NOAH'S ARK- The Early Years

In Sept. 1960, 27 year old Ron Wyatt, along with thousands of other people, read an article in "Life" Magazine about a strange boat-shaped formation in the mountains of Ararat:

 

"NOAH"S ARK?

Boatlike form is seen near Ararat.

While routinely examining aerial photos of his country, a Turkish army captain suddenly gaped at the picture shown above. There, on a mountain 20 miles south of Mt. Ararat, the biblical landfall of Noah's Ark, was a boat-shaped form about 500 feet long. The captain passed on the word. Soon an expedition including American scientists set out for the site.

At 7,000 feet, in the midst of crevasses and landslide debris, the explorers found a clear, grassy area shaped like a ship and rimmed with steep, packed-earth sides. Its dimensions are close to those given in Genesis: `The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, the breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits,' that is, 450x75x45 feet. A quick two-day survey revealed no sign that the object was man made. Yet a scientist in the group says nothing in nature could create such a symmetrical shape. A thorough excavation may be made another year to solve the mystery."

Ron's Decision is Made

At that time, Ron determined that one day, he would visit the site and see for himself. But that was a dream he could scarcely realize any time soon. He had a 1 year 4 month old daughter, a 3 month old son, and within a year and a month, he would have another son. Working as a lab technician in the quality control lab at Hercules Powder Plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he was also attending Western Michigan University, studying pre-med. But soon, family matters forced him to give up his hopes of becoming a doctor and he moved to Kentucky in 1964 where he entered nursing school. He graduated in 1967, entered Anesthesia School and graduated as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist in 1970.

It was also in 1970 that he found himself raising his 3 young children alone. It didn't look like there would ever be any opportunity for him to visit the strange boat-shaped site, so he had to limit his archaeological research to libraries and book stores. But he never lost interest- in fact, he studied everything concerning ancient history and archaeology, not just subjects concerning Noah's Ark. He had found that there was very little information available on the subject of Noah's Ark, which convinced Ron more than ever that no serious research had ever been undertaken on the subject. Everything he had read was based on folk-lore and unsubstantiated claims, and all claimed sightings were in different locations.

Move to Hawaii

From 1973 to 1975, he and the children lived in Hawaii, where he was able to study volcanoes first hand. This convinced him that if the ark had landed on the volcanic peak called Mt. Ararat, that it would have long ago been destroyed. Despite the fact that there are those who have written elaborate explanations of how the ark could have survived on the volcanic peak, within a few years, the eruption of Mount St. Helens would soon show that NOTHING could survive on a volcanic mountain such as Ararat. If the ark had ever been there, he concluded it would have long ago been destroyed.

"Building Mountains" in a Stream

Moving back to the mainland in 1975, he decided that there was one form of research that he could do- he built a small boat model the same ratio as the ark as stated in the Bible, and then he built various "mountain" configurations in a stream. By floating the model down the stream, he observed the boat's reaction as it approached the various shaped "mountains". What he learned was that when the boat approached a simple peak extending out of the water, it simply floated around it, not approaching it or certainly not landing on it. This was the "lateral displacement" of obstructed gas or liquid flow.

He continued this experiment with several shapes with the same result each time. That is, until he built a "crescent-shaped" formation with the crescent facing down-flow. When the boat accelerated around this "crescent-shape" mountain, he saw that it was pulled into the area within the crescent by the "eddy" effect, where it then gently floated within that area. With this bit of information, Ron felt like the ark would have had to have landed on such a location. The laws of hydrodynamics and water action and reaction were the same then and now. If the ark had approached a mountain peak extending out of the water, the water displacement around the mountain would have carried the ark with it. Next...