Biblical Archaeology From the Ground Down: The Search for Noah's Ark: Trip to Mount Ararat

Welcome to our episode of Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, presented by Bible Interact and hosted by Dr. George Sparks. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of the Bible from leading experts in the field of archaeology. Well, welcome again. My name is Dr. George Sparks, and this is Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact. Today we have Dr. Gray's PhD. He received his PhD from the University of Alberdeen. Also, he has over 30 years of experience in the Middle East in archaeology and also in biblical events. And we have with us today, because we're going to talk about the exploration and his excursion on Mount Ararat. So I don't know, should we call this In Search of Noah's Ark? What do you think, doctor? Sure, we can call it In Search of Noah's Ark if you'd like. So, you know, I'm going to be honest with the people out there. Before we go on a program, we kind of rehearse things a little bit. What we're going to talk about, I read your book, and then I take my notes. So there's going to be an order to the interview. But this is going to be actually, we haven't done anything. This is really ready, set, go. He briefly mentioned about his excursion, exploration, if you will, on Mount Ararat. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've got to do this. So he agreed to. I'm glad to have him. And he's going to unload some cool material for us, because I want to know about Mount Ararat. I want to know if they found Noah's Ark or just a plank. But let's find out together. Thank you, doctor. Good. I'm going to be with you, George. Yeah, this is a little bit impromptu, which is fine. My adventures of this go back to probably the British Museum when I began to look at the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atrahasis Epic and analyzing the flood stories and comparing it with the biblical stories. My first journey, because, you know, life gets in the way after you do your degrees. And I wasn't able to travel, couldn't afford to travel. But my first trip that I took was to Egypt with an archaeological group from the Associates for Biblical Research. And on that excavation or tour that we did, I ran into a gentleman by the name of Rex Geisler, who was doing Mount Ararat research. And we became good friends and hit it off. So he says, you know, I'm trying to get a permit. We talked about permits, I think, in the last podcast. I'm trying to get a permit so that I can climb Mount Ararat. And we need to do a ground penetrating radar of the ice cap of Mount Ararat because some have claimed that they have eyewitness accounts of Noah's Ark being found on top of Mount Ararat. And I said, yeah, well, that'd be great. I'd be in for that. And so because of my scientific background as an IT director, and I went for training in the United States for ground penetrating radar to be able to do that. So we hooked up, connected, and I had the opportunity to begin working with the Associates, or not the Associates for Biblical Research, I was already on their board, but with our organization, Ark Imaging, Archaeological Imaging Research Consortium. And this organization was dealing with the two controversial issues, the date of the flood, and whether it was on local or universal, and those are being debated. That really didn't enter into our research at all. We were interested in finding out, is there anything still remaining on the ice cap of Mount Ararat? So I began physically training, going to a gym, hired a trainer, began to collect some of my equipment that I would need, the crampons and the heavy equipment you'd need for the environment on top of Mount Ararat. And so in 2006, I was the director of operations for Ark Imaging with our president, Rex Geisler. It's the same organization that had Neil Armstrong involved. His wife still is involved, Mrs. Armstrong. And so Rex and I traveled to Turkey. We drove across the country and we ended up at Mount Ararat. And we received permit from the local governor and the local governor said that we could hike up into the Hora Gorge region. Now in 2005, there was a symposium that was conducted, housed by Ed Davis, a study meeting convened in the United States, and a number of Noah's Ark researchers had convened there. I wasn't able to be present, but we had Ed Hollerud, we had Rex Geisler, our president, we had Bill Kraus, Alfred Lee, Bob Striplich, and Bob Cornuke. We might also know of Bob Cornuke, he's a bit of a pseudo-archaeologist. And we had the astronauts, James Irwin's wife, Mary Irwin. The meeting that we had in 2005 with Bob Cornuke was host, discussed a number of the Noah's Ark researchers attending, all of our research and what had been found. James Irwin had been involved in Noah's Ark research with John McIntosh back for many, many years. And so after he landed on the moon, we have photographs of him showing some of the moon rocks to the military commanders in Turkey. And of course, he climbed and actually in 1982, Jim Irwin was hurt, seriously hurt on top of a mountain, had to be airlifted off of the mountain from his work. In 2007, I worked at a conference, the ETS conference in the United States, and was able to have lunch with Alfred Lee and John McIntosh. Alfred Lee has a famous painting of Noah's Ark with Rex and myself at this meeting. And we discussed what our proposals were going to be for traveling to Mount Ararat. So we traveled to Turkey. We visited the Darupinar site. The Darupinar site is a geological formation at the base of Mount Ararat that some Ron Wyatt believes is Noah's Ark, but it's not. We took some samples there and every year we go back and look at it. It was a different formation as the soil around it erodes and disappears. So it's a geological formation. It's not Noah's Ark, in my opinion. Although they did, you know, the Turkish government did create a visitor's center called Noah's Ark National Park because it's good for tourism at that location. Ron Wyatt's claims are not valid. That's not Noah's Ark, in my opinion. Bob Cornuke says it's at Mount Suleiman in Iran, and he's published on that in his books called Ark Fever, aptly, I think, aptly named. And so in 2006, he reached the object he believed that Ed Davis had saw in 1943. He found wood at the summit, which may be from a shrine, he said, and the wood has been dated to about 500 years old. What he's actually looking at is petrified, a type of stone that is very common at that location. It looks like wood, but it's not. It's stone. Kevin Pickering, a geologist at University College London who specializes in sedimentary rock, doesn't think that the ark-like rocks are petrified wood, a natural formation. And Cornuke is not an archaeologist. He's a retired police officer. He refused to work together with other archaeological authorities to legally conduct research. So he's not a professional field archaeologist. The samples that he collected were not collected in a scientific manner as well. And he doesn't produce any scientific or archaeological evidence or reports. And when asked about questions, he retreats from the question. So I have some problems with that. Now, the Chinese had also formed an investigative international symposium called NAMI, Noah's Ark Ministry International. And they reported to have found and filmed the inside of the ark. I remember that. This has been proven to be a fraud, proven to be a fraud. So Baba Parachute, or Ahmet Etigrul, he was the fraudster involved in all of this, a Turkish guide. He was involved with this. And then a number of Chinese individuals went to the site, including Don Patton, who I know and was involved with, and Randall Price, who I know and worked at Liberty University. And this was the U.S. geological team. And so there was filmmakers, and there were ark hunters, and there were fundraisers, Chinese. And then David McQueen, a geologist, were all involved in this search. And so they staged it. They actually created a cave. The pictures were taken, were not Mount Ararat. They staged it. It was a theatrical production that they did. And Randall Price says, I was the archaeologist with the Chinese expedition in the summer of 2008, was given photographs of what they now are reporting to be the inside of the ark. He says, I've got the photographs of the inside of the so-called ark. There's cobwebs in the corners, something that would be not possible in those conditions. The Kurdish partner in Duguz Bayazat, this is the village at the foot of Mount Ararat, has all of the facts about the location, the men who planted the wood, and even the truck that transported it. He says, to his knowledge, the Chinese took no professional archaeologists or geologists who could verify or document the wood or the structure in situ or in its location. It's a hot spring where it was filmed in a little cave, about 50 kilometers away from Mount Ararat. So the analysis of that is not evidence of Mount Ararat. It was a scam. It was a scam. It was a scam for fundraising. Now, my role in this was that we were supposed to climb Mount Ararat and we were supposed to do GPR, ground penetrating radar, using a machine that I was trained in to do this research on Mount Ararat. So we got in touch with Atatürk University in 2006. We met with the archaeological department and the president. We signed an agreement to work with them. I have the photographs of all those, that we would work in conjunction with the Atatürk University archaeological department of that university and we would do the scientific survey of the top of Mount Ararat. So in preparation for that, in 2006, we got permission to climb in the Ahura Gorge, which was the Armenian side, the gorge on the Armenian side of Mount Ararat, and did a survey looking for pottery and any scientific evidence of civilizations that may have been in that region from the Hittites period. So that's what we did. So we were supposed to climb and do the western plateau. Abik 1 and Abik 2 had already been surveyed and the Ararat anomaly is close nearby to the western plateau on the summit. So in preparations for this, we were trying to get permits and we traveled and hiked. So we checked in to the military fortification or military complex on the one side of Mount Ararat. We'd received permission from the governor of the village. He said, sure, you can climb around that. You just have to check in at the military base, drop off a newspaper and something else. I forget now what it was, something else. We had to drop off some food or something on our way. And then we had to check in with the military complex on the other side when we left. So off we go and Rex and I and our guide began to climb. The climbing was pretty hard because it's a high altitude. Now Rex comes from Denver, so he's used to the high altitudes. I come from sea level, so it was a bit of a challenge for me. But off we go and we have our digital cameras. I think we had three or four cameras and we're taking pictures all day long. And we get to the other side after we had an amazing day. We were able to look through the binoculars. They had these huge military binoculars on a stand that you could survey the entire mountain. I don't know if people are familiar, but there's a dispute between Armenia and Turkey over the mountain area and the KKP or they're fighting them or had been fighting them for many, many years. So it was a relatively dangerous area to be in. But I was able to look through these binoculars that they use for spying on the area and I couldn't see any Noah's Ark. So we were not able to visibly see it with our high powered binoculars from the ground, but we still needed to do our research on top of the mountain and probably the year or two later. So we get to the military station on the other side and they say, you're not supposed to be climbing in that area today. And the gentleman who gave you permission was not the commander. He was apparently getting groceries or something. And the other guy that gave us permission wasn't in command and didn't have the authority to do that. So they detained us and took our cameras and took our film and all of that kind of thing. And we're standing there looking at the commander. Here we have our guide that was working with us that day. He's talking to the commander that was in charge. In Turkish, you know, they're going back and forth, they're laughing and they're joking. Well, come to find out, he had gone to military school with his commander, our guide had, and they were good friends. And they were the same class. And so we were able to get out of there and we got a pizza for supper and he gave our cameras back to us. They deleted some of our pictures, but we were able to get out of jail free card because of the relationship between our guide. So that's my story of Noah's Ark. Now, I never climbed Noah's Ark because I had a heart attack and I was unable to climb. But in the years subsequent to that, Randall Price has gone up, I forget the year now, it was a couple of years after we were there, and has done the GPR of that area that I was supposed to do. And he said there was no evidence of Noah's Ark being found in the glacier at that level. So the eyewitness accounts of Ed Davis and others may be wrong. Or, you know, if Noah's Ark had been broken into two pieces and was on Noah's Ark, probably the glacier that's moving all the time had broken it up into, you know, toothpicks and hadn't survived. And of course, Noah comes down off of Mount Ararat after they leave and they make an altar after the flood, they probably use parts of Noah's Ark to create the altar that they used to burn, and so on. So I personally don't believe that has survived. I believe that it was probably on that mountain or the mountains of Ararat that the Hebrew says. But there's discussion on Mount Soleimani and the one in Iran, and there's some debate around the area. But that was my participation with Jim Irwin's group, the Ark Explorers, and that research continues even to this day. So your ventures to Noah's Ark, you didn't find Noah's Ark. And then your colleague from Liberty University, Dr. Randall Price, went up. I remember seeing a video on this years ago. He's up there cutting on that glacier with the chainsaw, and I thought like, yeah, you like it. What, did he have the helicopter in then? You know, I thought it'd be bad if you get hurt with a chainsaw way up there, man. That'd be pretty dangerous. So just to recap, you mentioned Ron Wyatt's location, and it has, of course, some kind of a tourist lodge next by advertising Noah's Ark, even though it's nothing more than a geological formation. And that's why I put it time and time again. Secondly, you mentioned a Japanese group that set up some kind of a... Chinese. Theatrical. Chinese? Japanese. Okay. I'm sorry. And they set up some kind of theatrical display and had it photographed, even though with lots of mistakes. Like you said, they had cobwebs and things that were ridiculous. Your analysis is that if Noah's Ark was sitting on the side of this mountain... I shouldn't say if. Noah's Ark was sitting on the side of this mountain. And later on, we have the glaciers forming, and the glacier is moving, ripping apart the structure. And it's very unlikely, in your opinion, that it would exist. And then you mentioned also lastly, that part of it could have been used to build the altar in which he sacrificed in, hypothetically, not knowing, but possibly. You know, personally, I'll just have to interject. If it was me, and I had this great big... I don't know, in the biblical narrative, does it kind of suggest it took 120 years to build it? If I was going to take it literal or whatever? You know what I mean? It said the day of man will be 120 years. I don't know if they meant the day of man, or they got 120 years left between the time that Noah gets the command to build the Ark, and about 120 years is the flood. So I'm not sure what it was in that particular text. But if it was me, and I had all that wood, I think I'd have Noah's house, Noah's barn. I'd be using up that wood. But it's interesting. I really appreciate your truthfulness in this matter. Even though, you know, people would like probably to hear you say, the Ark is up there. I think I've seen a board. I think I've seen, you know, the prowl of the ship, that I just, because of my health conditions, I couldn't quite reach it. And by the time Randall Price got there, there's a glacier over top of it. So they couldn't, you know, like, drill down far enough to get to, you know, make some kind of elaborate scene. You know, like, stay tuned, folks, and we'll come back next year, and we'll find it. But you're saying that it possibly could be gone. And I think that's very sincere, and I appreciate that very much. The purpose of our research, or my intent, was to do a scientific survey of the glaciers on Mount Ararat, to either determine whether it was there or not. I believe the historical account is accurate. There may well be some remnants of the Ark somewhere on that mountain. It's the highest peak, of course, in the entire Ararat region. So, you know, we believe the biblical account to be historically accurate. That's where it would have rested if the world was flooded. So my purpose was to eliminate, one way or the other, whether it was in the ice still remaining, and whether it had survived or not. Personally, I don't think it did. But I wanted to eliminate that scientifically with my GPR research. So the SIR 3000 was the same one they actually have on the moon, or on the Mars, one of the Mars rovers that are going to Mars. They're using that same technology to survey Mars. And that's the technology that we were going to use on Mount Ararat. Well, it's more than fascinating. You know, I think everyone would like to say, like, yeah, we found the Ark, but okay, it is what it is. I remember in that video with, I think, Randall Price, Dr. Randall Price shows up towards the end of it. Their final conclusion, of course, was they didn't find it. You know, and I was joking a little bit before we got started that I in search of Noah's Ark or finding Noah's Ark. And I said, this thing was over an hour long. I said, they should have called it, we didn't find Noah's Ark. That should have been the title. But once again, it is what it is. What's that? One thing we should probably mention to folks is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Very good. Very good. That's an old statement in archaeology that to argue from absence is never a good argument. Just because we can't find it doesn't mean it didn't exist. Yes. So I think we should end with that. It's been great to have you again. Excellent discussion on Mount Ararat. Thank you, Doctor, for your time. Everybody, don't forget to subscribe and to like the video. And I really appreciate the doctor's intuitiveness and also the energy that it takes to go on these adventures. I don't even think when I was a teenager, I think I'd want to climb Mount Ararat, but it is what it is. All right. Thank you. I appreciate your time.