Original subtitles

Narrator: on a remote hillside Near mount ararat in turkey

Lies a huge And mysterious boat shape.

Many scientists believe it's Just an unusual rock formation,

But some investigators Claim that, amazingly,

It's the physical Remains of noah's ark.

Man: well, we made it, guys. This is it.

We are standing on noah's ark.

If this was a natural rock Formation, it would be a jagged,

Irregular shape or a jumble of Just little rocks and boulders.

Instead, you actually see The boundaries of the boat.

I had to investigate it.

Narrator: According to the bible,

It was here, In the mountains of ararat,

That the ark landed with Noah's family and breeding pairs

Of all The world's animals onboard

After surviving a great flood Sent by god

To destroy the entire world.

Now we are in the middle Of the ark,

And it fits the biblical size.

Narrator: what is the truth?

Are there other, more convincing Geological explanations,

Or are these really The remains of noah's ark?

Despite what the bible says, There is actually

Zero archaeological Evidence for noah,

An ark, or a flood.

Sometimes, there's is no truth, But I am a huge believer

That there are usually Some grains of truth

In most myths and legends.

*

-- captions by vitac -- Www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by Discovery communications

*

Narrator: on a hillside Near mount ararat in turkey,

This mysterious boat shape Is believed by some to be

The actual historical remains Of noah's ark.

The world is fascinated By stories, myths,

And legends from The holy grail to noah's ark,

And we're forever trying to find Proof that these things exist.

I think the hunger For the search

Is the fact that people Are searching for god,

And so, If someone finds the ark,

Then it could be proof

That god exists.

Narrator: over the years, Many religious explorers

Have searched the middle east,

Hoping to prove that the story Of noah's voyage on the ark

During god's great flood Is the literal truth.

It's been a big thing Among adventurers for centuries.

In fact, marco polo, Way back, said,

"The ark is on mount ararat."

And he said, "Unfortunately,

The mountain Is too snowy to climb."

Narrator: During the 1970s and '80s,

Astronaut james irwin,

Who'd become a born-again Christian

After returning from the moon,

Made many expeditions up Mount ararat

In search of the ark,

But failed to find Any evidence of it.

Today, the unusual boat shape

Discovered nearly 20 miles South of mount ararat

May be the best hope of proving That noah's ark actually existed

And that, amazingly,

Its remains have survived To the present day.

*

Today, the leading investigator Of the site

Is devout christian, Andrew jones.

Accompanied by research teams,

He's been visiting and studying The site for more than 20 years.

I first came here in 1997, And I was in college,

And it was like A dream come true.

It was the most exciting trip Because you're thinking

You're walking on the remains Of noah's ark.

Now, I've been here about 16 or 17 times since 1997.

There's always something New that happens on each trip,

And now, of course, this trip, We're focused on

Radaring the site And getting survey

Work done aboveground, And so that's exciting.

We're just really wanting to see What's below the ground,

And so that's why We are here today.

Narrator: armed with the latest Scientific equipment,

Andrew jones' mission On this trip

Is to finally Gather enough evidence

To convince skeptics that The boat shape near mount ararat

Is more than just An unusual rock formation.

He's hoping to prove It really is noah's ark.

*

So all of ararat's in turkey.

It's a 16,000 Or 17,000-foot volcano.

It's a stratovolcano, and it Has a year-round glacier on top,

So you see The snow up there,

And we're working Across the valley

From mount ararat At the durupinar site.

Narrator: back in the 1980s,

The durupinar site was declared A national protected area

By the turkish government, And as a result,

Today andrew jones And his team

Are able to drive right up

To the once Difficult-to-access site.

In fact, we have just arrived At the visitor's center.

Now, the turkish government Built this building in 1987

When they dedicated a national Park here for the tourists.

*

So we have arrived.

Thank you.

Morning, zafer.

-beautiful day, huh? -yes, it is.

-welcome. -good morning.

Good morning.

Narrator: once their equipment Is unloaded,

Andrew's investigation team Heads straight out to the site

To begin work.

He's hoping that their latest

State-of-the-art Scientific equipment,

Including Ground-penetrating radar,

Will be able to convince Even the most die hard skeptics

That noah's ark Really has been discovered.

*

Christian archeology Is a weapon of faith

In the arsenal of proving To this modern, scientific world

That the stories In the bible are real,

And the ark has become A totemic part of that.

*

Jones: Well, we made it, guys.

This is it.

We are standing on noah's ark.

Can you believe it?

We've got a busy day Ahead of us.

*

If it is a boat, If it is an ark,

We're hoping to see, basically, Striations that would correlate

To what would be the beams And ribs of a boat.

That would be One major indicator.

Narrator: To skeptics, however,

The site Has clearly been shaped

By natural geologic processes.

When we look at a site Like durupinar,

And you look at the geology

And the geologic history Of the area,

We know that there was Glacial movement there,

Making it very possible A large rock

Fell off the side Of a mountain,

And it got surrounded by rocks That are different hardnesses.

Only is this case,

It just happens to be Sort of the outline

Of what we think of As a boat shape.

Jones: to me, If it is noah's ark,

Then that's a big plus For proving that,

You know, That the bible is true.

If we start digging and find Just natural layers of rock

And dirt down there, It would be very disappointing.

I mean, I've looked at this And studied it

And investigated it For half my life.

*

Narrator: can andrew And his research team

Find sufficient scientific Evidence to convince skeptics

That the site is the last Resting place of noah's ark

And isn't just An unusual rock formation?

Detailed analysis and precise Measurement of the boat shape

Will provide important clues.

*

*

Narrator: christian Archaeological investigator

Andrew jones Is in eastern turkey,

Near mount ararat,

With a scientific research team

Trying to prove that the story Of noah's ark

Is the literal truth.

According to the bible, After god killed the sinful

By flooding the entire world, Noah's family,

Plus breeding pairs Of all the world's animals,

Landed safely in the ark In the mountains of ararat

Before they began To repopulate the planet.

Selwood: noah is one of The great figures of genesis.

He is the righteous man.

He is the man who was chosen Out of everybody else

Because of his piety And his beliefs

And his upstanding nature To save the world.

If he really did what he did And he saved mankind

And for want of a better word, Animal-kind, as well,

Then you can't get any guy On the planet

That's done more for us Than noah,

So, you know, hail noah.

Narrator: Andrew jones is convinced

That this remarkable story

Isn't just a biblical legend.

He believes It's factually accurate.

According to the bible, He was a great man of faith

Because god said he was gonna Destroy the world with water,

The whole world, And noah had to believe that.

There was no evidence That this would happen,

But god said, "Build a boat,"

And so I can just imagine him Being made fun of

And ridiculed for building This giant boat on land,

But, you know, ultimately, By obeying god, he was saved.

And at the end of the story, The bible says that the ark

Landed In the mountains of ararat,

And so, where is this boat?

And so that's what we're here Looking for.

*

Narrator: most scientists Believe this unusual boat shape

Is simply a rock formation Shaped by an ancient landslide,

But andrew is hoping His research team

Can gather enough scientific Evidence to convince skeptics

That it really is noah's ark.

How you doing, seth?

Just finished 120 scans.

You finished 120 scans?

-yes, a million points of data. -wow.

And those points, It basically creates

A 3d model Of the object you're shooting.

Exactly, we put them All together,

Stitch them all together, And it also takes pictures

While it's doing it, So it'll colorize it

So it looks realistic. -that's amazing.

I can't wait to see The results of this.

Narrator: after fully Surveying the site

With the high-resolution Mapping scanner,

The team is soon able to To build

A preliminary 3d picture Of the parts

Of the boat-shaped formation That are visible aboveground.

*

So the results we've gotten, We're extremely pleased with.

Right now, This is bird's-eye view,

And you can see that This is kind of the bow

Of what we believe To be a ship structure,

And this is The back side of it,

And then this is The limestone structure

That they believe this boat Got impaled on

As it came down the mudslide,

And then you can kind of see The surrounding topography.

You almost can kind of visibly See the mudslide

Coming down the hill here.

With these ravines and cracks,

You can kind of see A little bit of the motion

And how some of that Is kind of parting

And going around the structure.

We can't make the determination Whether it's noah's ark or not.

What we can do is provide Archaeologists the details

They need to plan And then be able to do that

Invasive excavation,

Try to see What's actually under there.

Narrator: As excavation of the site

Is not yet Officially approved,

Over the coming days, The team plan to build up

A picture Of the site belowground

Using ground-penetrating radar,

But their 3d mapping Of the site aboveground

Has already helped highlight One very significant fact.

Intriguingly, the boat shape Very closely matches

The dimensions of noah's ark As described in the bible.

Here we are walking down The starboard side of the ark,

And over here is The middle of the structure,

And you can see how massive The ark would've been,

And it fits the biblical size.

Narrator: According to the bible,

Noah's ark Was 30 cubits high,

50 cubits wide, And 300 cubits long.

In modern terms, Roughly 50 feet high,

85 feet wide, And 510 feet long,

Which is vast.

In modern times, the largest Wooden ship ever built

Was the early 20th century American schooner

The wyoming, and noah's ark,

Supposedly built Thousands of years earlier,

Would've been even bigger.

I think the idea That you could've fitted

Two of every animal,

From the tiniest insects through To giraffes and elephants,

Onto a single ship and given The technology of that time,

You know, we're really Stretching the imagination

To breaking point here.

Many scholars have looked Into the feasibility

Of whether noah Or someone like him

Could've built an ark Of this size

And scope to do what It was supposed to have done,

And the answer always comes back To a resounding no.

It's not possible.

Narrator: in modern times, However, a complete,

Full-sized replica of noah's ark Has been constructed.

The ark encounter is A christian theme park

Opened in kentucky in 2016.

To build something like noah's Ark would've had to happen

On basically a military scale.

You need organization, Structure, hierarchy,

Logistics, planning,

So noah would've had to have Been in charge of all of that.

The modern replica In kentucky required

Over 3,300,000 Board-foot of timber,

Over 1,000 craftsmen Were employed,

And it is the largest Timber-frame structure

In the united states.

These people built the ark Using modern tools,

Electricity, Gasoline, vehicles.

For noah to do all that With bronze age tools

Would basically mean he was Like kind of a superman,

And then, on top of that, he has To become a sea captain

Of the largest vessel Ever built and a zookeeper.

*

Think of all that coming Together,

And it just boggles the mind.

Narrator: Andrew jones, however,

Believes noah and his family Could have built the ark

And remains convinced that

The boat-shape formation His team is investigating

Is the physical Remains of noah's ark.

Jones: if this was A natural rock formation,

You would not get This shape of a hull.

It would be a jagged, Irregular shape

Or a jumble of just little rocks And boulders in a mudflow.

Instead, you actually see This man-made object,

The boundaries of the boat.

Narrator: hoping to discover Features of noah's ark

That may be Buried underground,

Andrew and his team Continue surveying the site

Using ground-penetrating radar.

Can they prove that this is The last resting place

Of noah's ark,

Or will geological evidence Point to more plausible,

Natural explanations For the site's

Unusual characteristics?

*

*

Narrator: christian Archaeological investigator

Andrew jones Is at the durupinar site

In eastern turkey.

He's trying to gather convincing Scientific evidence

That this mysterious boat shape

Is the physical remains Of noah's ark

And isn't just an unusually Shaped rock formation,

As many scientists believe.

Jones: so we're standing On the pointed,

Uphill end of the ark.

What's really interesting About this boat formation

Is that the pointed end Is uphill.

Now, you might be wondering, "Why does that matter?"

Well, some critics believe that This site was formed naturally,

And in that case, they say that There was a rock and a mudflow,

And this mud went around this Rock and formed the boat shape.

Now, the problem With that theory is that

This is the complete opposite.

If that did happen, The rounded end would be uphill.

In this case, The pointed end is uphill,

And so we believe that This formation is actually

Because of the boat, Because of noah's ark,

And not because Of any natural processes.

Narrator: One prominent geologist

Who's taken an interest In the durupinar site

And who strongly challenges

Andrew jones' Interpretation of it

Is david montgomery, Professor of earth sciences

At the university Of washington.

*

Montgomery: I'm the kind of geologist

That's known as A geomorphologist.

That's somebody who studies The evolution of topography,

How earth's surface features Are formed.

Well, there's a report done By turkish geologists

That have examined that outcrop And concluded

That the form is actually A piece of limestone

That has been rafted Down the mountain

On what's known As an earthflow,

Which is a major landslide Kind of like a glacier

Made out of mud, If you will.

It's a piece of miocene Limestone,

10, 20 million years old, Fossiliferous,

So there's fossils in it,

And it's, you know, It's a hard stretch to think

That you would make An ark out of rocks.

Narrator: As a christian creationist

Who believes that the bible Is the literal truth,

Andrew jones has Many disagreements

With mainstream geology, However.

According to geologists,

The earth is nearly Five billion years old,

But according to creationists, The earth was created by god

In just seven days Around 4,000 b.C.

*

So if you're gonna take The bible at just what it says,

Then the earth itself Would be around 6,000 years old.

The boat would've been a lot, You know,

1,500 years after that,

So you're looking at a 4,500, 5,000-year-old object,

And so that would be, like, The conservative,

Creationism point of view On how old this is.

Now, we haven't tested it.

We haven't done in excavations.

And I believe in The bible accounts.

I believe, you know, It would match,

But obviously, no excavations Have been done yet to see.

Narrator: andrew's beliefs about Noah's ark and creation

Rely on the assumption that The world's sedimentary rocks,

Among which the ark Now supposedly rests,

Were laid down just A few thousand years ago

During the great flood.

Janulis: I respect The christian faith,

But the creationist narrative

Just does not match up To the science as we know it.

It just takes something like Looking at the cliffs of dover

And realizing that Every piece of chalk there is

The skeleton of a once-tiny Microorganism that slowly,

Slowly built up over Millions of years,

And when you look at something That's 500 foot tall

And you realize that deposited At maybe a millimeter a year,

You start to realize the scale Of what we're talking about

And how immense the scale Of geologic history is.

Narrator: however, andrew hopes That his new scientific

Investigations At the durupinar site

Will prove that The creationist belief

And the reality Of the great flood

And noah's ark is accurate.

*

Since andrew's team hasn't Received official approval

To excavate the site, Ground-penetrating radar

Is the next best option

To try to find Convincing evidence belowground

To help prove that the site Isn't a natural rock formation,

But really is noah's ark.

Sohlstrom: is it a boat? Is it not a boat?

Is it a natural structure? Is it not a natural structure?

We're all hoping it's not A natural structure,

But we got to get the data back And get it processed.

Narrator: The preliminary results

Of the ground-penetrating Radar survey

Will be ready In the next few days.

If the survey does indicate

Boat-shaped features Belowground,

That will be A major step forward

For andrew jones and his team.

But until any subsequent Excavation

Is able to prove What's underground,

Skeptics will still point To other perceived flaws

In the belief that the story Of noah's ark

Could possibly be true.

The most famous part Of the story, of course,

Is that the ark Carried breeding pairs

Of all the world's animals.

The logistics of running the zoo On noah's ark is impossible.

I can't even imagine Trying to do it.

A lot of these animals Are carnivores, too.

They need to eat meat.

Others are herbivores, Such as cattle,

That go through hundreds

And hundreds of pounds Of food a day.

Just the job of removing feces Alone would take everybody,

All hands on deck, Almost all day.

Do you really believe That all those animals

Went peacefully into that ark

Without the lions Having a go at the monkeys

Or the tigers Killing the zebras?

Oh, come on.

Narrator: andrew jones Does believe it,

But he recognizes that Noah's voyage in the ark

With all the animals would Have been a major ordeal.

You can only imagine being noah

With these animals for The whole duration of the flood,

And I kind of picture

Noah wanting that door open Right away.

You know, the bible says It was one door,

And so, as soon As he opened that door,

I bet you everybody, Including the animals,

Just ran off the ark, Just to freedom,

So I can picture That happening right here.

*

Narrator: andrew is now Going to examine

Some mysterious Ancient stones nearby

In an effort to find Corroborating evidence

To support his belief That noah's ark

Survived The flooding of the world

And its remains Have been found.

But skeptics question whether There is any scientific evidence

At all that there Ever was a global flood.

*

*

Narrator: christian Archaeological investigator

Andrew jones Is in eastern turkey

Near mount ararat Searching for proof

That this unusual boat shape On the mountainside

Is the physical remains Of noah's ark.

Andrew and his local Turkish assistant,

Zafer onay, are taking A short trip away from the site

To investigate a group Of mysterious ancient stones

In a nearby village.

Andrew hopes they'll provide Another promising clue

That noah's ark did land in this Region after the great flood.

That's amazing after All these years.

*

Narrator: remarkably, Andrew believes the group of

Heavy stones found here, Known as drogue stones,

Were once hung over The side of noah's ark

To stabilize it as it navigated

The choppy waters Of the great flood

Send by god to destroy The entire sinful world.

[ wind blowing ]

I think so far they've found, Like, 20 something,

26 or so of these.

You'll notice that these drogue Stones have holes in them,

And so all the drogue stones Would've been tied to the ark,

And this is one Of the largest stones.

In fact, a third of it Is below the ground still.

Gough: a drogue stone is a large Standing stone,

A megalith with a hole In the top center.

They appear to have been used As storm stones,

Anchors for ships who were Going through turbulent waters.

Now, we find these around The mediterranean.

We have found them In the nile river,

But the question is,

What are they doing In the range of mount ararat,

In this part of southeastern Turkey, which is arid?

There's no rivers.

There's no bodies of water, Giving credence to the fact

That they could've been used On noah's ark

Traveling across what is Now southeastern turkey.

Narrator: But as almost all these stones

Had lots of christian crosses Carved on them,

Skeptics point To a more mundane explanation.

They're simply Christian tombstones,

Yet believers in noah's ark Have another explanation.

Were these stones really used To stabilize noah's ark

During god's great flood

And then later reused as Gravestones by local christians

Who revered Their connection to the ark?

Skeptics refute the suggestion.

One reason is because geologists Say there is no evidence

For a global flood At any time in history,

Indicating that the story Of noah's ark cannot be true.

*

You really have to throw away

The last couple centuries Of geology

And all the science and physics And chemistry

And biology and paleontology

That goes along with that To embrace the idea

That the world was shaped By noah's flood.

Geologic history Has a much longer

And more complicated story

Told in the sediments Of the rocks themselves

Than could be recorded Is a single global flood,

So if there never was A global flood,

Are there geologically Plausible explanations

For the story of noah's flood?

A very reasonable explanation Behind flood stories

Can be the idea Of a regional flood

That essentially Took out the land

That people considered To be the world -- their home.

Narrator: geological evidence Shows that one area of the world

That suffered occasional massive

And catastrophic Regional floods in antiquity

Was the valleys of the tigris And euphrates in mesopotamia,

Modern iraq,

Where civilization Began over 5,000 years ago.

There is evidence within The mesopotamian region

Of the flood of the tigris river Dating to about 2,900 b.C.E,

So this we can date By pottery shards

That are found just before And just after this level,

This geological level That gives us quite

A, like, firm date for that.

Narrator: at the time, Around 5,000 years ago,

Local people affected By this huge devastating flood

In mesopotamia

Could easily have believed that The whole world was flooded.

If you're looking at A worldwide deluge,

When you consider What world means to a person

Who only has ever been within A couple of miles, 10 miles,

Maybe even 100 miles of The place that they were born,

That's a lot different Than our global concept

Of the world today.

Narrator: the bible's story Of noah's ark

Surviving a global flood

Was written a couple Of thousand years

After the great flood In mesopotamia,

But could the biblical account Have been inspired by it?

The remarkable discovery

Of ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets

Bearing the world's Oldest writing

Has provided Some tantalizing clues.

*

*

Narrator: amateur archaeologist Andrew jones

Is in eastern turkey Near mount ararat

Looking for decisive proof

That these are the physical Remains of noah's ark.

His research team Has almost finished

Their ground-penetrating Radar survey,

Which they hope will identify More boatlike features

Of the ark Buried underground.

While waiting for the results,

Andrew is heading To a nearby site

Where the graves of noah And his wife

Are said to have been Discovered a few decades ago.

*

Whatever noah was, And I'm talking about

What the bible actually says,

He wasn't a human being In any sense that we understand.

For a start, He was 650 years old,

But also he, According to some accounts,

Was a mere 12 feet tall, Possibly even taller than that.

Narrator: andrew jones Hopes any evidence

Remaining at noah's grave site

Will support the idea That he was a giant.

If this part of the story Of noah in the bible is true,

Then it implies that the rest Of the story may also be true

And that noah's ark Did land near here.

*

Jones: and so, the two big Headstones were right there.

One was fallen over, And then one was standing up.

Everything disappeared. The headstones are gone.

It's all broken up.

Narrator: since its discovery A few decades ago,

The site has been ransacked By treasure hunters.

As well as the headstones,

They're said to have taken away A huge sarcophagus.

Yeah, this 18-foot-long trench Was created because in '83,

Some locals, with the help of, They say, a foreigner,

Dug up this grave,

And it was a 15-foot-long box They pulled out of it,

A stone sarcophagus, And so that suggests

That whoever was buried in there Was a giant,

Just like we were thinking It says in the bible.

Narrator: skeptics are highly Doubtful about this, however.

I think it's important not to Equate the size of the tomb

With the physical size Of a man because, after all,

We have tombs of popes That lived in the renaissance,

For example, And they're massive of scale,

But the pope was just A regular-size man,

Maybe even shorter Than we're used to, so...

Narrator: to skeptics,

Noah and his wife Are just legendary figures,

Not real people who lived around 5,000 years ago.

Today, the most credible Evidence challenging

The factual legitimacy Of the noah's ark story

Comes from The remarkable discovery

Of some ancient clay tablets

Bearing the world's Oldest writing.

*

Dr. Selena wisnom,

An assyriologist at queen's College university of oxford,

Is one of a handful of experts

Able to read the mysterious Writing on the tablets,

Which come from mesopotamia, Modern iraq,

Where civilization Began over 5,000 years ago.

It's the earliest writing system We have anywhere in the world,

So it gives us our oldest Sources of information

For all kinds of facets Of human life,

From the very invention Of cities and agriculture

Right through To the babylonian sciences,

Medicine, mathematics, Astronomy, etc.

Narrator: over the years,

Decipherment of A number of mesopotamian tablets

Has provided dramatic evidence About the likely origins

Of the biblical story of The great flood and noah's ark.

This tablet is a replica of An incredibly important tablet

Because it was the first one To be discovered

That had any trace of A babylonian flood myth on it.

It was discovered In the 19th century

By a self-taught scholar, George smith.

He was reading through these, Working through it,

And then he came across The reference

To a universal flood,

And this was incredibly Exciting at the time.

Narrator: Dating to around 1,800 b.C.

And now known to be Part of the world's

First great work of literature, "The epic of gilgamesh,"

This tablet was the first Of many mesopotamian variations

Of the flood story That have since been found.

*

Hoffman: In all of the flood myths,

The plot is Essentially the same.

There is a hero.

He's usually a good man, A moral man,

A man that follows The decrees of god or gods,

And he tries to save A bit of the world,

Save a bit of humanity And a little bit of the animals

That were populated on it

By putting them into a big boat To escape a great deluge.

Narrator: The similarities between

The original mesopotamian Flood story

In "The epic of gilgamesh"

And the subsequent story Of noah's ark,

Written in the bible About 1,000 years later,

Are remarkable.

Wisnom: in both, a god tells A human figure

That the flood Is going to come,

Tells him how to get around it, Tells him to build a boat.

In both versions, the god tells The person to take onboard

Two of every kind of life,

All of the food That they'll need,

Both cases actually giving The very dimensions of the boat,

Really detailed instructions About how to construct it.

Narrator: the boats of The "Epic of gilgamesh"'s hero,

Utnapishtim, and another Mesopotamian flood hero,

Atra-hasis, are also Intriguingly similar in size,

If not in shape,

To the bible's description Of noah's ark.

Utnapishtim's ark was supposed To be a cube.

Atra-hasis had an ark That was a kuphar,

Or kind of a coracle,

A round boat which had Multiple tiers, as well,

And then noah's ark Was supposed to be,

Like, three stories, A long rectangle.

We've got a very specific size For that, big door at the end.

What's interesting About all of these is that

If we take The understanding of the space

That was given to create These in the stories,

They all tend to be about The same cubic space,

If you will, Which is really interesting.

It seems to suggest That the stories

Descend one from the other.

Narrator: There are many other details

In the stories that match.

For example, birds are sent out Three times

From both the mesopotamian boat And noah's ark

In order to search for land.

If we go down To this line here,

This is where it describes The sending out

Of the first bird.

[ speaking foreign language ]

So, "I let the bird out, Setting it free."

[ speaking foreign language ]

The bird went off, But it returned.

Narrator: to most experts, The numerous similarities

Between the mesopotamian Flood story

And the biblical story Of noah's ark,

Written over 1,000 years later,

Are much too great To be just coincidental.

Probably the reason why there Are these similarities

Between these stories is That the israelites were,

Actually, in babylonia During the 6th century, b.C.

The babylonian King nebuchadnezzar

Had sacked jerusalem

And then deliberately moved The population around

And resettled them,

You know, closer To the babylonian capital,

So the israelites would've Been coming into contact

With these mesopotamian Flood stories.

Narrator: christian Archaeological investigator

Andrew jones, however,

Doesn't accept that The bible's story of noah's ark

Derives from Mesopotamian myth.

His research team has Now finished

Their ground-penetrating Radar survey,

And as a result of what They've found underground,

Andrew is more convinced Than ever

That these are The remains of noah's ark.

*

*

Narrator: Creationist andrew jones

Is in eastern turkey With a scientific research team

Trying to prove That this unusual boat shape

On a hillside near mount ararat

Is the remains of noah's ark.

Skeptics, however, Remain resolutely unconvinced.

There is absolutely No evidence of the ark

Existing In eastern turkey, none.

I think it is just some form Of rock structure that's formed

And looks like a boat.

Narrator: andrew's Investigation team, however,

Has just finished surveying The durupinar site

With ground-penetrating radar.

Taking a first look At the data,

There's great excitement That it may show hidden features

Of noah's ark Buried underground.

When they get about 8 feet down, 8 1/2 feet down,

We're starting to see some Parallel, vertical structure,

And then as we go down A little bit deeper,

We get down to right At about nine feet.

We actually see an intersection Of that parallel

And a horizontal,

So we're actually Getting right angles --

-whoa! -...Underneath the ground.

-yeah, you see it right there, -yeah.

Yeah, you got almost like A little cavity

Where you've got a right Angle being created.

Oh, there's, like, three Or four right angles.

Mm-hmm.

So is there no way this could Be natural or what?

Typically, you're not gonna Find straight lines

And right angles In a natural environment.

-that's great, wow. -that's man-made items, yeah.

Narrator: it will take Considerable time

For the raw data To be fully processed,

So for now, the team's initial Interpretation of the data

Is all there is to go on.

Well, this is just raw data. It's not processed yet.

We can't tell what it is, But typically,

Right angles Don't exist in nature,

So this kind of leads You to believe

That there may be Something man-made under there.

I think it definitely Gives enough to say,

"Hey, let's investigate Further.

Let's start digging up. Let's see what this is."

Narrator: skeptics, however,

Are concerned That andrew jones and his team

Are simply finding What they're looking for.

There's a phenomena Called pareidolia,

And really it means That you kind of see

What you want to see,

And if you've invested a lot Of your personal identity

Into a faith That has an idea such as,

"The earth is 6,000 years old. There was a global flood,"

It makes sense that people Who are out looking to prove

This are going to start Finding evidence

That other people aren't seeing

And that doesn't hold up To the science.

Historically, throughout The history of archeology

Or the history of history,

When people want To find something,

They often mistake what They've found for the thing

They wanted to find.

Narrator: all in all, skeptics Doubt there's any chance

That the story of noah's ark Is the literal truth.

*

The geological evidence From the durupinar site,

Along with the similarity of Ancient mesopotamian flood myths

And the logistical challenges Of building an ark

And populating it With the world's largest zoo

Leads skeptics to propose Other explanations.

Most likely, perhaps, The story of noah's ark

Derives from a catastrophic Regional flood in mesopotamia,

Or elsewhere in the middle east, Thousands of years ago,

Which was vividly Remembered in myth

And then passed down To biblical times.

One of the important Things to remember

With all of these myths Is that,

No matter how old they are, Underlying them,

There could be Some element of truth.

In genesis, it says That he should take

One pair of every animal,

Now that's not even Remotely feasible,

But that doesn't mean that there May not have been some story

That went down in myth That people remembered

About some person Or group of people

Saving some local animals from A particularly disastrous flood.

And I suppose that some guy Living on a farm

In the remote part

Of wherever it happened To be at the time, mesopotamia,

Could've been a huge flood To him and his neighbors.

They probably never ventured More than 20 miles away

In the whole of their lifetime,

So that was the world to them.

*

Narrator: andrew jones, however, Continues to search for proof

That the biblical story of Noah's ark is the literal truth.

He remains hopeful that If he can get permission

To excavate the durupinar site, In the years to come,

He'll be able to find Sufficient proof

To convince Even the most staunch skeptics

That this unusual boat shape Really is noah's ark.

Ultimately, we hope to find A ship buried below the ground.

This would include rooms,

Floors that would match The biblical account.

The bible talks it having three Decks and rooms for the animals,

And so, that's what we hope To find below the ground there.

Narrator: whatever the truth May ultimately be,

Andrew jones' quest To find definitive proof

For the existence Of noah's ark,

The smoking gun that could prove The bible is literally true,

Will undoubtedly Long continue.

*