It may just be a discovery of biblical proportions.
Scientists have placed humans at the site of what is believed to be the “ruins of Noah’s Ark,” in the eastern mountains of Turkey.
The findings, released earlier this week, of rock and soil samples determined that “clayey materials, marine materials and seafood” were present in the area between 5500 and 3000 BC, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.
The study is comprised of three Turkish and American universities that have been investigating the theory of the site since 2021.
The “Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark Research Team” group was created for scientific research on the ruins, whose structure was damaged due to landslides, and carried out its first study in Dec. 2022.
Located less than 2 miles from the Iran-Turkey border, in the Doğubayazıt district of Ağrı lies the Durupinar formation, a 538-foot geographic feature made of limonite, believed by some to be the petrified remains of Noah’s Ark.
Scientists collected nearly 30 rock and soil samples from the area of the “ruins” and analyzed the findings at the Istanbul Technical University.
The dating study revealed the samples to be between 3500 and 5000 years old, or from 3000 B.C., the most recent time when the catastrophic flood is believed to have occurred.
“According to the first findings obtained from the studies, it is thought that there have been human activities in the region since the Chalcolithic period, that is, between the years 5500 and 3000 BC,” Agri Ibrahim Cecen University Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Faruk Kaya said.
“It is known that the flood of Prophet Noah went back 5 thousand years ago,” Kayalt added.
The size and shape of the formation correlate with the dimensions of what the ark is said to be in the Bible Book of Genesis, a “length of three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.”
In the Bible readings, God commanded Noah, a 600-year-old father of three, to build the ark and fill it with two of every animal before a global flood hit.
The Durupinar site is 18 miles south of the Greater Mount Ararat summit, which the Book of Genesis states is where the ark came to rest on the seventh month and seventeenth day.
The holy texts of three major religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam all have references to Noah and the ark, but scientists have yet to determine the authenticity of the stories.
The formation was first discovered by a Kurdish farmer in 1948 before Turkish Army Captain Ilhan Durupinar identified the site in 1951 when he was flying over the area while on a NATO mapping mission,” according to the Noah’s Ark Scans project.
Earlier this week, a conference took place in the area titled the 7th International Symposium on Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark.
“An important point of the symposium is that we have decided that more effective results can be obtained by conducting joint research in Cudi and Ararat, which we know as the Mesopotamian region, mentioned in the Holy Quran and the Bible,” Kaya said at the symposium.
