Why is science lazy and incurious! What is the ancient glacier hiding - an archaeological supersensation or a great disappointment? Humanity is in no hurry to check this.
"And the ark stopped in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat." Old Testament
… Ararat is a volcanic massif in Turkey (on the border with Armenia) - two extinct volcanoes merged with bases - Big Ararat (5165 m) and Small Ararat (3925 m).
How many years the Bible has existed, the same amount of controversy lasts about the reliability of some of the facts given in it.
It's amazing how lazy and incurious humanity is. After all, some biblical stories (about Noah, for example) are quite verifiable. Two months a year, when the ancient glaciers on the slopes of Ararat retreat a little under the soffit of the summer sun, a mysterious object appears from under the snow, resembling a huge ship outlines.
"The ark!" - some say. "Fairy tales!" - others parry. There are still others who claim that the ark, they say, was, of course, but inaccuracy crept into the translation of the Bible - in fact, Noah moored to the Urartu mountains … Meanwhile, it is enough to climb the slope of Ararat (not Everest, after all!) To stop this a verbal duel that has been going on for the second millennium.
One condition is that people whose opinion is trusted by the scientific world must take part in the expedition. Without this, disputes can continue for an eternity. After all, eyewitness testimonies exist. But all of them are not weighty enough, and sometimes they are simply questionable. We offer a concise chronology of the observation of "Noah's Ark" in this century.
… In 1916, Lieutenant Roskovitsky flew over the Turkish troops. Suddenly, on the slope of the mountain, he noticed the wreck of a ship frozen into the ice. As the pilot later reported in an interview with the California magazine New Eden Magazine, the ship was huge, the size of a city block.
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The hull was badly destroyed, but the bases of the two broken off masts and a flat bridge were clearly visible. When the news of the mysterious ship reached St. Petersburg, a decree came from there: to immediately send two engineering companies to Ararat. Roskovitsky also took part in the expedition and was able to see the ark up close. According to him, the inside of the ship consisted of hundreds of compartments. Some were simply huge, the thickness of the partitions reached 60 centimeters. It could well contain animals many times larger than an elephant.
Although the members of the expedition made careful measurements and photographs of the ark, no material evidence of Roskovitsky's words has survived. Samples and documents were sent to St. Petersburg together with special couriers … When the couriers reached the city on the Neva, there was already a revolution blazing.
It is clear that atheist Marxists did not need such material evidence. According to some reports, the sensational materials allegedly got to Leon Trotsky, who destroyed the documents, and ordered the couriers (white officers!) To be shot for counter-revolution.
How reliable this story, as you understand, is difficult to judge. There is also the story of a certain George Hagopian, wandering from newspaper to newspaper.
… In 1905, when George Hagopian was 10 years old, he climbed with his grandfather to Mount Ararat and saw there the hull of a ship protruding from the snow. "This is a holy place," said the grandfather, "don't be afraid, people and animals have long since left it."
“When we returned to the village at the foot of the mountain,” George recalled, “I boasted to the boys that I had seen the ark. But they weren't surprised. It turned out that they had already seen him before me …"
An interesting fact: the scientists tested George on a lie detector. The car showed that the eyewitness was not lying. An expedition to Ararat was even planned, but did not take place …
… In 1955, the Frenchman Fernand Navarra removed a petrified fragment of a log from a stone crevice on the slope of Ararat. Preliminary analysis showed the age of the find - 3000 years …
Newspapers immediately trumpeted this sensation around the world. But detailed studies have made an amendment to the age of the tree - about one and a half thousand years. Messages about this appeared in the newspapers in a smaller font …
… In 1960, the captain of Gre-mountains, Schwinghammer (pilot of the 428th tactical flight unit based in Aden) flew over Ararat and also saw the ark. The Turkish military immediately organized an expedition. The search was crowned with success. The hull of the ship was almost completely hidden under the ice. Access to it was cleared with dynamite. The soldiers penetrated the gap, but found nothing inside - only mountains of rotting wood …
But again there is no evidence - allegedly because the Turkish authorities classified these materials, hiding the truth about the Christian shrine. In 1984, a certain Ron Vyat reached Ararat, found the ark and chipped off several kilograms of petrified wood from the side. The relic was smuggled to New York, where it was put on public display …
But, as far as we know, no expert examination was carried out at that time. What do researchers have at their disposal today?
Interesting data can be found about Noah's Ark on the Internet (at users.aol.com/mkneisler/noah/naphoto.htm). It contains the correspondence of supporters of the existence of the relic with the American ^ Congress, the US Department of Defense and even the Central Intelligence Agency. Enthusiasts logically assumed that spy satellites should certainly detect an object on the slope of Ararat - a sizeable one, with a "city block", according to an eyewitness …
The military and special services initially got off with polite replies. But when they were reminded of America's strictly enforced freedom of information law, they opened the secret "bins" a little and were given really sensational photographic material.
… Back in 1949, a US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft returning to the Turkish airbase after flying over the territory of the USSR photographed an anomalous object on Mount Ararat, resembling the imprint of the bottom of a huge ship. The same strange print was photographed in 1987 by the Turkish Air Force. The “ship” is located on the edge of the glacier covering the top of Ararat, at an altitude of about 4000 meters above sea level. The official conclusion of military experts is “possibly snow caked into a dense mass” …
The enthusiastic researchers asked the military for satellite photographs, in which, as a rule, even the smallest details can be seen. But glasnost has its limits even in America. The polite "not possible" followed again.
A little later, the Washington Post newspaper (November 1997) cited, however, testimonies of CIA officers (without naming names) who allegedly saw with their own eyes pictures of the ark taken by a reconnaissance satellite. Even the ship's hull and three large curved beams are clearly visible in the photo, they said.
So does the ark exist? Alas, words are not proof, but a strange print on a photograph can really be anything, including a "snowdrift", as American experts said.
“I have a very negative attitude to rumors about Noah's Ark,” said Kirill Alekseevich Sergeev, the scientific secretary of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences. “And not at all because I don’t believe in biblical legends or deny the possibility of sensational discoveries (such discoveries are not uncommon in our area, they happen about once a year). It's just that all this talk comes from amateurs in archeology. Professionals, as far as I know, have never been engaged in searches”…
Everything is correct. And then it's time to return to the beginning of the conversation - how lazy and not curious we are, "professionals"! It is reliably known that there is "something" on the slope of Ararat, there are exact coordinates of the anomaly. You just have to go and check. But … You can still understand Muslim Turkey - why should they worry about an Orthodox shrine?
But why is our church asleep? Or is he also afraid of something? And the learned world?
Are theoretical disputes more important and more interesting than the potential find that awaits humanity on the slope of the legendary mountain?