Noah's ark satellite image on Mt. Ararat?

I’ve heard that too Switch. Before I get started, there is in fact a Mount Arafat, though not the one we’re talking of :) My bad.

The Discovery Channel had an interesting theory on this matter. They combined the portion of Gilgamesh dealing with the flood with the Noah story. They theorized that Noah was a merchant with a boat on the Tigris or Euphrates river. He had a bunch of animals and goods on this ship. One day it starts raining like crazy, visibility is poor, and suddenly a flash flood comes. The merchant gets on his ship with his goods, animals, and family and are swept down river. Come morning, they have been washed out to the Persian Gulf, but they don’t know it. When the clouds finally clear, land is nowhere in site. The merchant erroneously concludes that the world has flooded. Eventually, they wash ashore somewhere on the Arabian peninsula and start a new life, with Noah’s family and animals.

Well, the version I have heard relates to the marshes at the south end of the Rift Valley in what is nw the Red Sea.  It was below sea level, and contained a very fertile marsh land.  There were people living in this very fertile area, a culture that likely used small craft to move from one dry area in the marshes to another.  As the rift valley continued to open, the land barrier at the soutehrn end would have become overtaxed and subsided, and the Indian Ocean would have begun to pour in to the much lower rift valley.  The myth is that a herder, after receiving some kind of warning of the “topping” of the dam on the south end of the valley by the Red Sea took his herds, etc., loaded them onto a boat, and ridden the rising waters to safety on (most likely) the eastern shore of the new Red Sea.

This myth is a stretch though, because the Red Sea breached its soutehrn barrier sometime around the time of the last Ice Age.  So… if a “flood” myth does indeed originate with the actual flooding of the Red Sea Rift Valley, it would be the oldest myth known, with an origin that dates to the beginnings of Cro-Magnon and from the tiem of Neanderthal.

If they ever found the Galactica i would have destroyed it with my Baseships. Well count Baltar would have ordered it actually…

“As you may know a Battlestar is no match for 3 Baseships” Baltar quote from episode: Living Legend

The “ark” does not exist because Art Bell says it does exist and because Nimoy did a show about it. Thats totally proves the point.

Just like the “flood” never happened because the bible says it happened. Only the opposite of that book has been demonstrated as true.

Most ancient societies have flood stories because they grew up around river deltas which flooded frequently. The Egyptians had the Nile, the Sumarians had the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indians had the Ganges, etc.

@El:

Wouldn’t it be cool if they found Battlestar Galactica(or sum such) on Mt. Arafat!! :-D

Maybe that is what happened to the Pegasus from the 1970’s series :-)  The explosion of the two Base Ships as it fle between them created a tear in the time-space continum and Pegasus was transported back to be entombed in ice on a moutain top in Turkey…

Maybe that is also why we have not seen Lloyd Bridges in so long…

:mrgreen:

The Pegasus wasnt blown up… Cain fled the fleet because he didnt want to share his power with Adama. He tricked Adama into thinking he was blown up like he did before at the battle of Molokay 4 Yahren past. These issues were to be addressed in the second season but that was never realized ( according to a chat i had with the writers and Glen larson at Galacticon)

BTW can i start a Battlestar Galactica thread? who dares me?  I know nearly everything about that show. ( no not the current stupid one… the original)

I even have Baltars autograph and the great Imperious Leader Himself and his voice Patric Mcnee. I have met them all many times.

The ark wouldn’t still be wherever it landed. I fully believe in the flood, but I doubt that the ark would still be in a condition to be found.

It would depend on how fast it was preserved in an Ice “Container”…

Yan, for God sakes, there were more then just “River Dwellers” who had flood legends:

http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html here is the full list of them and shows how close their legend is to the biblical account…

GG

While I have no specific evidence of the Noah’s ark theory, the very small genetic diversity of humans has led some scientists to speculate that perhaps at some point long ago in human history, the human population dwindled to a few individuals before rebounding back to a large population.  (I read this story several months ago but I’m having trouble finding it again, I’ll try to find a link when I get more time).  The article went on to demonstrate some “bottleneck” in the human lineage almost definitely occured.

It would not be unreasonable to speculate a flooding event could have depleted an already small population of humans perhaps when people only lived in central Africa.  A catastrophic event which killed perhaps 90% of the known world would certainly be remembered (through storytelling) for many, many generations.  Whether or not this was the only population of humans wouldn’t matter if the story continued even as the populations met and combined.  Could this type of event still be “remembered” through the story of Noah’s ark?  Hard to imagine a story continuing for hundreds of thousands of years…

Edit: Found some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

From the article:
Geneticists Lynn Jorde and Henry Harpending of the University of Utah proposed that the variation in human DNA is minute compared to that of other species; and that during the Late Pleistocene, the population was reduced to a small number of breeding pairs (no more than 10,000), resulting in a very small residual gene pool. Various reasons for this possible bottleneck have been postulated, the most popular is called the Toba catastrophe theory.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wolpoff/Papers/Bottlenecks.PDF#search=‘human lineage bottleneck’

From the article:

There are many reasons to believe that there may
have been a number of severe population size bottlenecks
on the lineage leading to living humans, principally
because of the many speciation events that must
have occurred.

Also:

Based on autosomal evidence
from several gene systems, we may rule out such
a bottleneck at times more recent than 1.5 Myr (this
date, the time when significant expansion of the human
range out of Africa first began, can be estimated from
the autosomal data presented in table 1). No date more
recent than this is compatible with known neutral nuclear
variation. However, nonmolecular sources of information
must become more important as we consider
demographic events far in the past.
Therefore, considered together, nuclear data allow
bottlenecks within a narrow range around 2 MYA, a
range of possibilities that is fully compatible with the
fossil and archaeological records.

Noah’s ark, a two-million year old story?

Interesting…

More recent research has come out with a different hypothesis for the relatively limited genetic diversity:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7008/abs/nature02842.html

In essence, limited genetic variation is present today because of common but dispersed ancestry, which was “mixed” heavily.

Chengora,

Interesting as well.  Certainly both these events (bottlenecks and large intermingling) could have taken place.  IMO, it is most likely they both did happen.

You know, I’ve wondered how this impacts sociobiological theories which in certain cases relies on genetic isolation.  In discussing gender roles, for example, the adaptationists argue that matriarchal societies emerged from either genetic (and to a lesser extent environmental) anomalies.  However, if genetic variation is fairly limited, then that wouldn’t account for the persistence and statistically significant presence of matriarchal structures, polyandry, etc.  Anyway, just rambling here, but I agree, I find that bottlenecks and large intermingling could both plausibly have taken place, but I don’t know how science today can disaggregate that.

Chengora, I would consider it situational occurence… If the women at the beginning expressed themselves domineeringly over the men, and the men refused to resist then their culture naturally adapted in that direction… Nurture wins… always… :wink:

GG

Yeah, I largely agree, although I don’t know if we’ll ever have a testible theory of what happened.  After all, there’s always the opportunity for cultures to change.  Or at least, I hope that’s the case, because it means I can win more arguments with my SO.  :wink:

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of large-scale population mixing theory.  The main obstacle I think with this theory is how to acheive the large scale mixing this would require.  This would most certainly require considerable technology since the travel distances would be so large (after 1.5 Million years ago, humanity spread throughout the world).  Certainly, ocean-faring boats would be necessary for population mixing, since people settled in places like Australia.  It certainly possible to construct small ocean-faring vessels with stone-age tools, as was done by the Polynesians, but these can only hold a small number of people and possessions.

Perhaps we underestimate the abilities of stone-age people simply because the evidence of their accomplishments has not survived time.  A case in point is the redating of the Sphinx.  While it is debatable whether the Sphinx is in fact 10,000 years old, the evidence of water erosion plus the lack of equivalent erosion on other structures considered as old as the Sphinx leads me to think it probably is 10,000 or more years old.  If neolithic “civilization” was capable of constructing the Sphinx and Stonehenge, then why not sea-worthy vessels?  Why not transocean merchants or even large scale immigrations to empty continents (such as the Americas and Australia) during the stone age similar to the last 500 years?

I’m not sure whether or not stone-age people had sufficient technology to do this (and this doesn’t exclude a population bottleneck) but it seems plausable to me…perhaps archaeologists should be looking for much older dig sites??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza

From the article:

In recent years professor Robert M. Schoch of Boston University, Colin Reader and other geologists have pointed out that the Sphinx displays evidence of prolonged water erosion. Egypt’s last significant rainy period ended during the 3rd millennium BC, and these geologists have posited that the amount of water erosion evident on the Sphinx indicates a construction date no later than the 6th millennium BC or 5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the traditional construction date and 1500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization.

This theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists. Alternative theories for the erosion include wind and sand, acid rain, exfoliation or the poor quality of the limestone used to construct the Sphinx.

http://members.aol.com/davidpb4/sphinx1.html

From the article:

Schoch estimated the date of the Sphinx and most of the enclosure to between 5000 and 7000 BCE, far earlier than the date of 2500 assumed by archaeology. Schoch noted that weathering could have been non-linear, slowing as it got deeper because of the increasing mass of rock overhead. On this assumption, the Sphinx could have been significantly older than 7000 BCE…

To the problem of archaeological context for an earlier Sphinx, Schoch replied that urban centers had existed in the eastern Mediterranean at Catal Huyuk from the seventh millennium and at Jericho from the ninth millennium BCE.[22] At Jericho there were large stone walls and a thirty foot tower. No such settlement had been found in Egypt itself but clearly there was civilization in the region. More evidence could be under millennia of Nile river silt. [23] An advanced civilization may not have been necessary. A Neolithic culture was able to erect Stonehenge in Britain.[24]

Well, in the theory I cited, the authors suggest that the ice/land bridge between Asia and North America could have functioned, for a time, as a channel between the various human populations.  While there is certainly a gap of several thousand years, subsequent mixing (as well as what can pretty safely be termed genocide) after European colonization would again reduce any isolated variation.  I don’t know how convincing I find this, since that gap is hard to explain away, and as you say, the technological barriers are still there, but the 90-95% rate of depopulation in the Americas probably accounts for a lot (see Jared Diamond for that statistic).  That doesn’t really explain the Pacific Ocean populations, but there is some trace evidence in mythology and genetics which suggests a great deal of open ocean voyages by some prehistoric human population.

this was linked from Goerge Noory site ( basically art bells son)

http://www.space.com/news/060309_ark_update.html

enjoy looking at a picture of an ancient habitat… made of wood !

OK… so…

This image is 3 years old, give or take.  There has been all kinds of speculation about Mt Ararat going back to the 70’s (In Search Of…)

And on the link above there are satelite images going back to 1973.

HASN’T ANYONE FLOWN A FRACKING HELICOPTER UP THERE YET TO EYEBALL THIS THING?

I mean, you THINK that some rich Christian somewhere would be MORE than happy to fund a high-altitude helicopter flight to confirm the existence of the Ark… IF it were real.

Looking at the wreck of somebodies house is not worth the fuel to fly over this place. Thats why its not credible and why the mystery (if thats the correct word) has not been solved. Its like the lock ness beast. Keep the legend going to promote additional T-shirt sales from the Noahs Ark book store. If the legend was solved then 3 fat babooshkas would be out of work. Now do you want them to work or not?