Parshas Noach 5787 פרשת נח
A group of U.S. scientists in Turkey believe they found Noah's Ark תיבת נח . Andrew Jones, Founder of Noahs Ark Scans, believes they will have confirmation of the findings by this winter, and the evidence so far is overwhelming. Formation dimensions shaped like a boat that match the תיבה Biblical length of the Ark EXACTLY as written in חומש בראשית Genesis. Radar results suggesting organized patterns below the surface that could be parts of Ark halls or a deck. Unexplained seashells in the region despite no sea nearby that suggest this was an area covered in water at one point per Fox news.
Article from Aish.com The New Noah’s Ark Claim: Should We be Cautious
by Rabbi Daniel Rowe
October 14, 2026
New scans claim Noah’s Ark is buried in the mountains of Turkey. A closer look at the evidence, and at the lesson Noah left behind.
There’s been a lot of excitement lately over claims that Noah’s Ark has finally been found. Is this proof that the biblical story is true? Or should we be a little cautious?
A team of researchers says it has proven that a mound in the mountains of eastern Turkey, near Mount Ararat, is Noah’s Ark. The group, Noah’s Ark Scans, was founded by an American researcher named Andrew Jones. They recently announced that a radar survey confirms the site is “not geological” and that “an extraordinary man-made structure lies beneath the surface.” According to the team, the radar shows corridors, compartments, and even several decks. They have drilled up to 18 meters deep and sent a robot camera down the hole. One press release reported that a drill bit shattered on what might be a layer of petrified wood. The headlines wrote themselves: “Noah’s Ark Found.”
How the story began
It starts with the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. It tells of a massive flood and of Noah’s ark, which saved his family and the animal world so that life and civilization could begin again. When the waters receded, the ark came to rest “on the mountains of Ararat.”
In 1948, near the town of Doğubayazıt, about 29 kilometers south of Mount Ararat’s summit, heavy rains and earthquakes stripped the mud from a hillside. A Kurdish shepherd, [Reşit Sarıhan], noticed something strange. In 1959, a Turkish army captain named İlhan Durupınar spotted the same formation in aerial photographs taken during a NATO mapping mission, and the site still carries his name. Geologically, it looks unusual: a long ridge of earth shaped like a ship’s hull. In 1960, LIFE magazine published the photograph, and people began to wonder whether this could be Noah’s famous boat.
The measurements added to the excitement. The formation came out to about 157 meters (515 feet) long, and some measurements put it at 164 meters. The Torah says the ark was 300 amot, or cubits, long. Scholars still debate the exact length of a cubit, but according to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a leading 20th-century authority on Jewish law, a cubit is 21.25 inches, about 54 centimeters. Three hundred of them comes to 162 meters, almost exactly what was found.
Seventy years of back and forth
Then the debate began. In 1960, an American expedition led by George Vandeman and Arthur Brandenberger spent two days digging, and even used dynamite. They found only soil and rock. Most people concluded it wasn’t Noah’s Ark, and the site was largely forgotten.
In 1977, Ron Wyatt, an American amateur explorer with no training in archaeology, revived interest. He claimed to have found petrified wood, iron brackets, and even the ark’s anchor stones. He was joined by salvage expert David Fasold and geophysicist John Baumgardner, and their radar scans reportedly showed walls and bulkheads. But in 1987, a professional radar operator named Tom Fenner went back to the site and couldn’t reproduce those scans at all.
In 1988, Baumgardner, once a supporter of the site, drilled four holes into the formation with a Turkish geologist. They found mud and bedrock. No wood, and nothing resembling an ark. He concluded it was simply an unusual natural formation.
In 1996, geologist Lorence Collins co-authored a paper with David Fasold, previously one of the site’s biggest champions. They called it “Bogus Noah’s Ark” and exposed the whole thing as a hoax.
Still, the claims kept coming. In 2019, Andrew Jones’s team scanned the site again and reported angular structures beneath the surface, shapes you wouldn’t expect in a natural mound. In 2024, they reported finding about three times more organic matter, material that came from living organisms, in the soil than in the surrounding formations. This June, the Turkish government granted permits for the largest investigation the site has ever seen, led by Professor [name, confirm spelling], an archaeologist at [university] in Sivas. The team began drilling, and a week or two ago came the latest announcement.
Why caution matters
Many of you have asked what I think. Here it is: anything connected to the Bible calls for real caution. The same goes for anything connected to Israel, ancient or modern. Very few people come to these subjects neutral. The Bible, Israel, and the Torah stir up deep emotions. They challenge people’s identities in complicated ways, whether they’re religious, atheist, or anything in between. Almost everyone has a stake in the outcome, which means almost everyone is biased.
Almost everyone has a stake in the outcome, which means almost everyone is biased.
That doesn’t mean we can’t investigate. The scientific method can do its job. We just need to wait for the lab results, for peer-reviewed journals to publish the findings, and for the wider archaeological community to examine and critique them. Then we’ll know where things actually stand.
So far, none of this work has been peer reviewed. The lab results aren’t expected until early next year. Andrew Jones is a software developer, not an archaeologist, and he says so openly. He simply believes this is the ark. The radar engineer says he is 100 percent sure the signals come from a single object, but, in his words, “a ship or spacecraft or what, I do not know.” And the university running the dig describes its goals far more modestly: to determine whether the shape is entirely geological, or whether it shows any evidence of human activity.
This pattern isn’t unique to this site. Over the next few weeks, I’m launching a series fact-checking the Torah. One thing I’ll show is how many sensational claims have been made over the last 150 to 200 years. Some people claimed they’d proven the Torah false. Others claimed they’d proven a particular story true. Again and again, on closer inspection, the claim fell apart. Sometimes they were looking at the wrong site. Sometimes a new discovery reversed the verdict entirely. People sincerely believed they had found proof one way or the other, only to see it overturned.
Archaeology is a genuinely difficult science. Unless an inscription turns up that tells you what a place was, you often can’t know for sure.
This could be an incredibly exciting find. If the researchers turn out to be right, if this really is a wooden, man-made structure from the time of Noah, a boat that carried animal life and came to rest on this mountain, it would be one of the most sensational discoveries in history. It would matter enormously to everyone who believes in the truth of the Torah, and to all of humanity, believers or not.
Intellectual honesty requires intellectual caution. I plan to withhold judgment until far more rigorous work is done and the scientific community has had a real chance to study the results.
But intellectual honesty requires intellectual caution. I plan to withhold judgment until far more rigorous work is done and the scientific community has had a real chance to study the results. Whatever the truth turns out to be, it will be contentious. Some will grab any straw to say this is Noah’s Ark. Others will grab any straw to say it can’t be, even if the evidence overwhelmingly points the other way. For me, the best approach is to wait and see.
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. More importantly, the truth of the Torah doesn’t hinge on any archaeological find. The real message of Noah’s story isn’t sitting on a mountain in Turkey.
Maybe it's a knock off taiva that didn't survive a even for a few days. Maybe it's a boat that was at see and the mabul brought it to that mountain range. Maybe it was a wooden mansion. Maybe the tziyonim built it as a replica museum to make fun of noach.
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Maybe it was a Chinese knockoff that sunk
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