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| Searching for Noah's Ark |
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It is one of the most beloved stories in the Bible and many other great religious texts. God, upset by the behavior of his creations on Earth, decides to start over -- to wipe the slate clean by sending a great flood to wash away "both man and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air."
Believers have searched the Holy Land's highest mountains for the remains of Noah's
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But at the last moment, God decides to spare the family of one good man. And he orders this man -- named Noah in the Bible -- on an extraordinary search and rescue mission: He must build an ark, a sort of giant life boat, and pack it with "two of all living creatures, male and female." When the great flood recedes, Noah and his oceangoing menagerie are left high and dry on the side of a great mountain, free to renew life on a barren landscape.
To some, the story of Noah is an ancient metaphor for the restoration of life after a great disaster. But to others, it is history, or as they say in Hollywood: "Based on a true life story." And for centuries, these true believers have searched for Noah's landing place and the remains of his ark on the rocky, snowy ridges of the Holy Land's highest mountains.
Much of the attention has focused on Mount Ararat, a 17,000-foot-high extinct volcano in Turkey, near its borders with Iran, Iraq, and Armenia. Even in the 13th century, Ararat already had a reputation as Noah's final destination. And in the famous TRAVELS BY MARCO POLO, the Venetian adventurer describes its imposing grandeur: "It is so wide that it takes more than two days to circle it. The summit's snows are so deep year round that one can never climb it."
Such grueling conditions, however, haven't prevented explorers from scrambling up Ararat's slopes in search of the Ark. In modern times, these quests have become increasingly high-tech, using aerial photography and ground-sensing radars to probe the mountain's thick ice sheets and rock fields. Others have seized on images captured by satellites orbiting high above the earth. Every shadow, snow bulge, and oddly-shaped rock is scrutinized for the possibility that it, at last, is the remains of the ark.
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Searching for Noah's Ark
Could the ark have existed?
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Ancient Ein Gedi
Explore a refuge for threatened wildlife
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Resources
Links and books about the Holy Land's animals
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