# So, Has NOAH's ARK Been Found? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 20, 2006, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488 "2006-06-20T21:54:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/81 "2026-10-04T05:18:25Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Do literalists truly believe this? Yup. I grew up literally believing in the creation of the world and the Flood, et al. You just turn off (or never develop) your power of questioning. Believers tell urban legends to each other. There an urban legend that scientists calculated the orbit of the earth and that confirmed that the sun had indeed “stood still” as is told in the Okd Testament. My uncle, was as a professor of engineering at a respected university, recounted that legend to us. He pooh-hoohed anything non-scientific in other aspects of life, but unquestionably accepted all sorts of nonsense when it came to religion. My dad told the story about a professor at the University of Utah that would take his students up the local canyons ever year to carbon date the granite in the mountains and one year that was a change of 10s or 100s of thousands of years. That explains why “science” gets the age of the earth wrong. I was quite young at the time and just completely accepted it. My biology teacher in high school taught evolution, but also let us know that he didn’t agree with it. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/82 "2026-10-04T05:32:36Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Hence the high propensity for Australian animals to have springy legs. It all makes perfect sense when you do your own research and reason it out And here I thought logic had no place in literalists’ beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/83 "2026-10-04T05:52:21Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > the myth the flood story in Gilgamesh was based on. What story was that? ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/84 "2026-10-04T05:55:58Z")
> **[Gilgamesh flood myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth)** > > The Gilgamesh flood myth is a partial narrative of the Gilgamesh Epic. It is one of three Mesopotamian flood myths alongside the one included in the Eridu Genesis, and an episode from the Atra-Hasis Epic. > Many scholars believe that the Gilgamesh flood myth was added to Tablet XI in the "standard version" of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who used the flood story, which is described in the Epic of Atra-Hasis. A short reference to the flood myth is also present in the much older Sumerian Gilga Gi... Too much information to summarize easily, but lots of parallels to the story. As translated and shown, a few _too_ many to casually dismiss. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/85 "2026-10-04T09:05:17Z")
Another possible stimulus for the flood myth may have been the discovery of fossil sea shells at, or near, the tops of mountains. The great flood was a common explanation for such discoveries in medieval times, before the concept of geological upheaval was developed. ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/86 "2026-10-04T09:22:30Z")
Back in 1988 or so, we had a substitute teacher in Geography for a couple of weeks. He would bear down on us with all his adult authority telling that sealife fossils found on the mountains indisputably prove the Biblical flood. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/87 "2026-10-04T11:57:58Z")
You can’t carbon date granite. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/88 "2026-10-04T12:16:25Z")
Oh ok, I don’t remember the details, but they were doing some sort of dating. I was only 10 at the time. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/89 "2026-10-04T12:47:46Z")
YECs have a habit of calling all radiometric dating “carbon dating” and intentionally not understanding how radiometric dating works. There’s a history of YECs providing blind samples and requesting the wrong test and when the results come in declaring that the test simply does not work. > Though Austin {geologist Dr. Steve Austin, a YEC} described himself as “an age-dating agnostic”, he was eager to share with us the fact that he alone had radiometrically dated the Mt St Helens lava dome. Using potassium/argon dating, he determined a lava dome age of 350 000 years. His unstated conclusion was that radiometric methods are unreliable and give all sorts of bogus dates. There are, however, several other explanations of his results. > > First, Austin sent young, low-potassium rocks to Geochron Laboratories. Such samples are very low in radiogenic argon, which is the isotope responsible for the radioactive decay that is the basis of the dating techniques. Although Geochron specifically stated that it did not want to deal with young, low-potassium samples, Austin sent them anyway and specifically stated in his paper that he did not reveal the origin of the samples. This “omission” can result in potentially large ranges of error in the results and also opens his research to ethical questions. > > [A Visit to the Institute for Creation Research | National Center for Science Education](https://ncse.ngo/visit-institute-creation-research) ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/90 "2026-10-04T13:54:13Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > hat’s not quite what the Bible says though. It says inconsistently that Noah took a pair of each animal (Gen 6:19), and also that he took a pair each of “unclean” animals, but of clean animals and birds he took seven (or seven pairs) each (Gen 7:2). This inconsistency is the result of redacting two different traditions, the Priestly source P which specified a single rule for all animals, and the Yahwist source J which specified different handling for clean and unclean animals. Where is the part that defines “clean” and “unclean” animals, and how much later than Genesis was it written? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/91 "2026-10-04T15:16:44Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Do literalists truly believe this? That a pair of every single species on earth could fit on a single boat? Including species Noah couldn’t have even been aware of such as polar bears? If not, how do they account for the ones that didn’t make the boat? Because they don’t believe in evolution… Most of them don’t give a thought to the logistics of it. Those that do may use Baraminology. > **[Baraminology | National Center for Science Education](https://ncse.ngo/baraminology)** > > Creation science comes as a surprise to many scientists, and thus I suspect that the fact that there is creationist systematics will come as an even bigger surprise to systematists. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/92 "2026-10-04T15:51:06Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > My dad told the story about a professor at the University of Utah that would take his students up the local canyons ever year to carbon date the granite in the mountains Very impressive, given that granite isn’t even carboniferous, and even for the rocks that are carboniferous like limestone or marble, carbon-dating still wouldn’t tell you the age of the rock. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/93 "2026-10-04T18:26:36Z")
Did you read the post directly above where somebody already pointed this out and then I acknowledge that is a 10-year-old I got the wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/94 "2026-10-04T21:47:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But one person saving his immediate family and a few of their more valuable livestock from a smaller but still locally-devastating flood by taking them on a ship, That would assume a foreknowledge of the upcoming flood and the tools and skill to build a ship for the uninitiated. Which it would really need to be because if that hypothetical person lived in a sea town of worked in a seaport, it would be a much less impressive story. The whole idea is pretty implausible and if I was a betting man I’d say was made up whole cloth rather than embellished upon. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/95 "2026-10-04T21:54:29Z")
The flood myth of Atra-Hasis describes a huge ‘cube-shaped’ ship with a roof, which sounds more like a raft than a boat. Atra-Hasis had lots of help, and threw a party before the flood for his helpers, but didn’t enjoy it very much. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atra-Hasis#Tablet\_III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atra-Hasis#Tablet_III) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2026, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/96 "2026-10-04T21:55:21Z")
Floods were common in the ancient Middle East. Someone might plausibly have said to himself “there might be a flood even worse than that one my grandpa told us about; we should be prepared just in case”. And they might have read any number of different sorts of weather omens: Sure, those are unreliable, but sometimes folks guess right from them. A raft is probably more likely than a ship, though. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2026, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/97 "2026-10-05T11:49:02Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Out of curiosity, I googled the leader of “research” group and it looks like he has been with the group for 30 years. They do tours and he appears in TV shows and documentaries. > > Is he a nut job or a scam artist? Yes, and in collaboration with Lauren Witzke who is well rounded lunatic: > **[Lauren Witzke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Witzke)** > > Lauren Elena Witzke (born February 9, 1988) is an American far-right political activist known for her anti-LGBTQ, anti-Zionist, white nationalist, and antisemitic views as well as her promotion of QAnon. Witzke was the Republican nominee in the 2020 United States Senate election in Delaware, which she lost to incumbent Democrat Chris Coons. She is a former TV show host for TruNews. Witzke was born on February 9, 1988, in Delmar, Delaware. She attended Goldey–Beacom College, where she earned a ba... ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2026, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/98 "2026-10-06T21:47:21Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > young, low-potassium rocks Worship of K-pop makes as much sense as claiming the Ark has been discovered. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2026, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/99 "2026-10-06T21:56:23Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > > [@Czarcasm](#): > > > > It’s a little difficult to create legends about events that happened long before people existed. > > Many cultures manage it. > > For example: Odin and his brothers (Vili and Vé) killed the primordial frost giant Ymir. They used Ymir’s body to build the physical cosmos. His flesh became the earth, his blood became the oceans and rivers, his bones formed the mountains, his hair grew into trees, and his skull became the sky Are you suggesting your example is a legend based on _fact_? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2026, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488/100 "2026-10-06T22:42:54Z")
Why would I suggest that? It’s an example of a creation myth describing events that happened long before people existed. Which is something Czarcasm said was difficult. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-has-noahs-ark-been-found/361488.md?page=6)