We all know the story of Noah's Ark from the days spent yawning during Christian religion classes while drawing ponies in the back of our workbooks (no, just me?). You know, the one where Noah and Mrs Noah build a big boat and invite a male and a female of each animal species from all over the world to board it for a year or so while God sends down a world-engulfing flood.
The story is dubious at best because A) how would you even manage to gather every single species on earth onto the ark, B) please explain the snack situation and additionally C) why did all the animals hold off in indulging their natural survival instincts
and abstain from eating each other as in the normal circle of life?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's just a story in the bible to teach us all to be good and pure because those
degenerates of humanity will literally be drowned out by God and all that. But nope, there are some people who really, truly believe that Noah and his ark did actually exist. And apparently, they've got some new hot new evidence to prove it.
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According to
Genesis 8:4 in the bible, Noah's ark came to settle on the "mountains of Ararat" in what was Armenia but is now Turkey, after 150 days of the flood. Back in 2010, a group of Christian explorers were shut down by experts after they claimed to have found traces of the ship on the mountain but were found to lack any kind of real evidence.
But lo and behold! A Calfornia-based "ark hunter" is telling everyone he's found
new
evidence that proves that Noah and his ark and all the animals inside it
did
run
aground at Mount Ararat. Professor
Raul Esperante
from the
Geoscience Research Institute (sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church) was part of more than 100 researchers from around the world who assembled in Turkey for a three-day international symposium to find bits and pieces of the ark that might prove its existence.
"My purpose is to visit the sites around the mountain to find clues about catastrophic events in the past," said Esperante.
According to the Express, he says that what those explorers found in 2010 (bits of wood from an ark-like structure they claimed to be 4,800 years old, when the ark would've been afloat) really was evidence, and calls for more "rigorous, serious scientific work" in the area.
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"The result of my findings will be published in books, publications and journals, but at this point it is too early to know what we are going to find," said Professor Esperante.
"Once the scientific community knows about the existence of Noah's Ark in Mount Ararat, we can make it available to the general public."
He is asking for international investment to help fund a full investigation for his ark-uncovering mission. But in bad news for Esperante, his controversial enthusiasm for the discovery has been met with the same criticism as the explorers seven years ago.
One lecturer in ancient history at Oxford University, Nicholas Purcell, told Mail Online that what he was saying was the "usual nonsense".
"If floodwaters covered Eurasia 12,000ft [3,700 metres] deep in 2,800BC, how did the complex societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, already many centuries old, keep right on regardless?"
Huh. What do you say to that, professor?
