World of the Bible News Update on Chinese/Turkish Mt. Ararat Expedition Find

 In 2003 a Hong Kong exploration team was sponsored by Noah’s Ark Ministries International (NAMI), an organization of researchers, scientists, and biblical scholars who “seek the truth of the Ark from a faith-based yet objective, scientific perspective.”[1] The team was comprised of Andrew Yuen Man-Fai, founder and General Secretary of Media Evangelism for NAMI, and Pastor Boaz Li went to the area of Mt. Ararat in order to become familiar with the mountain and to research local traditions about the Ark. The next year the team planned to return to film and American expedition that had announced its ascent of the mountain in search of the Ark. However, the American team was denied a permit while the Hong Kong team was granted a permit. As a result, the Hong Kong team decided to conduct its own expedition. Based on a local story that the Ark had been broken into three parts by the earthquake of 1840 and that these parts resided at known sites, the team followed a well-known Dogubeyazit mountaineer and guide Ahmet Ertugrul, known popularly as Parasüt (pronounced: Parachute) to the southwestern slope where he had discovered a cave at an altitude of 12,600 feet (4,200 meters). Although they could not enter it at the time, the group filmed the expedition and upon returning to Hong Kong, turned into a full-length documentary called “The Days of Noah.”

In August of 2006 Parasüt contacted the Hong Kong team and told them he had located a cave in another area where remains of the Ark were rumored to exist on the northwest slope at a height of 12,000 feet (4,000 meters). In a wall of the cave Parasüt told the team he had discovered what he suspected was a layer of “wooden material.” Extracting some samples from the wall of the cave, he sent a small sample to the Hong Kong team to have analyzed. The larger sample remained in a secure place in Dogubeyazit. In September, two orthogonal thin sections cut from the small sample were studied at the Applied Geoscience Centre at the University of Hong Kong and determined to be a type of petrified wood in which minerals (Feldspar and Hornblende) had replaced the original wood.[2] As a result of this successful petrographic analysis, the team made plans to return to Mt. Ararat the following year to further explore the cave with a film crew to document the expedition.

In August 2007, the group succeeded in reaching the cave entrance, which they found to be only a narrow opening between large lichen-covered boulders. One intriguing feature at this entrance was the presence of a Byzantine-period cross etched into one of the boulders. Such crosses on Mt. Ararat have been thought to serve as markers, either of a particular trail or of a specific site. Inside the cave the team discovered one side of the cave’s wall covered by volcanic ash, which when removed, revealed a whitish layer (they referred to it as a “structure”) 34.5 feet (11.5 meters) long by 7.8 feet (2.6 meters) high resembling the samples they had been retrieved by Parasüt.

Following this expedition the Hong Kong team held an International Press Conference January 16, 2008 in Dogubeyazit. I was invited to this conference as a member of a U.S. geologic team (Dr. Don Patton and David Mcqueen) who was given private access to the larger and smaller samples of the “wooden” material for independent analysis. The conference, hosted jointly by the city governorship of Dogubeyazit and NAMI, included some 200 local dignitaries, scientists, and international press and Ark researchers. A panel included City Governor Mr. Cemalettin Demiricioglu, Director of Culture and Tourism Ministry Mr. E. Muhsin Bulut, Parasüt, NAMI General Secretary Andrew Yuen, documentary film producer Yeung Wing-Cheung, and Turkish academics Professor Oktay Belli, Dr. Selim Pullu, and Dr. Ahmet Ozbek. After a two-hour presentation of the results of the expedition and analysis of the “wooden” sample, the audience was invited to view the samples and ask questions of the panel.

While the Hong Kong team properly stated in its publication of the expedition that “certainly, the NAMI discovery can in no way be proclaimed as a piece from Noah’s Ark,” it nevertheless concluded that “as a faith-based organization, the NAMI believes that, with the evidences and their scientific interpretation, the wood discovered on Mt. Ararat is very likely to be a relic of Noah’s Ark.”[3] Furthermore, the fact that the wood was covered by a layer of volcanic ash suggest a burial by volcanic activity, perhaps as a result of the earthquake of 1840 that it is believed split the Ark into three separate pieces.  

The Hong Kong team believes that the most important source for their research, which they have followed in their expeditions, are the oral traditions preserved by the local inhabitants of the region as interpreted by Parasüt and his own investigation of the three sites for Ark remains. Such a source is subject to suspicion due to the various motives of those who control the information. However, if it is repeatedly successful in getting an expedition on the mountain to examine these proposed sites it can only be lauded as part of a worthy endeavor. To their credit the Hong Kong team has attempted to properly document their expeditions, include Turkish authorities and academic experts, make available to the scientific community the results of their work and analysis, and publicize their finds to the international community.

Evaluation of the Hong Kong Team’s Discovery

 The interpretation of the discovery in the cave wall as a “wooden structure” that is “likely to be a relic of Noah’s Ark” presents some concerns. First, the fact that the “wooden structure” was covered by volcanic ash, should indicate it is a volcanic layer rather than anomalous “structure.” Since no drilling was done into the layer in order to measure its depth, it is unclear whether it an independent object that has been buried or a part of the original formation itself. It is a concern that in the published color photos of the “wooden structure” in the cave interior and the small sample that they appear in a reddish-brown to gray hue when in fact they are yellow-white. In these photos the appearance seems to be that of wood, something not so evident in personal examination. 

Despite the verdict of Hong Kong University’s Department of Earth Sciences that the small sample taken from the cave is a mineralized-replacement form of petrified wood, the geological team from the U.S. (of which I was part) and studied both the smaller and larger samples in Dogubeyazit, came to a different conclusion. The samples were indeed unusual with their combination of sharp angles and wispy strands that had the appearance of taffy-pull. While the sample clearly contained Feldspar (no Hornblende was observable) and in part had the texture of wood (but more like carbonized, not petrified wood), under 20X magnification the strands appeared to opalize, indicating they were also Feldspar. While it is conceivable that these minerals could replace wood, it is a far more natural interpretation to identify the sample as simply "volcanic tuff" (this is the conclusion of Steve Austin and John Baumgartner of ICR upon viewing macro pictures of the material) . (More below the pictures)