Hi, it’s Katrina.
[music] Is Noah’s Ark buried in Turkey?
For the first time, someone has drilled into it to [music] find out.
A robot went underground, came back with layers of organic material, [music] and the team behind it thinks it could be the decayed upper decks [music] of the ark itself.
Now, we were all waiting on the lab results, [music] but this site has a strange history.
Fake relics, a self-proclaimed ark hunter, and a Scotsman who went looking for Noah’s Ark and was never seen again.
Let’s get into it.
New tests on Noah’s Ark.
Soil samples collected from what mainstream scientists say is nothing but a coincidentally boatshaped geological formation may have just proven the story of Noah’s Ark.
In eastern Turkey, a team of scientists is currently hard at work trying to prove that Noah’s Ark is real.
The proof they’ve already come up with is changing everything.
This is a huge investigation with implications that could change the way society views both Christianity and its holiest book.
Just this year, scientists carried out ground penetrating radar analysis of the legendary Durupanar Formation.
In doing so, they uncovered some underground anomalies, which got people really excited.
The leader of that study, Andrew Jones, is the deputy head of the Noah’s Ark Research Project.
[music] Andrew said their radar scans revealed angular formations that are too perfect to be natural.
The scan showed what appear to be tunnels, layered structures, and some voids.
Those voids are believed to be chambers, possibly those used by Noah to cage the animals he saved from the biblical flood.
Some of the voids are surprisingly shallow, only located around 9 ft below the surface of the formation.
Others are extremely deep, extending to depths of around 40 ft.
Obviously, when you find voids inside the structure that’s supposed to be the remnants of a biblical ark, the next step is [music] digging, which is exactly why Andrew and the team conducted the very first core drilling campaign at the Duropinar Formation in September.
Their drilling reached a depth of around 60 ft at one location and depths of between 15 and 25 ft in a few other locations.
More than 300 core samples were collected during this fieldwork.
They were then delivered to laboratories at Turkeykey’s Anar University where they will be analyzed.
But unfortunately, the analysis hasn’t come back yet.
If the results are anything like the soil study from 2024, the world is in for a big surprise.
Two years ago, scientists took soil samples from the Durup Pinar Formation and were shocked by what the lab said.
The soil contained much higher levels of organic material than all the dirt in the surrounding hillside.
The soil within the boatshaped formation contains three times more organic matter than the same soil outside of that formation.
It’s a result so compelling that it’s hard to argue against the implications.
If there is that much more organic material inside the structure that was supposedly once a boat, the obvious explanation is that the matter comes from decayed wood, animal remains, and human activity.
But hold on to your socks because that doesn’t automatically prove the formation is the decayed shell of a boat.
The wood could have come from ancient structures.
The animal remains could be from a prehistoric farm.
And human activity isn’t exactly unheard of across Turkey.
After all, Gobec Leepe isn’t all that far away from the Duropinar formation.
The questions left in the air after the 2024 study are now being answered.
Andrew and the team employed a gopher drone, which is an underground robot, to collect the core samples, and so far, Andrew said they recovered layers of rich organic material, which they believe to be the decayed upper tiers of the real life ark.
They can’t prove it yet, but they have been able to potentially disprove mainstream archaeologists because throughout these drilling missions, there hasn’t been any bedrock or solid limestone identified in [music] the drill holes.
That’s a huge development because according to the scientific community, the Duropinar formation is solid rock.
Scientists say the formation is totally natural and just so happens to look like a boat, but it’s made out of limestone or bedrock and not a boat at all.
Drilling 60 feet into it and not finding any bedrock or limestone has just destroyed that explanation.
And while Andrew said they have not identified any material as ancient wood, not all the results are in yet.
Andrew expects the lab analysis back by late winter, [music] giving the team a definitive answer by spring on whether the formation contains wood.
And if it does, Andrew insists it could be the ultimate proof that this site holds the true remains of Noah’s Ark.
But I have to, for the sake of being unbiased, tell you about the other side of the coin.
Organic matter is known to accumulate naturally in soils, especially in sloped formations like this.
The 2024 study that revealed the higher concentration of organic matter isn’t as exciting as the team made it out to be.
It really could be 100% natural.
The other issue is that even if Andrew finds evidence of ancient wood inside the structure, it doesn’t prove anything about an ark.
It only establishes that humans lived here and built wooden structures which then got buried.
Seeing as humans have been building megaliths in Turkey and burying them for more than 12,000 years, the likelihood that any wood traces come from an early human settlement is extremely high.
It’s a bit of a paradox.
On one hand, wood found inside the structure could prove it really is Noah’s Ark, but on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily prove a thing.
The best case scenario for Andrew and his fellow believers is going to be if the tests find something definitive that points to a ship, which means it’s all going to depend on the results of the minology, microscopy, and organic content measurement tests, plus whatever else the lab throws at the samples, the hunt for Noah’s Ark, and the missing Scotsman.
According to the book of Genesis, torrential rains battered the earth for over seven months, drowning the planet under an inescapable global flood.
When the chaos finally settled, there was only one boat left on the face of the earth, resting high up on the slopes of Mount Ararat.
That of course was Noah’s ark.
Everyone else gone.
The story goes that God wanted a total reset to wipe out humanity and rid the world of the corrupt Nephilim once and for all.
God chose Noah and his family to survive the cataclysm and restart civilization from scratch.
Ever since antiquity, explorers, Christians, and the curious have come from around the world to Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey on a quest to find the ruins of the ark.
And here is where the vast majority of those explorers believe the ship landed.
This is the Duropinar Formation located about a dozen miles from Mount Ararat.
It doesn’t look like much, but when you look directly down on the site with a bird’s eye view, you can make out the obvious shape of an enormous ship.
Andrew Jones and the team with the Noah’s Ark Research Project are not the first ones to try and find the ark here.
Modern exploration began in the middle of the 1800s.
Locals started telling travelers and visitors that the ark was hiding in the mountain.
It didn’t take long before a wave of wealthy evangelists started flying to Turkey to search for proof of God at the site.
Ark hunting rapidly became a cottage industry.
An entire hospitality sector rose up around Mount Ararat because there were so many people going out there to try and find any evidence that they could that the ark was real.
One of those men was Donald McKenzie from Scotland.
He went in search of the holy relic and no one has seen him since 2010.
Donald was a perfectly average Scotsman from the outer hees where he ambled through most of his life.
Throughout his 20s and 30s, the town’s folk knew him as the local drunk.
He drank a lot, he worked construction, and he got into fights.
That is until one fight left him in the hospital, questioning his own existence.
After this wakeup call, Donald’s brother, Derek, persuaded him to consider letting God into his life.
Donald did consider it, and he turned his entire life around.
But he didn’t just commit himself to God.
Donald became obsessed with the story of Noah’s ark.
And thus began his trips to Turkey.
Again and again, Donald traveled to Mount Ararat, spending weeks in the local town and going up the mountain in search of anything that might prove the existence of the ark.
He would often go alone, but he always came back until [music] one day he didn’t.
In September of 2010, Donald was eager to explore a gorge he suspected might have some clues buried in the ice.
The reason for his excitement was that a few months before a scientific team from Hong Kong claimed they had uncovered a fragment of the ark.
That claim has never been verified, but it was interesting enough that Donald had to see for himself and do a little of his own digging.
Unfortunately, Donald walked straight into an early season blizzard.
In one of the last recordings he made, Donald said, “Apparently, there is much more bad weather forecast, so I’m going to head down today.”
It sounded as if he was going to abandon his mission and get back to safety, but he was never seen or heard from again.
Later, an abandoned campsite was found above 13,000 ft with a sewing kit, a pocket telescope, and a business card from Scotland.
It’s believed the campsite was where Donald spent his last night.
But what happened to him afterward?
Did he freeze to death in a blizzard?
Was he picked apart by wolves?
Or was he kidnapped by extremists?
It’s a massive mystery because if he had just succumbed to the elements, someone should have found his body, but it’s like he disappeared into thin air.
Some suspect local villagers had gotten sick of his preaching [music] since it was known that Donald had been trying to convert some of the Kurdish villagers to Christianity.
He was once [music] arrested for handing out Bibles to students at Erzeroom University.
And that has led to speculation that the police may have been involved in his disappearance as well, or at least restricted a real effort to find him.
Whatever happened to Donald, it was a tragedy.
Even if he was bugging the local villagers, he didn’t deserve to go missing.
If the ark was ever found, it would at least give Donald’s family and maybe even his spirit some closure that he had been on the right path.
But is the ark really out there?
To understand the fascination with the Durupanar formation, you need to learn about the man who made it famous, Ron Wyatt.
Pseudo archaeology and the Durupanar Formation.
The region surrounding Mount Ararat has long been thought of as the final resting place of Noah’s ark.
But the physical structure of the Durupinar formation wasn’t singled out as the precise location until 1959.
Heavy rains and a trio of earthquakes exposed the formation from the surrounding mud in 1948.
Then it was first seen from the sky by a Turkish army captain named Elan Duropinar for whom the structure was named after.
He was on a mapping mission for NATO when he looked out the window of his plane and saw what looked to him like the remnants of an enormous boat.
When he realized exactly what area he was flying over, he made the connection to Noah’s Ark.
It was only one year later that Professor Arthur Brandenburgger surveyed the site.
After 2 days of digging into the formation and setting off dynamite charges, the expedition team found nothing but dirt and rocks.
They concluded that no archaeological remains were visible at the site.
They also said that the entire formation was a freak of nature and not man-made.
And that’s an exact quote from their report.
The site then went ignored for the next 17 years until a very controversial figure came into the picture.
In 1977, pseudoarchchaeologist Ron Wyatt took a very special interest in the formation.
For the sake of full disclosure, I need to tell you a little bit about Ronald Elden Wyatt before moving on.
He claimed to discover just about every important artifact from the Bible that you can think of.
He supposedly found the exact spot where Moses crossed the Red Sea.
He claimed to have discovered the real site of the crucifixion of Jesus and even the Ark of the Covenant.
Keep in mind that Wyatt was trained as a nurse anesthetist.
He worked in a hospital in Tennessee when one day out of the blue he saw a picture of the Duropinar formation and a light bulb went off in his head.
[music] From 1977 onward he made over 100 trips to the Middle East and somehow even got permission from authorities in Jerusalem to dig shafts near the Garden Tomb.
Ron claimed that in 1981 the shafts he dug led him to a cave below the Garden Tomb where Jesus was said to have been buried.
Inside that cave, among other things, was the legendary table of showbread from the original Solomon’s temple.
It was still covered in its gold veneer.
As Ron Wyatt explored this cavern, he found a mysterious black substance that had dribbled down from the garden tomb above onto a flat stone split in two.
Ron had the overwhelming sense that the black substance was the blood of Jesus Christ himself and that it had dripped from his tomb into the ark of the covenant which was hidden underneath the cracked stone.
Using a colonoscope, Ron shown a light between the split and the rock and saw flashes of gold.
He knew that he had just found the Ark of the Covenant.
He even claimed that his little colonoscope shined its light on what looked like the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.
So obviously Ron recovered these fantastic artifacts so that the whole world could see them, right?
Obviously wrong.
Ronald said the space was too small for him to remove any of the objects or the Ark of the Covenant.
So he took some samples of the black ooze, snapped a few Polaroid pictures so blurry even a Bigfoot enthusiast wouldn’t believe them, and resealed the cave.
It’s questionable, right?
Even if you want to believe in Ron’s discovery, you have to admit it sounds a little silly.
But it gets even sillier.
Ron reported his amazing discovery to Dan Bat, an archaeologist working for the Department of Antiquities.
Ron Wyatt took Dan to the cave where he’d found the blood, stone, and ark, and asked Dan if he could see the relics.
Dan said he couldn’t see anything.
He said Wyatt had taken him to a hole in the ground where gardeners dumped their garbage.
I mean, I can only imagine how uncomfortable this must have been for Dan.
Imagine spending your whole life studying archaeology only to have an amateur bring you to a pit, point at nothing, and act like the Ark of the Covenant is there, just invisible.
In the aftermath of this unfortunate encounter, Wyatt blasted Danbot, claiming that he was trying to keep the discovery secret to preserve public order.
Why also claimed that the test results from the black substance proved it to be human blood, but not any ordinary human blood.
This stuff had 24 chromosomes instead of the usual 46.
Ron Wyatt claimed that 23 of the chromosomes came from Mary and one of the chromosomes came from God.
But to be clear, neither God nor the Virgin Mary’s DNA is on record.
So there is zero possibility of that being true.
It was around this time that Joe Zas, who used to work for the Israel Antiquities Committee, was asked to look into Ron Wyatt’s activities.
[music] Joe was approached by a small group of American pastors who were concerned that Ron was siphoning money out of community projects and misappropriating funds through his organization.
Joe then contacted Ron and asked him for a copy of the DNA report showing the 24 chromosomes.
He also asked for a sample of the blood so that he could replicate the test himself.
Ron never responded to Joe because he claimed Joe was an infidel.
After Ron Wyatt died, a full-scale excavation was conducted of the caves under the Garden Tomb.
And although artifacts were found, [music] nothing that Ron had claimed to have discovered was down there.
He is generally regarded today as a fraud.
I just wanted to give you a little bit of background before jumping into Ron’s investigation of the Durupinar Formation in 1985 so that you understand exactly who you’re dealing with.
Ron was joined by David Fold and geoysicist John Bombgardner.
Together, they used ground penetrating radar equipment and what they called a frequency generator to search for traces of the ark.
The frequency generator was set to look for iron.
But I have to tell you that the frequency generator is not an accepted piece of technology and has been compared to dowsing rods by mainstream scientists.
Expert Andrew Snelling called it a gadget that employs no scientific principles.
So make of that what you will.
Ground penetrating radar, though, that’s real technology.
The radar scan supposedly discovered a regular internal formation matching the length of Noah’s ark in the Bible.
The scan showed a structure about 538 ft long, which is roughly the 300 cubits that the Bible says the ark was.
Ron and his team claimed that they had uncovered the fossilized remains of the upper deck of the ark and that the reed substructure had decayed and was gone.
In the nearby village of Kazan, they even claimed to find the anchor stones that were once attached to the ark.
But mainstream scientists say they are nothing but regular rocks.
In the 1990s, David Fold, who had been one of the formation’s biggest supporters, changed his mind.
He did a complete 180 and published a scientific paper claiming the Durup Pinar Formation is nothing but a common geological structure.
In 1997, he made a sworn testimony in an Australian court saying that all claims that Noah’s Ark were found were absolute BS.
What happened after Noah’s Ark?
Not very many generations of people had existed before God decided to do a hard reset on humanity.
The Bible, specifically in the book of Genesis, tells us that Noah belongs to the 10th generation of the human race.
Noah was married.
He had three sons named Shem, Ham, and Jaffith.
And each of his sons had their own wife.
A lot of people say if Noah’s family had to repopulate the world, how did they do that without inbreeding?
The answer is that Noah had a wife and his sons had their own wives.
So that is four non-related breeding pairs, so to speak.
There may have been a little cousin loving, but it wasn’t just Noah and his own children like a lot of people think.
During the years that Noah spent building the ark, his father Lamech and his grandfather Methuselah were still alive.
They likely assisted Noah in the construction of the ark, which is another misconception people have.
I hear people say that there is no way Noah built an entire boat by himself.
But he would have had help.
Another part of the story that people like to argue is that Noah couldn’t have possibly gathered two of every animal given that he lived in the Middle East and didn’t have a teleportation machine.
But the Bible specifically says that God brought the animals to him.
Noah had to collect rations and get the animals into the boat, but God magically brought them to Noah.
Then there’s the biggest logistical nightmare of all.
How could one wooden boat hold every species on Earth?
Most people picture two of each animal, but biblically speaking, that’s actually a misconception.
[music] Creationists point out that for clean animals and birds, Noah had to bring seven breeding pairs.
That means 14 of each.
And since young Earth creationists believe dinosaurs lived alongside humans, you’re suddenly trying to board 14 triceratops next to the sheep.
As for the question of when this all happened, creationists say it was 4,400 years ago, which was 1,650 years after creation.
Obviously, this doesn’t fit into the known archaeological record, but creationists don’t really care about that.
Noah was 600 years old at the time.
His father lived to be 777 and his grandfather Matusela died at 969.
So let’s say all of this is true.
What happened according to the Bible after the flood was over?
How can the Bible help us find the remains of Noah’s ark?
After a short period of waiting for the flood waters to recede, God told Noah to let the animals out of their cages.
Then Noah and his family were instructed to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth.
The first thing Noah built was an altar to the Lord and he killed some animals and birds as offerings.
This was the moment that God made a covenant with Noah, promising to never ever destroy all life on earth again with a flood.
A lot of creationists don’t think the ark will ever be found because they believe that Noah and his family dismantled it after the flood to build the first new settlement on Earth.
Noah would end up living another 350 years, dying at the age of 950.
His three sons became the forefathers of all the nations of the earth.
But as for the colossal wooden ship that saved them all, the Bible pretty much goes silent, leaving its final resting place a mystery.
If we want real clues about where that vessel actually ended up, we have to look outside of Genesis entirely.
Buried in the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia, archaeologists uncovered a 3,000-year-old clay tablet known as the oldest map in the world.
And etched right onto its surface is a route that supposedly leads directly to the ark.
Noah’s Ark on a 3,000-year-old map.
According to scientists, the world’s oldest map leads directly to the location of Noah’s Ark.
That map is a 3,000-year-old Babylonian artifact that has been puzzling archaeologists for years.
The map is carved on a clay tablet which was discovered in Mesopotamia before falling into the hands of the British Museum in 1882.
Ever since it was recovered, experts have been trying to decipher what the bizarre symbols on the artifact mean.
It’s strange because the symbols look like a map, but a map to wear.
The paragraphs written in uniform on the backside of the object are the key.
Experts have now analyzed the ununiform and the symbols on the tablet and believe they are references to stories in the Bible.
They’ve said that the artifact is a secret key that shows travelers the route they must take to reach the ruins of Noah’s great ship.
The artifact is known as the Immago Mundi.
Scientists say the map depicts ancient Mesopotamia centered in the region of what is now Iraq.
The land is surrounded by a double ring labeled the Bitter River, which marks the edge of the known world for the Babylonians.
One of the key passages on the object says that those on the journey must pass through seven leagues to see something that is thick as a pariku vessel.
This is interesting because the word pariku is in reference to a giant ship, the kind you would need to survive an epic flood.
Another inscription on the object is believed to show a path along with instructions for how to reach Uratu, a powerful kingdom from the ancient world whose territory once encompassed the mountains of Ararat.
Uratu also happens to be an alternative name for Ararat Mountain, where the Bible and Babylonian legend before claimed the ship came to rest after the flood.
Only in the Babylonian version, which predates the Christian version by a lot, the boat builder is Utnap Pishtim.
A lot of people don’t know this, but the biblical story of the flood is a retelling of a much older version that first appeared in Mesopotamia.
Ununiform expert Dr.
Irving Finkele from the British Museum said the stories were the same and that the Babylonians treated the flood as a very real historical event, just like Christians do.
In the Babylonian version, the God Aah was the one who sent the flood to destroy humanity.
He did it for pretty much the same reason God did in the Bible because humans were acting foolish.
The big difference with the Babylonian version is that instead of God choosing one man to continue a refreshed human race, the god and Leil gave away a plan to Utnapishim and warn him to build a big boat.
Only through this sneaky treachery could humanity’s future be assured.
Rather than fill his boat with 14 of every animal, Udnapishim simply filled it with as many animals as he could fit, which feels a little more believable.
When the flood finally did hit, the Babylonian hero spent 6 months at sea with his family enduring endless rain.
Then, when the flood ended, their boat safely came to rest on one of the peaks of Aratu, known today as Ararat.
This mysterious map appears to tell people how they can reach the remnants of that historic boat.
No one can decipher the exact meaning of the artifact.
So, the map is currently about as useful as a paperw weight.
But given the connection between Uratu and Ararat, it’s safe to say if the ark does exist, the current drilling campaign is in the right spot.
Explore Noah’s Ark for yourself.
To prove that Noah’s Ark could have really existed, someone built a life-sized replica, and you can see it for yourself in Williamstown, Kentucky.
Known as the Ark Encounter, this massive replica was designed to demonstrate that biblical history is real history.
Its founder, Ken Ham, whose last name being the name of one of Noah’s sons, can’t possibly be a coincidence, is also the founder of the Creation Museum.
Ken Ham said he built Ark Encounter because he wants people to first encounter the Ark and then encounter God.
But whether you’re looking for God or just an experience, this thing matches the biblical description of the ark to a tea.
The Bible described the ark as 510 ft long, 51 ft high, and 85 ft wide.
And that’s the size of the recreation.
It was also seaorthy, structurally sound, and cozy enough to keep its occupants safe during a worldwide flood.
And here’s Noah playing the flute and hanging out in his cozy ark.
Recreating the ship was an engineering feat of massive proportions.
There is so much wood in this boat that if you took the planks out and stacked them end to end, they would go from Williamstown to Philadelphia.
The roof of the ark is so big that NASA could park three of its space shuttles on it, nose totail.
It’s even more impressive inside the structure.
Deck one is filled with all kinds of different animals, including dinosaurs.
Deck two has Noah’s workshop, while deck three has the living quarters.
Talking about the ark and seeing a faithful reproduction are two completely different things.
This boat is huge and could easily fit thousands of animals.
I’m not sure about all the dinosaurs, but you know, the ark encounter recreation could probably hold all the animals that Noah would have been able to round up.
If he really did build a gigantic boat to survive a flood, maybe he filled it with farm animals.
And people have been misinterpreting the Bible this entire time.
So, what do you think?
Do you believe in the story of Noah’s Ark and the biblical flood?
Have we actually found the ark?
Let me know in the comments.
And thanks for watching.
Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already, and I’ll see you next time for more ancient history and mysteries.
Bye.
