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s8int has located some more background information about Bob Cornuke's discovery of what may be Noah's Ark in Iran. As I noted previously, the interview with John Kasich didn't give much in the way of background information concerning the find, but the article published on s8int by Bill Wilson, Koenig's International, gives a great deal of more detail. The article reports:
1. The object that is being identified as possibly being the remains of Noah's Ark (for convenience, I will reference it as just "the Ark" from this point forward) is located in the mountains about six hours North of Tehran, Iran. The article includes photos of Sabalan Peak Lake, so it appears that the Ark is near that Lake. A photo of Mt. Sabalan is at left.
2. Contrary to the claims of a skeptical blogger that I read, the team that went with Mr. Cornuke to examine the remains consisted of "15 geologists, historians, archeologists, scientists and attorneys." Thus, Mr. Cornuke did take with him people who knew what they were doing and would be able to bring some training in both archaeology and geology to the investigation.
3. The object is ordinarily covered under a glacier but our warmer worldwide temperatures has revealed the object's "450 foot by 75 foot" footprint.
4. The heart of the article reads:
After crawling on hands and knees miles above the earth’s surface in four below zero weather, the expedition found an altar, which could very well be the altar Noah built because it was made from the same materials they later found in the Ark.
They found grapevines over two inches think in the area, of which the DNA from the grapes is the oldest known to man. Genesis 9:20 says that Noah planted a vineyard. But most amazing was the ark itself.
It was found in sections, somewhat like a house that had collapsed over the years. Sections of petrified wood 12 to 14 feet high and 40 feet long were found.
They found a huge pile of timber, thought to be floors or walls, in four-to-six foot sections.
Looking at this last bit critically -- I find this last quoted part to be disturbing. I am trying to determine why the team needed to crawl on hands and knees when Mt. Sabalan is a walk-up mountain (according to Peakware, the self-proclaimed "world's premier mountain and mountaineering resource.") I am also puzzling over the fact that the DNA results from the grapes have been made public so quickly when I would have thought that such a determination would take longer than the analysis of the wood of the ark itself. And exactly how did they determine that the DNA of these vines are the oldest grapes known to man? And what about this altar? It's "made from the same materials they later found in the Ark" but we don't really have any details about what the Ark itself was made of (the Ark is described in Genesis as having been made of gopher wood, but no one is certain as to what type of wood was being described because we don't have any gopher trees). Thus, I would have liked to know what type of wood made up the wooden structures found.
Again, I expect that evidence of Noah's Ark will be found someday, and I further believe that this find could actually be Noah's Ark, but there are some things about this report that continue to trouble me. I look forward to more details being released.