Has the Ark Itself been Found?

From time to time theories are put forward as to the finding of the ark, one such having been investigated by Turkish Army authorities in the late 1960’s. It was a huge object some five hundred yards long, but wood found in the area proved to be relatively recent. What was believed to have been a huge man-made object turned out to be a natural formation after all.

Remains of ARK

10 Points of this discovery

Another claim was that two World War II airmen saw the ark high up on one of the mountains inside Russian territory, but this particular “sighting” has been authoritatively denied. Similar claims have been made from time to time, without denials, and it certainly is not impossible that the ark has been or will be both seen and found.

There are well attested records relating to a Roman Catholic monastery destroyed by an avalanche at the beginning of this century. There were many ancient objects in this monastery which were supposed to have come from the ark, having been gathered over the centuries in times of a hotter than usual summer when the ice-line was higher than in other seasons, thus loosing some of the treasure normally bound in impenetrable ice.

Certain it is that Fernand Navarra, a Frenchman, believes that he has found evidence of Noah’s ark, and following one of his visits to Mount Ararat in 1955 he wrote his best-seller, I Found Noah’s Ark.

Carbon-dating has shown that some of the wood he found near the summit of this 17,000 ft. mountain was over 4,000 years old, and to Navarra the logical explanation was that this was part of the wood from Noah’s ark. Others challenged this conclusion, pointing out that in very early times the region around Mt. Ararat was thickly forested, and that tribes in the area built log huts and in doing so displayed real skill in their primitive woodwork. Others have suggested that Navarra actually found part of an ancient wooden temple dedicated to gods in the region, this being a real possibility on the summit of a mountain such as Ararat.

However, this is not without problems, for when the late Ralph E. Crawford, President of the Search Foundation Incorporated of Washington, D.C., U.S.A., reported on this finding he stated that the timbers recovered appeared to be white oak. As there is no white oak within hundreds of miles of the mountain it is hard to see how this timber could have been transported to high up the mountain for the purpose of building a temple.

The Frenchman Navarra estimated that the timbers he saw embedded in a frozen lake in 1955 would have weighed about 50 tons. The “proof” piece he chopped out at his first sighting was about five feet long — and, as we have already said, it was carbon-dated as being over 4,000 years old.

The Turkish Government constantly receives requests from those who want to climb Mt. Ararat, but these are usually turned down — one reason is that the Russians object to the area being visited because of the very real possibility of spying, and also because the region is part of a N.A.T.O. restricted area.

Some, though not all, pieces of wood found recently are reported to be identical to those found 14 years before. One of the expedition listeners is reported as saying that the main part of a great man-made wooden construction which could be Noah’s ark was buried in 900,000 cubic yards of ice and debris left by earlier glaciers. He reported that modern techniques would be essential if the ice and debris were to be removed.

A number of Americans, including John Warwick Montgomery, Eryl Cummings and Ralph A. Lenton, have continued separate activities towards finding the ark. Another who believes he has seen the famous old vessel is Mr. Hardwick Knight.

This author has talked at length to Mr. Knight, a well-known New Zealand archaeologist who has no special brief to “prove the Bible”. He saw a man-made wooden structure high up on Mt. Ararat, and revisited the area with an American investigation team. At the time of his “sighting” he was moving away from the area as fast as he could, and did not stop to photograph what he saw, nor did he take a sample of the wood. In fact, it was not until a few minutes later that it registered that what he had seen was at least unusual, but his immediate circumstances did not allow him to retrace his steps. It was a particularly hot summer, and he believed that what he had seen would be uncovered only in such a season, when the ice-line was higher than usual.

When this author talked at length with Mr. Knight, he certainly impressed by his objective approach to what he had seen. He believes it is possible he stumbled on Noah’s ark, but he does not insist dogmatically that he has done so.

He described the object as resembling the framework of a large wooden gun-carriage. I rather doubted if such a description would fit Noah’s ark, unless it were only a part of it. However, Mr. Knight’s “find” was some distance from Fernand Navarra’s sighting, and it could be that time and the elements have broken this “object” into sections. Only time will tell as to whether the ark has in fact been found.