The Search for Noah's Ark

A Boat-Shaped Ridge and a Mountain

In October 1959 a Turkish military captain, İlhan Durupınar, noticed a large boat-shaped outline on aerial survey photographs of eastern Turkey, on a slope south of Mount Ararat near the village of Üzengili, at about two thousand metres — published distances from the peak differ, running from roughly twelve to twenty miles, and this article does not pick one. Life magazine published the photograph in September 1960, and a team went out that month, dug and dynamited for two days, and found soil and rock. The magazine's caption, reproduced in full on the Wyatt organisation's own website, does not settle it either way, and all three of its closing sentences belong together: "A quick two-day survey revealed no sign that the object was man made. Yet a scientist in the group says nothing in nature could create such a symmetrical shape. A thorough excavation may be made another year to solve the mystery."

From 1977 R. Wyatt took the site up and made it famous, and the claims attached to it are specific enough to be tested. This article is about the site and the search; the app's separate article Ron Wyatt's Claimed Discoveries covers the rest of what he announced, and the two should be read together. His organisation reported metal-detector readings over what were described as iron rivets, laboratory assays showing aluminium, titanium and magnesium metal — with the inference, printed in capitals on their own site, that those metals are not found in nature — a deck plank said to be petrified wood, huge anchor stones with crosses carved on them at the village of Arzap, and radar scans said to reveal keels, bulkheads, animal chambers and a ramp. Turkish authorities designated the area a national park and a visitor centre was built.

Mount Ararat itself has its own literature. F. Navarra recovered worked wood from the mountain in 1955. A photographic anomaly on the north-west slope, first noticed on a United States Air Force mission of 17 June 1949, was declassified in 1995 and has been argued over since. And in April 2010 a Hong Kong expedition announced at a press conference that it had entered a wooden structure at around four thousand metres, radiocarbon dated to about 4,800 years, with one of its members saying it was "99.9 percent" the ark.

What the Text Actually Says About Where to Look

Before weighing any of that, it is worth noticing that Genesis does not name a peak. Genesis 8:4 says the ship rested "on Ararat's mountains" — a plural, naming the mountainous region the Assyrians called Urartu, in the Armenian highlands. That is a territory roughly the size of a country, and the text says nothing that would pick one summit out of it.

The oldest surviving traditions did not pick the mountain now called Ağrı Dağı. Berossus, a Babylonian priest writing in the third century BC, put the landing in the Gordyaean mountains — the Judi or Qardu region south-west of Lake Van. The Syriac Peshitta reads Qardu at Genesis 8:4 rather than Ararat. The Qur'an names al-Jūdī. Syriac and other eastern Christians carried that identification through late antiquity.

This is the point at which an article could get lazy and treat the whole thing as debunked, and it should not. R. W. Younker of Andrews University has published a serious case for identifying Ağrı Dağı with the biblical mountain, on the ground that the earlier and smaller Urartian heartland lay north-east of Lake Van and takes in Ağrı Dağı, while Cudi Dağı lies outside it. What makes his article worth citing here is that he states the awkward fact himself rather than around it: Ağrı Dağı, he writes, "is thought by most scholars to have not been a serious candidate for biblical Mt. Ararat until around the 11th to 12th centuries A.D." A reader should know both that the traditional peak's claim is late and that a credentialed scholar has argued for it anyway on other grounds.

The Refutations, and Who Wrote Them

The Durupınar site has a natural explanation, and it was published in a peer-reviewed journal in 1996 by L. G. Collins, a retired professor of geology at California State University Northridge, and D. Fasold. That second name is the load-bearing one. Fasold had spent years promoting the site as the ark; he collected twelve samples of the supposed petrified wood, had them sectioned, found every one to be basalt or andesite, and ended up as co-author of the paper titled "Bogus 'Noah's Ark' from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure." Its conclusion: "Evidence from microscopic studies and photo analyses demonstrates that the supposed Ark near Dogubayazit is a completely natural rock formation. It cannot have been Noah's Ark nor even a man-made model." Collins refined the mechanism in a 2016 article, attributing the boat shape to erosion of layered bedrock by landslide debris rather than to the fold he had first proposed. The metal-detector readings, he explains, are cemented grains of magnetite containing manganese and titanium, which make a detector buzz exactly as iron does; the aluminium figure is what a basalt would give, because basalt is largely plagioclase feldspar; and a thin section of an anchor stone shows anorthosite that does not occur in southern Mesopotamia at all. Collins, whose byline notes that he attends the United Methodist Church, closed by thanking Fasold, "although he is no longer alive, for his sincere efforts to find the truth."

Four years before that paper, A. Snelling had reached the same conclusion from a very different direction. Snelling is a geologist and a young-earth creationist, and his 1992 report for Answers in Genesis says the site "has a perfectly reasonable natural geological explanation" and that "there is no mystery about this site and its boat-shape": earthquakes pushed up a block of basement rock, mudflow moved slowly around it, and the fault scarps make the "walls." On the assays: "the assay results of these two samples are exactly what one would expect from soil developed from basalt." On the anchor stones, that Noah would scarcely have used slabs of rock native to the place the ark came to rest, and that there is no wear around the tops of the holes. Answers in Genesis files that report under the heading "Arguments to Avoid." A reader who has been told that only sceptics doubt this site has been told something untrue.

The Ararat claims have gone the same way and the pattern is worth naming. F. Navarra's 1955 wood was dated by four laboratories — R. Berger at UCLA, R. E. Taylor at Riverside, H. Suess at La Jolla, and England's National Physics Laboratory — and the results converge on roughly the seventh or eighth century AD, about twelve hundred years old rather than five thousand. That is not a sceptic's summary either: reviewing those very papers in 1980, a research institute of the Seventh-day Adventist church accepted their result, that "the dates for the wood converge around 700 A.D." and that the samples come from some other ancient structure. The 1949 anomaly was assessed by the Defense Intelligence Agency itself, whose analysis of the frames concluded that accumulated ice and snow along the precipice fall away at intervals leaving "long linear facades," and that the anomaly appears to be one of them.

The 2010 Hong Kong announcement is the sharpest case, because both of the people best placed to check it were evangelicals working with the expedition. R. Price, the archaeologist on the 2008 season, wrote to supporters in April 2010 alleging a hoax, and his allegation should be quoted as he framed it — with the hedge he himself used: "In the late summer of 2008 ten Kurdish workers hired by Parasut, the guide used by the Chinese, are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area (where the photos were originally taken) at the Mt. Ararat site." He added that to his knowledge the expedition took no professional archaeologist or geologist who could verify or document the wood. Fairness requires the rest of it: within days Price's ministry issued a clarification that while he had reservations about the expedition's nature and procedure, "he believes that a decision concerning this matter must wait until independent examinations of the site and the structure can be made and published." And then the dating. A. Snelling, the same creationist geologist, was given the expedition's radiocarbon results by the ministry itself and published all of them in 2011, reporting that two of their four wood samples were tested at two laboratories each and certified modern — post-1950 and roughly 120 to 135 years old — and a third returned an age of about 610 years. The fourth sample, the only one behind the announced figure, was tested at a single laboratory that did not follow standard procedure, measure the carbon isotope value or report an error margin. His conclusion was that the tests "strongly indicated that their wood samples could not have come from the Ark."

Work continues at Durupınar, and it deserves reporting straight rather than mocked. A team including archaeologists from Turkish universities has run ground-penetrating radar and resistivity surveys and taken soil samples, reporting rectilinear anomalies below the surface and about three times more organic material inside the formation's outline than in controls outside it, with core drilling and isotopic dating scheduled. Two things need saying about that, and the team says the second one itself. First, what a soil result of that kind can show: elevated organic carbon and potassium are consistent with decayed plant material of any origin and any date, they identify no species and no structure, and a date on sediment dates the sediment. Right-angled radar returns are likewise not unique to building — jointing, bedding and fracture intersections produce them, and Collins specifically describes a nearly rectangular joint system at this site. Nothing becomes evidence of a vessel until a core brings up worked wood, which has not happened. Second, their own statement of where they are — given whole, because the claim in its second half is part of the sentence: "The evidence gathered over decades of fieldwork does not yet constitute definitive proof of Noah's Ark, but it presents a collection of anomalies that are difficult to reconcile with purely natural geological explanations."

So, plainly. In sixty-six years at Durupınar and seventy on Ararat, no claim among them could be found in a peer-reviewed venue; the proponents' output is press releases, films, ministry publications and symposium chapters, while the peer-reviewed literature — Collins and Fasold in 1996, Taylor and Berger in 1980, L. R. Bailey in 1977 — runs the other way. That is not archaeology being closed-minded about the Bible. It is a specific body of claims that has been checked repeatedly, often by believers who wanted them to be true, and has not survived the checking. None of that touches Genesis. The flood narrative is not waiting on a photograph, and a faith that has been told it is has been set up to be disappointed by a soil sample.

Scripture references

• Genesis 6:15 — The ship's dimensions — three hundred cubits by fifty by thirty
• Genesis 8:4 — "The ship rested... on Ararat's mountains" — a plural naming a region, not a peak
• 2 Kings 19:37 — Sennacherib's sons escape "into the land of Ararat" — Ararat as a territory
• Jeremiah 51:27 — "The kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz" — Ararat as a kingdom among kingdoms
• Hebrews 11:7 — Noah's ark presented as an act of faith, not as a locatable artefact
• 1 Peter 3:20 — Eight souls saved through water

Sources

• ScholarshipL. G. Collins and D. Fasold, "Bogus 'Noah's Ark' from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure" — Lorence G. Collins, California State University Northridge, and David F. Fasold · Journal of Geoscience Education 44:4 (September 1996), 439-444. The peer-reviewed refutation, co-authored by the man who had spent years promoting the site. Full text is also posted by the author at csun.eduSupports: That the Durupınar formation is a natural rock structure, and that its best-known promoter concluded so himself
• ScholarshipL. G. Collins, "Noah's Ark near Dogubayazit, Turkey?" — Lorence G. Collins · Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 68:4 (December 2016), 218-228, freely readable. Collins's later and fuller treatment, in which he attributes the boat shape to landslide erosion of bedrock rather than to the fold proposed in 1996, and answers the metal, anchor-stone and petrified-wood claims point by pointSupports: The geological mechanism, and the specific answers to the Wyatt-era claims
• ScholarshipR. E. Taylor and R. Berger, "The date of 'Noah's Ark'" — R. E. Taylor, University of California Riverside, and Rainer Berger, UCLA · Antiquity 54:210 (1980), 34-36. The radiocarbon scientists' own peer-reviewed publication on F. Navarra's wood. Paywalled; the figures given in this article are taken from the reporting of their results rather than from this paper, which was not opened · paywalledSupports: The dating of the Ararat wood
• ScholarshipL. R. Bailey, "Wood from 'Mount Ararat': Noah's Ark?" — Lloyd R. Bailey, Duke University · The Biblical Archaeologist 40:4 (December 1977), 137-146. The scholarly treatment of the Navarra wood. Paywalled · paywalledSupports: The scholarly assessment of the Ararat wood claims
• Holding institutionA. Snelling, "Special Report: Amazing 'Ark' Exposé" — Andrew A. Snelling, for Answers in Genesis · Creation 14:4 (September 1992), 26-38. A young-earth creationist geologist's refutation of the Durupınar site, published by Answers in Genesis and filed by them under "Arguments to Avoid." The source of every Snelling sentence quoted hereSupports: That the site is rejected by creationist geologists as well as by mainstream ones
• Holding institutionA. Snelling, "A Response to the Accusations of Noah's Ark Ministries International and The Media Evangelism" — Andrew A. Snelling, for Answers in Genesis · 6 December 2011. Noah's Ark Ministries International gave Snelling all of its carbon-14 results in April 2010 and he published them in full in November 2011; this piece reports what the four samples actually returned, and which laboratory did not follow standard procedureSupports: The radiocarbon results behind the 2010 announcement
• ReferenceWyatt Archaeological Research: "NOAH'S ARK - The Early Years" — Wyatt Archaeological Research, reproducing the Life caption of September 1960 · The promoters' own page, read in full, and the only place the 1960 caption could be read here. It reproduces the caption entire, which is why this article quotes all three of its closing sentences rather than the first: the survey found no sign the object was man-made, a scientist in the party said nothing in nature could produce the shape, and Life left the question for a later excavation. The same caption puts the formation "20 miles south of Mt. Ararat" at 7,000 feetSupports: What Life actually printed in September 1960, and the range of published distances from the peak
• ReferenceThe Noah's Ark Scans research team's own statement of its evidence — The Mount Ararat and Noah's Ark Research Team · The current team's own page, and the source of the soil-sample figures and of the sentence quoted at the end of this article. Cited so the live claim is represented by its claimants rather than only by this article's summary of it; nothing here has been peer-reviewed, and the team says as much itselfSupports: The current Durupınar work and what its team claims for it
• ReferenceR. W. Younker, "The Case for Ağri Daği/Masis as the Biblical Mt. Ararat" — Randall W. Younker, Andrews University · Perspective Digest 29:1 (1 January 2024); also published in the Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 32:1-2 (2021), 14-34. The case FOR the traditional peak, cited here so the article does not knock down a position nobody holds, and the source of his own statement that most scholars date the identification to the eleventh or twelfth century ADSupports: The scholarly case for identifying Ağrı Dağı with the biblical mountain, and the lateness of that identification
• ReferenceR. D. Tkachuck, "Wood from the Ark — a Knotty Problem" — Richard D. Tkachuck, Geoscience Research Institute · Origins 7:2 (1980), 89ff, published by an institute of the Seventh-day Adventist church and freely readable. A review of the two papers cited above rather than an independent study, which is why this article does not present it as corroboration: it accepts their result, that "the dates for the wood converge around 700 A.D.", and answers the contamination and altitude objectionsSupports: A second, confessionally sympathetic assessment of the Ararat wood
• ReferenceJ. Kovacs, "Noah's Ark found? Not so fast, says archaeologist" — Joe Kovacs, WorldNetDaily, 28 April 2010 · Reproduces R. Price's dispatch of 26 April 2010 in full, which is the source of the allegation quoted in this article. Price's ministry issued a clarification days later, reported by the Christian Post on 2 May 2010, and both are represented hereSupports: R. Price's allegation about the 2010 expedition, in his own words
• ReferenceS. Kurczy, "Chinese explorers stand by claim of Noah's Ark find in Turkey" — Stephen Kurczy, The Christian Science Monitor, 30 April 2010 · The 2010 claim in its claimants' own words, including the "99.9 percent" statement quoted hereSupports: The 2010 announcement as its makers stated it
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Durupınar site

Further reading

• Wikipedia: Durupınar site
• Wikipedia: Searches for Noah's Ark

Reflect

Every serious refutation of these claims was written by someone who believed the flood happened. What does it cost you when someone on your own side says the evidence does not hold?