Upon examination of the find, geologists declared it to be just an oddly shaped variety of rock. So too have a host of Christian explorers most recently in 2006, when a Colorado-based Evangelical and amateur archaeologist claimed to have uncovered the ark, petrified within Iran's Alborz mountain range along the Turkish border. In the Book of Genesis, God set about annihilating a "corrupt" and "violent" world once Noah, whom he seemed to like, built a wooden vessel to hold his family and two of "all living creatures, from all flesh." As the floodwaters abated, the barque came to rest by "the mountains of Ararat." Since then, ancient Roman scholars, medieval travelers and Ottoman soldiers have all supposedly spotted this mythical ship amid the region's peaks. Reported sightings of the ark are almost as old as the biblical story itself. "There is a tremendous amount of evidence that this structure is the ark of Noah," said Gerrit Aalten, a Dutch researcher of ark lore who was enlisted to evaluate the team's findings. They displayed specimens of objects recovered from the supposed ark, which they say they encountered in seven dismembered compartments within the mountain: on show are pieces of petrified wood allegedly carbon-dated at 4,800 years old, a chunk of crystal and a cluster of seed-like pellets. On hand were members of the team, composed largely of Hong Kongbased Evangelicals, an art historian and a handful of Turkish academics and government officials. This is the footage of the alleged discovery of the biblical vessel, perched more than 12,000 ft (4,000 m) high on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, that was first shown to journalists on April 25 at a press conference in a fancy boutique hotel in Hong Kong. What is it? According to the explorers, it's Noah's Ark, literally frozen in time. There's straw and bits of old rope on the ground a structure is taking shape.
A gnarled beam runs suspended from one part of the cavern to another. Moments later, we go inside a dark cave and watch members of the expedition inspect what appears to be a solid wooden wall, entombed within layers of glacial ice and volcanic rock. They camp on a hilly bluff, the sun setting over the Anatolian hinterland below. Follow a score of marching drums and pipes, we see the expedition trudge across a snowy expanse and up the mountain.