cent more carbon than the surrounding soil.

“This raises the idea that there may be organic material or remains of wood,” Prof Atila said.

He indicated that the team would receive “definitive results” in two months.

Sivas Cumhuriyet University said it would publish a comprehensive report in 2027.

ANCIENT TALES OF ARKS
The Biblical account of Noah’s ark has long been described as a mythical tale by scholars, with many religious people divided as to whether any of it actually happened.

However, Noah’s ark was not the only story involving worldwide floods and the attempt to repopulate the Earth using an ark.

There were also much older Mesopotamian* stories, preserved in Sumerian* and Babylonian*, on nine ancient cuneiform* tablets.

One set of tales, the Atrahasis Epic, dates from around 1750BC.

Here, the later role of Noah is played by Atrahasis, and the Babylonian pantheon* fills the role of angry (or sympathetic) gods.

The Sumerian Flood story was a separate narrative.

The oldest surviving example dates from about 1600BC. Here, the immortal King Ziusudra is given the task of building and captaining the Ark.

Then, because King Ziusudra had safeguarded the animals and the seed of mankind, they settled him in a land overseas, in the land of Dilmun, where the sun rises.

Another surviving flood tradition has been found on tablets inscribed some 1000 years later. Dubbed The Epic of Gilgamesh, its Noah-hero is named as Utnapishti the Shuruppakean.

Jewish theologians* would have been in close contact with these different stories during the Assyrian Exile* of the 8th Century BC, and again during the Babylonian Exile* of the 6th Century BC.

Efforts to bring together Hebrew traditions into a standardised scriptural text began between the 8th and 6th Centuries BC. The Talmud* (core Rabbinic Judaism* text) itself was not fixed until well after the Babylonian exile.

POLL

GLOSSARY

• evangelical: a Christian belonging to a protestant movement based on sharing the “good news” or gospel of Jesus Christ
• Durupinar Formation: a 164m boat-shaped geographical formation near Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey. While geologists have identified the site as a natural phenomenon, researchers have recently reported characteristics of the site that suggest it could be a human-made structure
• rivet: a metal pin that joins two pieces of material together
• petrified: turned into stone
• anomalies: something that differs from the usual pattern
• Mesopotamian: relating to the ancient historical region of mesopotamia, which was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and was home to many civilisations, such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. The land now comprises modern-day Iraq plus areas of present-day Iran, Syria, and Turkey
• Sumerian: an ancient civilisation that came about in the 5th and 4th millennium BCE and divided day and night into 12-hour periods as well as hours into 60 minutes plus minutes into 60 seconds
• Babylonian: an ancient civilisation centred around the city of Babylon, founded in about 1894 BCE as an independent state by Amorite leader Sumu-abum
• cuneiform: the earliest known system of writing, developed by the Sumerians in about 3200 BCE
• pantheon: a collection of hundreds of gods and goddesses worshipped in Mesopotamia
• theologians: people who study and write about religion
• Assyrian Exile: a period in history when tens of thousands of Israelites from the Kingdom of Israel were forced to leave by the Assyrian Empire, which happened straight after the Assyrian conquests of Israel and Judah
• Babylonian Exile: Judah was later conquered by the Babylonians and there was another period in which large numbers of Judeans were exiled. Eventually, it became a Persian province and the exiled Judeans were permitted to return to Judea. The Babylonian Exile was a significant period in the development of Judaism
• Talmud: a compilation of ancient teachings regarded as sacred to members of the Jewish faith
• Rabbinic Judaism: the mainstream form of Judaism centred around the belief that God gave Moses both the Written Torah, or Bible, and Oral Torah at Mount Sinai and that the two cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Rabbis are seen as the holders of the oral tradition. The form of Judaism shifted from the reliance on a physical temple to textual study, prayer and community observance, making it ideal for the global diaspora of Jewish people that occurred throughout history

EXTRA READING
What lies beneath ‘tomb of Jesus’
Resurfacing an ‘Ancient Wonder’
Time facts that will bend your brain

QUICK QUIZ
What types of relics have been listed by researchers as being suggestive of a buried boat?
Where is the site being studied?
What do the soil samples that have been taken suggest, according to the researchers?
How many different versions of a flood and ark story are listed in the article?
How would Jewish theologians have come across the Mesopotamian stories?

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Proof of Noah’s ark
What evidence would you and the wider world need to have to believe this structure is actually Noah’s ark?

What is the current evidence?

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What further evidence may make it more definite and scientifically proven?

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Time: allow 15 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Science, History, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
After reading the Kids News article, write:

• One piece of evidence you found interesting …
• It does/doesn’t prove the Ark because …
• One piece of evidence researchers still need is …

Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Science, History, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY
Wow word recycle
There are plenty of wow words (ambitious pieces of vocabulary) being used in the article. Some are in the glossary, but there might be extra ones from the article that you think are exceptional as well.

Identify all the words in the article that you think are not common words, and particularly good choices for the writer to have chosen.

Select three words you have highlighted to recycle into your own sentences.

If any of the words you identified are not in the glossary, write up your own glossary for them.

Extension

Find a bland sentence from the article to up-level. Can you add more detail and description? Can you replace any base words with more specific synonyms?

Down-level for a younger audience. Find a sentence in the article that is high level. Now rewrite it for a younger audience so they can understand the words without using the glossary.