In the mountains of eastern Turkey lies an unusual boatshaped geological formation.
For decades, some have wondered whether it could have a connection to one of the most famous stories ever recorded.
Is its unusual shape merely the product of geology?
Or could something unexpected lie beneath the earth?
Before considering those questions, we have to travel backward to the ancient account that made such a question possible.
Thousands of years before this formation became the subject of modern investigation, an ancient account told of a vessel built for a catastrophe unlike any other.
The story is recorded in the book of Genesis.
It begins with a man named Noah.
Piece by piece, the enormous [music] vessel began to take shape.
[groaning] [screaming] Heavy timbers were raised with ropes and animal power, then carefully fitted into the growing frame.
The work would have required patience, strength, and years of construction before the ark was finally complete.
As the animals entered, the enormous vessel became their shelter.
Genesis tells us that the ark was divided into rooms and built with lower, second, and third decks.
Food was gathered for Noah’s family and for the creatures that would remain with them.
The Bible gives us the ark’s dimensions and describes its multiple levels, but not the exact arrangement inside.
What we see here is a reconstruction of how such an enormous wooden vessel might have been organized.
But where could so much water have come from?
Genesis describes not only rain, but says that the fountains of the great deep burst open.
One proposed explanation known as the hydroplate theory looks beneath the surface of the Earth for an answer.
In this model, enormous quantities of pressurized water were trapped beneath sections of the Earth’s crust.
As pressure increased, the crust fractured and lifted.
Water then escaped violently through these enormous cracks, providing a possible physical interpretation of the biblical description of the fountains of the Great Deep breaking open.
The hydroplane theory proposes that immense pressure beneath the Earth’s crust eventually caused it to fracture.
Water trapped below surged upward through the widening cracks while sections of crust were lifted and forced apart.
As the water escaped, the theory proposed that it also reduced friction beneath the fractured crust, allowing enormous sections to move rapidly away from the rising regions.
Above them, flood waters spread across a surface, undergoing extraordinary change.
In the hydroplate theory, the flood was far more than rising water.
It was a catastrophe involving the crust of the earth itself.
Fracturing, enormous releases of underground water, rapid movement, and tremendous geological upheaval.
It offers one proposed explanation for how a global catastrophe described in Janastes might have reshaped the planet.
But it isn’t the only model.
Another theory begins with a different question.
What if the continents themselves once fit together and then rapidly moved apart?
The second theory also begins beneath the Earth’s surface.
The continents are not giant islands floating freely across the planet.
They are carried as parts of enormous tectonic plates.
In this catastrophic interpretation, stresses within the earth begin moving those plates with extraordinary speed.
The crust stretches, fractures, and tears open.
Molten rock rises into the widening breaks as ocean water pours into fractures containing lava.
And as columns of water and steam high into the atmosphere, and this is only the beginning.
As the fractures spread, and the plates continue to move, the disturbance of the oceans would become far greater.
As the plates moved, this would have caused enormous earthquakes.
Beneath the oceans, the shifting seafloor could violently displace tremendous volumes of water, generating repeated tsunamis.
Along the spreading fractures, seawater meeting intensely heated rock could erupt into enormous clouds of steam.
In this proposed scenario, the moving crust would turn the oceans themselves into part of the catastrophe.
Meanwhile, inside the ark, every movement of the sea would have been felt.
The great vessel rose and fell as the storm raged outside.
Animals shifted and braced themselves while Noah and his family cared for them.
[screaming] Surrounded by the sound of wind, water, and groaning timber, they could do little but endure and wait.
Then, after the violence of the flood, the Bible describes a remarkable change.
Genesis says, “God remembered Noah and that he caused a wind to pass over the earth.
The rain was restrained and the waters began to recede.
The ark continued upon the waters as they steadily decreased, and eventually Genesis tells us it would come to rest upon the mountains of Ararav.
Could this be where the ancient story meets the modern world?
In 1948, reports tell of heavy rains and earthquakes disturbing this remote mountain side in eastern Turkey.
As earth and mud shifted, an unusual formation became more visible.
11 years later, Turk Army Captain Ilhan Durupunar was examining aerial mapping photographs of the region when one shape caught his attention.
It looked remarkably like a ship.
A closer photograph made the formation even more intriguing.
From end to end, it measured approximately 515 ft, 157 m.
Its resemblance to a massive vessel was difficult to ignore, but resemblance was not evidence.
In 1960, investigators traveled to the site to answer a much more important question.
What was actually beneath it?
The 1960 expedition concluded that the formation was natural.
For years, the site faded from attention.
Then 17 years later, an American named Ron Wid traveled to eastern Turkey with his two teenage sons.
The formation that investigators had left behind in 1960 was about to be examined again.
Wyatt documented the formation and several massive stones pierced with large openings.
Some bore carved markings.
He believed they might resemble ancient drowage stones, heavy anchors once suspended from ships.
But the stones alone could not prove what lay beneath the formation.
Then in late 1978, an earthquake struck eastern Turkey.
When Wyatt returned the following year, cracking in the formation allowed him to collect material from inside and compare it with surrounding soil.
Laboratory tests reportedly found more organic carbon in the interior sample.
Wyatt believed this could indicate material that had once been organic, but the results did not establish that it was wood or that the formation was a ship.
Wyatt next turned to metal detection.
He reported repeated readings at locations across the formation with some appearing to follow regular lines.
He interpreted the pattern as possible evidence of metal associated with an ancient structure, but detecting metal in the ground could not determine what the objects were or establish that they belong to a ship.
The investigation then moved beneath the surface.
Radar surveys reportedly detected unusual reflections within the formation, some appearing to form regular patterns.
Investigators who believed the site contained the ark interpreted these as possible structural features.
But radar does not photograph what lies underground.
It records changes in the material below.
And those signals can have more than one eglalination.
The drilling left the investigators divided.
Wyatt remained convinced while others concluded the formation was geological.
Decades passed, but the controversy never completely disappeared.
As surveying technology improved, researchers returned to Durupun.
This time using drones, three-dimensional mapping, and newer geoysical methods to examine the formation in greater detail.
The new surveys revealed something the shape alone could not show.
Beneath the surface, researchers reported long linear features, unusual layers, and angular patterns extending through parts of the formation.
They did not prove that a ship was buried here, but they raised a tantalizing possibility.
Was this formation more than geology?
The scans had revealed anomalies.
Now, investigators wanted physical evidence.
Using the survey data to guide them, they began drilling into the formation.
Deep beneath the surface, the core barrel passed through layers that had remained buried for centuries.
Then the samples began coming up, giving researchers their first direct look [music] at what was actually beneath the ground.
At another location, the team reported hitting something unexpectedly hard in the formation.
So hard, it broke the drill.
Investigators raised an extraordinary possibility.
Could they have hit mineralized wood?
Samples are now undergoing laboratory testing and more on-site tests are being done.
At the time this documentary was made, these results had not yet been released.
