Tonight, one of the Bible's best known stories.
A catastrophic flood wipes out
nearly every living thing on Earth,
except those saved by Noah and his fabled ark.
NICOLA DENZEY LEWIS: Humankind become evil and sinful,
and God decides to sort of hit the reset button.
Could this tale be more than mere legend?
And if the answer is yes, what evidence supports it?
Research has found that a piece of the ark
may actually have survived.
Now, we explore the theories behind this biblical mystery.
ROBERT CARGILL: Sir Walter Raleigh suggested
that we should be looking for Noah's Ark
in a massive mountain range in India.
NICOLA: It could be that the story of Noah's Ark
is actually based in ancient Greece.
SAMI JARROUSH: What in the world is a boat doing
13,000 feet up on a mountain in Turkey?
Was there really a great flood, and if so,
what became of the ark?
[music]
Uzengili, Turkey, 1959.
Army Captain Ilhan Durupinar
flies an aerial reconnaissance mission for NATO.
SAMI: Captain Durupinar's there
to take photographs from his plane
in order to map a remote area
in the Turkish Highlands.
A few years prior, there had been
three large earthquakes that altered the terrain,
so the government wants updated images.
LAURENCE: The flight is routine
until he spots something strange.
SAMI: He's flying over basically the middle of nowhere,
when he sees a startling and unusual formation
amongst the rocks below, which of course, he photographs.
LAURENCE: When the film is developed,
the captain is surprised to see what appears to be the remains
of a large ship far inland and 6,500 feet above sea level.
What in the world would a boat
be doing way up there?
He doesn't know it yet, but he may just have stumbled
onto the answer-- some people think--
of a great biblical mystery
that has been out there for thousands of years.
LAURENCE: The mystery of Noah's Ark.
SAMI: The story of Noah's Ark
is told in the biblical Book of Genesis.
After God creates the universe
and mankind begins with Adam and Eve,
they go on to populate the Earth.
Ten generations later, Noah's born.
LAURENCE: According to Genesis, during Noah's time,
God loses faith in humanity.
NICOLA: Humankind become evil and sinful,
and God sees all this and is very, very displeased by it.
And he essentially decides to sort of hit the reset button.
He's going to wipe out all living things
that he has created and start afresh.
LAURENCE: God spares Noah and his family on one condition.
He must build an ark and stock it
with pairs of every animal on Earth.
SAMI: So, the ark is a giant ship.
It's designed to survive this cataclysmic flood
that's about to cover the Earth.
God gives Noah extremely detailed instructions
on how to build this ark-- how many floors it should have,
to how many rooms, what type of wood to use,
and even its exact dimensions,
515 feet long, 86 feet wide, and 51 feet tall.
ANTHONY HURST: According to the Book of Genesis,
the flood lasted for 40 days and 40 nights.
Eventually, as the waters receded back into the Earth,
the ark came to rest
on the mountains of Ararat.
SAMI: And actually, there is a mountain today
called Mount Ararat, it's a huge peak in Turkey.
And Durupinar's aerial photo
is taken just a few miles south of there.
LAURENCE: For centuries, religious scholars
and historians view the story of the Great Flood
as a metaphor, a warning that God punishes sin.
But curiously, the flood is also mentioned
in both the Torah and the Quran.
Could these photos be proof that Noah's tale is, in fact, true?
Durupinar's photos create a real kind of firestorm
of controversy and excitement,
especially when they're featured in a story
that Life Magazine puts out in 1960.
People are super excited,
because if these photos actually show Noah's Ark,
then they can prove that everything
that's written in the Bible about this whole event
is actually true, right?
This is a historical event that actually happened.
LAURENCE: Inspired by the article,
a team of Americans led by Ron Wyatt
begins researching the site in the 1970s.
SAMI: One of the first things the team learns
when they arrive is that the locals call the mountain
where the Durupinar site is located Mount Cudi.
Why is this important?
Well, the Quran also tells the story of Noah's Ark,
and in the Quran's version, the ark comes to rest
on a mountain called al-Gudi.
So, they think Cudi is actually al-Gudi.
So, the team now believes that they're able to connect the site
back to the Quran and the Bible.
Everything seems to be adding up.
And so, they embark on this arduous hike
all the way up the mountain
convinced that they're on the right track.
NICOLA: Near the Durupinar site,
they actually discover several very large boulders
with holes bored through them.
And the marine archaeologists who are part of the team
are very excited about this,
because they look at them and they recognize them,
and they say, "You know what these are?
These are something called drogue stones."
LAURENCE: Drogue stones are ancient anchors.
SAMI: Archaeologists have found evidence
of drogue stones used as anchors in some of the oldest shipwrecks
in Egypt and the Mediterranean.
So, could these stones be the anchors
used on Noah's Ark?
LAURENCE: Next, the team examines
the strange boat-shaped formation
with ground-penetrating radar.
SAMI: While they're performing the scan,
the team is excited to note the measurements
of this formation.
In the Bible, the ark is 300 cubits,
or about 515 feet long.
This structure on the mountain is 538 feet long.
It's almost an exact match,
and they can't believe this coincidence.
DUSTIN GROWICK: The scan also reveals
what appears to be a manmade internal structure.
The team believes this could be
fossilized remains of chambers
inside the ark.
SAMI: If this is an ancient ark,
it's unlikely that any wood could survive
all these thousands of years.
So, this might be an incredible stroke of luck
if some of the remains have been petrified or fossilized.
NICOLA: The team drills down, they take some samples.
When the samples are analyzed,
they're found to be nothing other than soil
and regular sedimental rock.
In other words, it seems to be just a natural formation.
LAURENCE: But that doesn't end the hunt
for the ark in this area.
SAMI: See, there are two things researchers can look for.
Now, the boat itself is one of them.
But another avenue to explore
is looking for evidence of a giant flood.
Large-scale natural disasters leave traces behind
that can last thousands of years.
And interestingly enough, research has found
that a massive flood may indeed have taken place,
and it happened right near where Durupinar's photograph
was taken in Turkey.
In 1997, a team of geologists, geophysicists,
and oceanographers led by a couple of Americans,
William Ryan and Walter Pitman,
analyze the area around the Black Sea.
And they find evidence for what they call
the Black Sea Deluge.
SAMI: At the bottom of the saltwater Black Sea,
they find remains of freshwater animals
dating back to around 5,000 or 6,000 B.C.
And soil samples and bedrock tests
also prove that this once was a freshwater lake,
and then it changed very quickly.
NICOLA: So, the theory runs that about 8,000 years ago,
there was a huge glacier,
and suddenly, that glacier collapses.
It causes this massive upsurge of the Mediterranean Sea
that floods all the surrounding areas,
including what's now the Black Sea.
SAMI: Every day, the equivalent
of 200 Niagara Falls' worth of water floods in,
and this goes on for 300 days straight-- madness.
The existing freshwater lake that will become the Black Sea,
it gets bigger and deeper at the rate
of one mile a day.
If you lived in this region, in just a matter of hours,
your home could be at the bottom of the sea.
LAURENCE: In 2000, marine archaeologists
led by former Navy Officer Robert Ballard
find evidence of a flooded ancient human settlement
over 300 feet down on the bottom of the Black Sea.
The flood was actually the size
of Colorado before receding.
It could have affected thousands upon thousands of people.
LAURENCE: According to the study's authors,
any survivors could possibly have passed the flood story
down through the generations.
SAMI: Now, we may have evidence of a great flood right here,
and this reignites interest in the Durupinar site.
NICOLA: The Turkish government sanctions
further ground-penetrating radar studies in 2014,
in 2019, and again in 2021.
So, as the technology advances, the scans get better,
and we're finding evidence for straight lines.
Now, any time you have a straight line like that,
it could be the result of human occupation.
LAURENCE: Although Turkish authorities
currently restrict access to the site,
some remain hopeful that evidence of the ark
may eventually be found.
SAMI: So, there's pretty good evidence
for a large ancient flood here in Turkey.
And if it turns out that this is a boat
that dates to the same time as the flood,
then pretty good chance that we found the inspiration
for Noah's Ark.
LAURENCE: But this is not the only candidate--
not by a long shot.
LAURENCE: When evidence of a massive ancient flood
is discovered near the Black Sea in 1997,
many believe it may be proof the story of Noah's Ark is real.
This story is famous in three
of the world's major Western religions.
It's in the Jewish and Christian scriptures,
and it's also in the Quran.
But each of these books
only give archaic
or vague locations
for precisely where this might have taken place--
names of mountains and regions that have been lost to time.
LAURENCE: But one additional ancient text may hold clues.
SAMI: There's an early Roman historian named Josephus
who was writing around the same time
that some of the Bible was written
in the first century A.D.
ROBERT: Flavius Josephus is the most important
source of information about
Judaism outside of the Bible
that we have.
NICOLA: Josephus is actually Jewish,
but he's raised and educated in Rome.
And one of the things he seeks to do in his writings
is to kind of explain the Jewish people
for a Roman audience.
The particular book that Josephus writes still exists.
It's known as "The Antiquities of the Jews."
In researching it, he talks to other Jewish historians
and combs through all these ancient documents,
as many as he can find.
Based on his research, Josephus believes
he's found a new location for the story of Noah,
the ark, and the Great Flood.
He believes it all took place in the Kingdom of Armenia.
While researching his book, Josephus comes across
the writings of a Babylonian historian
whose name is Berossus.
Now, Berossus is writing between 300 and 200 B.C.
SAMI: According to Berossus, the remains of Noah's Ark
are still around in 200 B.C.
Berossus writes, quote, "The ark, grounded in Armenia,
some part still remains in the mountains of Armenia."
NICOLA: Armenia is very mountainous,
and where would you start to look?
As amazing as this little kind of piece
of historical lore goes,
it's still really very vague and unspecified.
LAURENCE: Instead, Josephus tries to track the ark's pieces.
ROBERT: Josephus cites Berossus as saying people
are going up into these mountains in Armenia
to grab chunks of the ship,
taking them as keepsakes and amulets.
SAMI: Eventually, according to Josephus,
most of the ark ends up in a city
in the Kingdom of Armenia called Carrhae.
During Josephus' time, he says they're still showing
pieces of the ark to visitors,
and if true, this could be a tremendous lead.
Who knows, maybe today some traces of the ark
could still be found there.
But there's one problem.
In 1260, the Mongols invade and burn down Carrhae.
LAURENCE: Luckily, the trail doesn't end there.
According to the Armenian Apostolic Church,
a piece of the ark may actually have survived.
ANTHONY: The Armenian Apostolics believe
that in the fourth century A.D.
a holy man by the name
of Jacob of Nisibis
climbed a sacred holy mountain in Armenia,
and there, he found a piece of Noah's Ark.
SAMI: Now, once again, we don't know
precisely where this mountain is.
But we do know what happens to the piece.
Jacob brings it to the Cathedral of Etchmiadzin
in the Armenian Mountains.
ANTHONY: The Cathedral of Etchmiadzin
still exists today in Armenia.
It dates back to the year 301 A.D.,
and it is believed by many
to be the oldest Christian cathedral in the world.
LAURENCE: And the cathedral claims to still possess
Jacob's piece of Noah's Ark.
There was an ornate reliquary
built in the Cathedral of Etchmiadzin in 1698
that supposedly housed this piece of wood.
DUSTIN: No one's ever tested it and we don't know how old it is.
We're not even sure what kind
of tree it comes from.
ANTHONY: It is unlikely that it will ever be allowed
to leave the cathedral,
since it is a precious religious relic.
But maybe someday, science can definitively link it
to the Great Flood.
DUSTIN: Even if you accurately date this piece of wood,
that doesn't necessarily mean it's part of the story
from the Bible.
But there's possible evidence that Noah's Ark
is based on a real story,
and it's not because of an object.
It's because of the story itself.
NICOLA: Sure enough, there is another ancient flood story.
This one is older than Christianity,
it's older than Islam,
and it comes out of ancient Greece.
LAURENCE: The ancient Greek flood story
is surprisingly similar to the biblical account.
So, once again, in this you have a man,
a flood, and a boat.
The protagonist of this peculiar story
is called Deucalion,
and Deucalion lives in a very mountainous region of Greece
called the Peloponnese.
SAMI: Zeus, god of lightning, the leader of the Greek gods,
becomes enraged because mankind is corrupt and evil.
And according to the story, Zeus unleashes a massive deluge,
with the rivers and the sea flooding everywhere.
NICOLA: Deucalion builds what is described
in the flood story as a giant chest,
and he and his wife climb into this chest,
and they float around through this deluge
for nine days and nights.
Finally, it touches down on solid land
on a mountainside, and just like Noah,
Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha are the only human survivors
of this great flood.
SAMI: Deucalion's flood is one of the key stories
in Greek mythology, and it's pretty interesting
that this same tale pops up in more than one place.
But again, makes you wanna ask, is this just a myth?
LAURENCE: Then, in the early 1600s,
a key new piece of evidence emerges.
NICOLA: There's a man called Thomas Howard.
He's a British nobleman,
and he is like many of the elite men of his day,
very interested in going on what was called "the grand tour."
That is, he would travel to all the archaic regions--
Italy, Greece, what's now Turkey,
and he would, on this tour, bring back as many antiquities
as he could possibly carry back with him.
LAURENCE: In 1627, he buys two small pieces of marble
with ancient Greek writing on them.
SAMI: They've given to a respected English scholar
named John Selden, who begins working
on a translation of the writing.
NICOLA: As Selden starts this process
of translating these texts,
he realizes that he has in his hands
something really interesting and really important.
What he's got is a listing of historical events
since ancient antiquity.
Since these marble pieces originated
on the island of Paros,
he calls this the Parian Chronicle.
SAMI: And right there on the Parian Chronicle
amongst all the other historical events
is an entry for Deucalion's flood.
There it is, just carved in stone with a date
that may just prove this version of Noah's Ark is actually real.
LAURENCE: When the Parian Chronicle
is discovered in ancient Greece in the early 17th century,
some scholars believe it could hold the answer
to the mystery of Noah's Ark.
The biblical story could in fact
be inspired by the story
of Deucalion, or it's possible
that they both related to the same historical event.
Either way, according to the Parian Chronicle,
Deucalion's flood was an actual historical event,
and it took place in 1581 B.C.
SAMI: When historians get a look at that date,
they get pretty excited,
because there's a real-life event
that fits that timeline,
which could well have inspired
this widespread flood myth.
There's a huge natural disaster that is so catastrophic,
observers as far away as Egypt,
and even China record its impact.
It's called the Minoan eruption, on the Greek island of Thera.
LAURENCE: Thera is an active volcanic island
in the Aegean Sea.
And right there, at some point in the late 1500 B.C.,
this volcano suddenly erupts.
What's even deadlier than this eruption
is actually the tsunami that it creates.
SAMI: It has an estimated wave height of 400 feet
radiating out from the eruption site.
This floods and destroys everything
for hundreds of miles in every direction,
and many believe the destruction of the island of Thera
inspired Deucalion's flood.
LAURENCE: If this is Deucalion's flood,
what became of his version of the ark?
NICOLA: Depending on which ancient author you believe,
there are four possible locations for the mountainside
where this chest of Deucalion comes to rest.
Of the four, there's only one that shows evidence
that dates back to around the second millennium B.C.,
Mount Parnassus.
LAURENCE: Mount Parnassus features an ancient settlement
called Delphi, most known today for its famed oracle.
SAMI: If there were any survivors of the flood,
this is one of the best candidates
for where they might have set up a new town.
But so far, no ark, no boat,
no giant chest has been found in Delphi.
LAURENCE: But could there be an entirely different location
where Noah's Ark came to rest?
According to famed 17th century explorer,
Sir Walter Raleigh, the answer is in the Bible.
NICOLA: Late in life, Raleigh sets on writing
a very ambitious project
called "The History of the World, in Five Books."
Sir Walter Raleigh is a Christian,
and he really kind of goes back to what he sees
as the most important historical text,
and that's the Old Testament,
starting with the Book of Genesis.
And he takes a close look at the story of Noah's Ark.
ANTHONY: During Sir Walter Raleigh's time,
people believed that the ark
landed in the mountains
of Ararat in Turkey.
But Sir Walter Raleigh came up with a shocking proposal.
SAMI: According to his research,
the story of Noah and the Great Flood occurred
some 2,000 miles away from Turkey in India.
LAURENCE: Raleigh finds several key clues
that suggest India.
ROBERT: The Bible talks about the descendants of the Flood
traveling to a place called Shinar--
it's a name for Mesopotamia--
from the East-- Mekedem.
Now, Walter Raleigh asked the question,
why would the descendants of the Flood
be traveling to Shinar
from the east if Mount Ararat
is to the northwest?
So, he suggested that we should be looking for Noah's Ark
in a massive mountain range to the east of Mesopotamia.
And that would be the Himalayas in India.
SAMI: The other thing he's looking for is vineyards,
because in the Bible, it says that one of the first things
Noah does when he lands is plant a vineyard of grapes.
LAURENCE: Raleigh points to another written account
to support his claim.
Raleigh reads a history
of Alexander the Great's conquests in India.
Now, it says that after a successful campaign in India,
quote, "did Alexander feast himself and his army
ten days together finding therein the most delicate wine."
This pretty much seals the deal for Raleigh.
Of course, today we'd say his argument is a little thin.
LAURENCE: But there may be more substantial evidence
to prove his theory.
SAMI: Raleigh doesn't seem to be aware of this,
but there's a well-known story of a massive flood
in Indian folklore.
LAURENCE: The Indian flood legend
appears in a sacred text known as the Matsya Purana.
ROBERT: In this story, Vaivasvata Manu
is warned by Vishnu, one of the chief Indian deities,
of a great flood.
Manu survives the flood by crafting a giant boat,
and saves humanity.
SAMI: Yet again, the similarities to Noah
are uncanny, and so we find ourselves wondering,
was Raleigh actually right?
Did the Great Flood take place in India?
LAURENCE: In 2017, Indian archaeologist B.B. Lal
believes he's uncovered the answer.
B.B. Lal is the former director general
of the archaeological survey for the state of India,
and he was doing research in the Indus Valley
looking at the civilizations from 4000 to 1000 B.C.E.
Now, he's actually trying to solve a different mystery.
This ancient culture describes a great holy river
in northwestern India called the Saraswati,
but it's not there anymore.
It's said to have just disappeared.
Now, he discovers that there was a massive tectonic shift
around 2000 B.C. that suddenly obstructed
the Saraswati River's path into a nearby valley,
flooding it in a massive deluge.
Lal believe that this explains both the fate
of the Saraswati River and Manu's flood.
He believes he's proven that Manu's flood is real.
LAURENCE: If correct, could this be the origin story
of Noah's infamous flood?
B.B. Lal passes away, unfortunately,
in September of 2022, before he's able
to further develop his Indian flood theory.
But it is kind of interesting to see
how this well-known English researcher
and this great Indian archaeologist
both point to the same conclusion 400 years apart
using very different methods.
The Indus Valley remains a hotbed
of archaeological exploration.
So, who knows what they might turn up?
DUSTIN: Maybe one day we'll find out
that both Raleigh and Lal were right,
and this is the location of the Great Flood.
In 1985, the long hunt for Noah's Ark
takes a sudden turn when a 4,000-year-old clay tablet
is discovered in the attic of a British Air Force veteran.
It takes many years to translate,
but some believe it could finally solve the mystery
of where the Bible's Great Flood took place
and where the ark itself landed.
NICOLA: In the 1980s in England,
a man by the name of Leonard Simmons passes away.
Simmons had led a really interesting life.
So, he had been a Royal Air Force officer,
and as such, he traveled a lot
around the world,
around the Mediterranean Basin,
and he had collected
on his travels a lot of different artifacts
which he brought back to England with him.
SAMI: Simmons' son Douglas would like to know
what some of these things are, so every so often,
he'll take one and bring it to the British Museum.
One day in 1985, he arrives
with a tiny clay tablet,
maybe four inches high, not very big.
It's covered front and back in cuneiform script,
the writing of ancient Mesopotamia.
NICOLA: Simmons meets with Dr. Irving Finkel,
who is chief curator for Near Eastern artifacts
at the British Museum.
And when Finkel starts working with this text,
he is apparently really amazed.
POLLY: Finkel knows that every single scratch
on this tablet is gold.
His eyes scan the first line,
and he's almost drowning in excitement at this point,
because here in this tiny tablet is an account
of a devastating flood.
LAURENCE: Finkel asks Simmons if he can keep the tablet
to fully translate it, but Simmons declines.
Finkel really wants a crack at this tablet,
because he's devoted his life
to the study of these cuneiform writings,
and he knows that this is something special.
Finkel's department at the British Museum
includes over 130,000 of these clay cuneiform tablets,
most of which were unearthed in 1852 in Iraq.
NICOLA: Ancient Mesopotamians used cuneiform
essentially to kind of keep track of things
like provisioning-- how many ducks
were needed for a feast, things like that.
SAMI: But they also wrote down at least one
exciting historical tale--
one of my favorites, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
LAURENCE: The poem recounts the exploits of King Gilgamesh,
who ruled in ancient Mesopotamia,
an area near modern-day Iraq.
NICOLA: The story begins with a great flood
that is sent by the gods that basically wipes out everything.
ROBERT: Most scholars believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh
was written between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago,
and it plays out
almost identically
to the story of Noah's Ark.
But it's important to remember that this story
was written 1,000, if not more, years before
the story of Noah's Ark.
So, the big question that we have is,
was there one original event,
or were there lots of different floods
or different flood stories?
NICOLA: In the Epic of Gilgamesh,
an immortal man by the name of Utnapishtim
rounds up various animals
and brings them with him into an ark.
Together, they survive this catastrophic flood.
ROBERT: Utnapishtim's boat comes to rest
on a mountain called Mount Nimush.
And this story is so similar
to the story of Noah's Ark, that many scholars believe
that the story of Noah's Ark is a direct descendant
of the story of Utnapishtim and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
That means Noah's Great Flood actually takes place
in Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq.
LAURENCE: When Dr. Finkel first examines
Douglas Simmons' clay tablet, he hopes it holds answers
that Gilgamesh doesn't.
SAMI: The tablet at the British Museum
that Gilgamesh is written on
is missing some pretty critical lines.
It says "The ark that you are to build,"
blank, "be equal," blank.
It's like going through a tunnel with your cell phone,
you miss certain parts.
The tablet is broken, the story is incomplete.
Finkel is hoping that this new find from Simmons' attic
can fill in the blanks.
Finkel finally convinces Douglas Simmons
to let him translate the tablet in 2009.
And as expected, it's a retelling
of the Mesopotamian flood story.
LAURENCE: Dr. Finkel spends the next four years
decoding the writing.
SAMI: The tablet is so old
that he's having a hard time reading it.
So, he has to have it 3D-scanned
in order to complete the translation.
In 2013, he's finally ready to publish his findings.
NICOLA: Finkel believes that this was worth
the nearly 30-year wait, because what he's got in there
is explicit instructions for how to build the ark.
SAMI: I mean, this is incredible!
A British tourist buys a souvenir in 1948,
puts it in his attic, where it sits for decades
until his death, and the whole time,
he had the ark's instruction manual.
LAURENCE: The tablet describes in great detail
the measurements, materials, and construction process.
SAMI: It reads more clearly than most build-it-yourself
furniture instructions these days.
It describes how to make the ropes to bind it together,
how to space out and connect 30 ribs and 3,600 stanchions,
and how to waterproof it with bitumen.
NICOLA: The boat built as described is enormous.
It's 4,300 square yards,
about the size of a modern football field,
and its walls are about 20 feet tall.
The length of rope that's needed on this boat
would stretch from New York all the way to Pittsburgh.
And the weird thing about this boat
is that it's not rectangular, it's actually circular.
SAMI: This is much different from the vague metaphor
of the biblical story of Noah.
It also rings much truer. It's more convincing.
The level of detail of these instructions,
it seems like they're meant to be followed.
It seems like this is a literal boat
that is supposed to be actually built.
So, the natural next step if you've got these instructions
is to build it.
LAURENCE: In 2014, a 4,000-year-old tablet
translated by Dr. Irving Finkel reveals instructions
to build a massive boat.
NICOLA: Many people believe that this tablet is proof
that Noah's Ark was real,
and that it was used
to survive the Great Flood
that was in Mesopotamia, which is now modern-day Iraq.
LAURENCE: To test that theory, a team of Indian archaeologists
attempts to build a version of the ark.
They don't have the money
or the time to build
the full-size version.
So, they decide they're going to make the replica
at one-fifth the size of the original version.
SAMI: Even scaled down,
the finished product weighs 35 tons
and is made of wood,
rope, and bitumen,
which is a form of natural tar
that will waterproof the boat.
NICOLA: So, this team sets up shop.
They gather all the necessary tools that they would need,
and they're really kind of keeping it to the sorts of tools
and materials that would have been available
in ancient Mesopotamia.
SAMI: No metal, no adhesive, no power tools.
The wood acts as like a sort of skeleton
that they wrap over a mile of rope around,
kind of like a giant basket.
It's like they're weaving it, almost.
Then, they add the bitumen last, which waterproofs the hull.
LAURENCE: Finally, after four months of building,
they construct a platform with rollers
to launch their creation into the Indian Ocean.
SAMI: It's the moment of truth.
Dr. Finkel himself comes to India to observe.
The team is holding their breath.
Will this bizarre-looking ship actually float?
They manage to get it into the water, and...
the ark floats!
I mean, this is pretty incredible.
We're talking about a set of instructions
that are thousands of years old, and they work.
Dr. Finkel is ecstatic.
In press interviews, he says a boat like this
could potentially have floated all the way to New York.
DUSTIN: So now, there's even more evidence
to tie the story of Noah's Ark to Mesopotamia.
We have a legendary great flood
and instructions for a seaworthy ark.
LAURENCE: But where could that ark have ended up?
One man thinks he knows the answer.
SAMI: Bob Cornuke is an amateur archaeologist
who specializes in biblical geography.
He spends over a decade searching for Noah's Ark.
ROBERT: Cornuke is a biblical apologist.
He wants to prove the Bible
to be true, so he starts out
looking for Noah's Ark
on Mount Ararat,
and of course, he's unsuccessful.
Then he meets a man named Ed Davis.
In 1943, Ed Davis was working for the Army Corps of Engineers
in the Hamadan province in Iran.
According to Davis, the locals take him
up to the top of a mountain 13,000 feet up,
and they show him what they believe
to be the remains of Noah's Ark.
DUSTIN: This sounds like a tall tale,
but Davis takes a lie detector test
and passes it.
And the more research Cornuke does,
the more convinced he becomes.
LAURENCE: To try and locate the mountain for himself,
Cornuke examines a 1,000-year-old map.
NICOLA: The Hereford Mappa Mundi
is a massive medieval map
of the ancient world.
I mean, it's huge, it's like four feet by five feet.
And right there in the middle of this medieval map,
in the center of it is Noah's Ark in Hamadan,
which is right next to where Ed Davis is stationed.
SAMI: Cornuke is able to locate a holy mountain in this area
known as Mount Suleiman,
which is also known as the Throne of Solomon.
LAURENCE: Cornuke flies to Iran in 2005
intent on climbing Mount Suleiman.
SAMI: He climbs the mountain, and at 13,000 feet up,
at the same elevation where Ed Davis described the ark,
Cornuke finds several rocks that are, quote,
"uncannily beam-like in appearance," end quote.
He believes these are petrified wood.
He also finds a worship shrine littered with wood fragments.
So, Cornuke takes these rocks to be analyzed,
and sure enough, it's petrified wood.
He also claims to find fossilized clams,
and to Cornuke, this is evidence
of a great flood from a couple thousand years ago.
LAURENCE: But not all of Cornuke's evidence
can be proven.
POLLY: Cornuke has the wood fragments dated,
and they turn out to be only 500 years old,
so they can't possibly be from Noah's Ark.
MARTIN: Cornuke argues that these wood fragments
most likely were just part
of a shrine that was built
and rebuilt basically
commemorating this area
of where the ark rested.
He believes that people have been worshipping here
ever since the Mesopotamian ark came here to rest
after the great flood.
DUSTIN: Further research is still ongoing at this site,
and Cornuke hopes to one day be able to go back to Iran
and pursue more evidence on his theory of Noah's Ark.
LAURENCE: The search for evidence of Noah's Ark
has crossed many countries in Europe, Asia,
and the Middle East.
But according to some theorists,
that search may be fruitless.
There are some compelling arguments
for giant floods
in several different regions,
and in several different mythologies.
But there are some academics
who are not swayed by this evidence,
because according to their own findings,
the story of Noah
and the Great Flood never happened.
When William Ryan and Walter Pitman
publish the Black Sea deluge theory back in 1997,
which suggests Noah's Ark is based on a real-life flood
in ancient Turkey and Armenia, critics come forward
to suggest that maybe that flood
isn't all it was cracked up to be.
NICOLA: Most people would agree that something did happen.
You can see geological evidence for it.
But probably it wasn't cataclysmic.
It could very well have been
a change that took place
over a much longer period of time.
And if it really happened in around 8000 B.C.
in the close of the ice age, it was really before
any significant human activity in the area.
SAMI: Regardless of when it occurred,
some experts believe
it was more of an inconvenience than a disaster.
People could have just packed up and moved up the hill
a little bit, and they'd have been fine.
LAURENCE: Some feel the same way about the ancient Greek flood.
DUSTIN: The volcanic eruption on Thera
most definitely destroyed that island
and took a lot of people with it.
But the after effects have been hotly debated.
SAMI: There may be evidence of a destructive tsunami
hitting nearby Crete, but others believe
that destruction was due to an earthquake, not a flood.
As for Mesopotamia, there was flooding there all the time.
Flooding was a very necessary part
of Mesopotamian cultures.
The word Mesopotamia means "between the two rivers."
It's actually this area that lies
between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers.
And the point of being on that floodplain
is that twice a year,
these two rivers would overflow their banks.
It was a necessary thing,
because it would make the soil really fertile.
ROBERT: So, flooding in a controlled manner
was a regular part
of the agricultural cycle.
But when the floods get out of control,
when the levee breaks and destroys a city,
to the people who are devastated by these floods,
they see these as apocalyptic world-ending events.
That can be true without the story
of Noah's Ark being true.
LAURENCE: Other parts of the story
have been questioned as well.
SAMI: So then, there's the thing
about the animals, you know, two by two.
This doesn't show up in every single flood myth, by the way,
but as we know in the Bible, Noah saves two of every animal.
And of course, this didn't happen.
We have traced the genetic origins
of, I don't know, thousands of species,
and they simply didn't just all come from one place.
ROBERT: If you put every species of animal on the ark,
the ark as described in the Bible
is nowhere large enough to hold all of these animals.
And forget about the animals' excrement
and the food for the animals.
You need a lot of food every day.
And so, this becomes the problem
of a literal reading of the story of Noah's Ark.
It just doesn't make any sense.
LAURENCE: But there is at least one part of Noah's story
that rings true to most.
NICOLA: Ultimately, we have to think,
what is the point of this story?
Why do so many different cultures
tell different variants of this kind of flood story?
Because it makes the same point, all of them.
It tells us that, again, as a species,
what we do best is survive.
SAMI: I'm pretty sure that at many points in history,
a group of human beings put their heads together
and figured out a way to endure a massive flood.
It happened in 2004 in Indonesia.
It happened in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina
in New Orleans, and it certainly happened
5,000 years ago, inspiring a story
that we still tell to this day.
One thing is for certain.
The hunt for Noah's Ark continues.
Perhaps Turkish authorities
will find evidence
on Mount Ararat.
Perhaps Bob Cornuke will be able
to make a return visit to Iran.
And perhaps one day, science will find
definitive proof of the Bible's Great Flood
and of the ark itself.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."