The riddle of Noah's Ark has attracted not only theologians, but also scientists for many years. And among those, and among others, there are enough people who dream of proving that the Ship, thanks to which mankind was saved from the Great Flood, is not a myth. Until now, the researchers of the topic assumed that the Ark should be sought on Mount Ararat, to which, according to the Bible, he stuck. However, none of the expeditions even 50 percent confirmed the existence of the Ark, despite the fact that many of its alleged fragments were found, as well as the outline of the ship itself on Mount Ararat. Therefore, hypotheses about its location continue to appear.
In the Chechen Republic, the local searcher Marat Makazho took up the topic of the Ark after he found strange fossils on the mountain Sadoi-Lam of the republic.
- While walking, I noticed layers of rock protruding from the mountain, similar in texture to logs, - he recalls. - The stones adhered to each other evenly and tightly, like beams in a ship. In the stones themselves, I did not find any admixtures of local clay, they looked like man-made ones.
Marat Makajo claims that these fossils were once the logs of the Ark.
The size of the fossils, as well as a quadcopter survey, which made it possible to see that the mountain has the outline of a large ship, prompted Marat to think that it might not be just a ship.
- The dimensions of the hill are quite suitable for the dimensions of the Ark described in the Scriptures, - says Marat. - I began to question the elders who live near Mount Sadoi-Lam. And they said that during the construction of the mosque almost 100 years ago, two giant wooden beams were found on a high plateau. According to them, the tree came from nowhere. The beams were so large that no one could lift them - they dragged them with difficulty, and now our mosque stands on them. Other residents with whom I spoke, recall many strange and even mystical stories associated with the mountain.
However, Marat has not yet been able to convince archaeologists to begin excavations:
- They shrug their shoulders and do not believe in the very possibility of finding the mythical, in their words, Ark.
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Hope was given to Marat by the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society, which plans to go to Chechnya and study the fossils in more detail. In the meantime, the "discoverer" of the Ark conducts excavations himself with the help of his associates and is trying to attract experts to the topic by publishing videos of his observations on the Internet. We asked Professor, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences and Chief Researcher of the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Trifonov to look at one of these records.
“It looks more like limestone deposits, which have their own special origin in the Caucasus,” he commented. - These structures were formed on the bottom of the Tethys Ocean, which existed on the site of the North Caucasus millions of years ago. Such artifacts are rarely so high, but due to the movement of tectonic plates, this is quite possible and most likely. Visually, it may resemble a tree, but due to the influence of the environment, it can weatherate and take on an amazing shape.
As far as I know, there have been several such cases. They all have a distinctive feature: people see something visually similar to the remains of an ancient ship. The two most striking cases were recorded in Turkey, directly at the foot of and not far from Mount Ararat. In one case, these were sediments formed relatively recently. They acquired their shape as a result of external influences, that is, washout and weathering. However, their structure was too strikingly different from petrified wood, which most often quartz (partially converted into quartz - Ed.), And almost never remains soft, like the same limestone. In the second case, the structure was solid, these were quite old rocks that even aroused the interest of scientists. A group of geophysicists from Japan studied this formation and set up experiments,however, she could not provide solid evidence.
How many times has the Ark been found?
Attempts to find the Ark have been made since about the 4th century AD. According to the biblical legend, he had to stop on the slope of Mount Ararat. There are several other areas that are considered its potential location. One of the main places, in the opinion of the seekers, is the so-called Ararat anomaly - the "outlines of the ship" protruding from the snow on the northwestern slope of Ararat. Scientists explain its formation by natural causes, however, on-site research is difficult, since the area is a military closed zone in the area of the Armenian-Turkish border.
The alleged remains of Noah's ark near Mount Ararat in Turkey.
1. One of those who "found" the Ark was the Russian military pilot Vladimir Roskovitsky, who during the First World War, flying over Mount Ararat, saw what he called "a large ship lying down." The pilot wrote a report about what he saw, and in 1917 Russia allegedly even sent an expedition there, which took several photographs of the Ark, but during the revolution the report on the expedition disappeared. Later, other pilots, in particular the Turk Durupinar in 1957, took photographs of a strange contour, similar to a ship, near Mount Ararat. The photograph of Durupinar even got into the Life magazine and became the reason for the next expeditions, each of which announced the discovery of the Ark.
The Turk Durupinar in 1957 made a photograph from an airplane of a strange contour, similar to a ship, near Mount Ararat.
2. In 1955, the French explorer Fernand Navarra brought from Ararat the remains of a board that, according to him, was broken off from the wooden frame of the Ark. Some of the studies have partially confirmed the tree is 5,000 years old, but these findings have been highly subjective.
3. A joint Turkish-Hong Kong expedition to Mount Ararat in 2010 made a statement that they found Noah's Ark at an altitude of 4000 meters frozen into a glacier and even penetrated some rooms inside the Ark, taking video and photographs. However, there is a version that all these footage were edited to create a worldwide sensation. Professional archaeologists do not take the claims of the Ark seekers seriously, considering all their discoveries to be a figment of the imagination.
VITALY KLIMOV, ANDREY ZOBOV
