Finding Noah's ark--oh, she said wearily, boy.

'99.9pc certainty' of Noah's Ark discovery on Mount Ararat

CHINESE and Turkish evangelical explorers believe they may have found Noah's Ark - 4000m up a mountain in Turkey.

The team said it had recovered wooden specimens from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey that carbon dating proved was 4800 years old, around the same time the ark is said to have been afloat.

"It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it," said Yeung Wing-cheung, a Hong Kong documentary filmmaker and member of the 15-strong team from Noah's Ark Ministries International.

The structure had several compartments, some with wooden beams, which were believed to house animals, he said.

The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds that one had never been found above 3500m in the vicinity, Mr Yeung said.

I'm wondering why the Noah clan never used the Ark to get the polar bears back to the pole, the koalas back to Australia, the pandas back to China, the grizzlies back to North America, and that's just bears, which I wonder how Noah would have gotten hold of in the first place. After all, we find those species in the geographical niches in which they would appear to have evolved over many, many years, without some weird pool of abnormal biodiversity in the region of Turkey. I wonder why "it's wood, it's compartmented, and it's in Ararat" seem sufficient for a 99.9% certainty of specifically Noah's Ark--except that it would be a really sensational documentary, huh?

Historically, animal husbandry has been pastoral--where animals are "turned out" to graze with herders overseeing them. They wouldn't be necessarily turned out in valuable "bottom land" that could be worked for agriculture, but would be moved according to season. This would imply that structures built relative to animal husbandry might exist separate from any human settlement, which would be closer to the arable homesteads. About which I am by no means 99.9 % certain, but which I submit as a plausible enough reason for such a structure without trying to nail down what it is before having a good look at it.