Special Edition: The Search for Noah's Ark

SPEAKER_1 (0:20)

We're back at 7.4 this morning on In Depth Today, The Search for Noah's Ark.

SPEAKER_2 (0:25)

One of the Bible's most compelling stories, of course. But now, some American researchers claim they have found what they believe is evidence of the ark buried in a remote part of Turkey. Well, it looks ark-shaped, doesn't it? NBC's Keir Simmons has made his way there for us with the shovel cake here. Good morning.

Keir Simmons (0:43)

Hey, Savannah, good morning to you. It's a story we're told from childhood, isn't it? And take another look at that shape on the mountain there. A group of American Christians believe they have new evidence that that is the wreckage of Noah's Ark here in these mountains. And then look at this majestic live shot. That in the distance there is Mount Ararat. What that tells us is we're in the right place.

Imagine these mountains millennia ago submerged by floods. And in this beautiful biblical landscape named in the Old Testament, the shape of a ship. The Book of Genesis says Noah landed here in the mountains of Ararat. So could this really be Noah's Ark?

New research shared with today hints at that extraordinary conclusion. Believers have been drawn to this site in Turkey, close to the Iranian border, since it mysteriously emerged after an earthquake in the 1940s.

Andrew Jones (1:47)

You're here.

Keir Simmons (1:48)

Christian researcher Andrew Jones from California says the dimensions match.

Andrew Jones (1:53)

In chapter 6 of Genesis, it talks about a 300-qubit long boat. And that, if you use the Egyptian qubit, is 515 feet long or about 157 meters. And that's exactly the length of this boat-shaped object.

Cliff Dunning (2:05)

That's a news broadcast of information regarding the supposed discovery of Noah's Ark in Turkey, just below Mount Ararat. And the new research team that has been involved in scanning, using scanning technology, into the portion of this hill that they believe is a ship. And this is something that has been encountered in British news, UK Daily, as well as American news by Fundamentalist Christian programs, and some news programs that are waiting to hear more evidence. Hey, this is Cliff, your host of Earth Ancients. And this week we have a special edition to review this supposed information on what they believe is Noah's Ark. And I'm reporting on it because I have been interested in this topic for a number of years, including almost 30 years ago, when I invited one of the early explorers, early researchers to a conference in San Francisco known as the Whole Life Expo. And the individual we're speaking of is David Fasold, who was a ocean salvage specialist. And in 1989, he wrote a book called The Ark of Noah, where he was part of a team, including archaeologist Ron Wyatt, who is credited with discovering this landform that he thought was a boat. Now, this is a curious find because the original discoverer was a guy named Durupınar.

Durupınar found this boat-shape landform in 1959 as he was flying over it in his plane, and it led to a lot of speculation, a lot of articles and books. Obviously, in 1959, they didn't have a lot of sophisticated scanning technology. But what we're going to hear about today is the team, including David Fasold, and others who began researching in person the body of what they thought was a ship, and investigating just what was laid to rest on the foothills of Mount Ararat. This is in Turkey. So that's our program today. I'm going to be playing excerpts from a number of people who have discussed this phenomenon, including Irving Finkel, who we've had on the program a number of times. He's a seriologist who is an expert on cuneiform. He's clay tablets that are really an expression of ancient civilization thousands of years ago. His book was called The Ark Before Noah, and we'll hear exactly what he has to say. It's fascinating because he gets a completely different description and other information that makes you question what's going on right now.

Today's program is The Path to Noah's Ark, and we have a whole group of presentations on the podcast today.

I mentioned earlier that there's a great deal of coverage right now. What people believe is the ruins of Noah's Ark in the hills, the mountains of Turkey.

And I've had an interest in this for a long, long time, including back in 1993 when I invited David Fasold to speak at the Whole Life Expo in San Francisco. And what makes David Fasold interesting is he is really the only researcher attached to the early exploration of this Mount Ararat area and an association with a field archaeologist, a guy named Ron Wyatt, who is credited with the discovery of the outline of a boat in the foothills of Mount Ararat. Now, Fasold was a merchant marine officer, a salvage expert, who wrote a book called The Ark of Noah, and he presented in this book his investigations of the Durupınar site. He had a background in actual recovery of different kinds of boats, and was considered an expert in marine maritime salvage. Now, when he was presented with the image of what looked like a formation of a ship or outer rim of a ship, he believed it looked like a boat, but the only way you could tell was to go and actually see firsthand, and do some research, some studies, some excavations. This is where the archaeologist Ron Wyatt comes in. What Wyatt had found was an image taken by a pilot in 1959 of a landform that had the shape of a boat, oval, a front and rear portion, what looked like sightings.