Noah’s Ark

One of the oldest stories in the world is the story of Noah's Ark, which has crossed oceans and continents over millennia. The versions occur in almost every human culture, and in Christianity, Islam and Judaism share the general points of the plot of a man, a flood and animals marching two by two to enter it and escape the flood. But despite all these similarities, if history goes back to the facts, it remains controversial between religious scholars and scientists alike. As the story goes, God told Noah to build a huge wooden boat and carry in it a male and a female of each animal species, and then God made it rain, flooding the whole earth with water to eliminate the wicked.

Related topics

Universal Flood

What is Noah's Ark?

Noah's Ark was a wooden boat that had numerous compartments and was impermeable both inside and out, which was built to save Noah, his family, and several pairs of animals from the universal flood.

History of Noah’s Ark

According to history, the descendants of Adam and Eve had become evil, and God regretted having created mankind. For this reason, he decided that he should destroy them all and start over. But there was one man, Noah, who had always obeyed God and had therefore won God’s favor. God told Noah to build a great boat, called an ark, and told Noah exactly how to do it.

Noah was 600 years old when he finally finished building the ark. Then God told Noah to enter the ark with his wife, his three children, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their respective wives. After they entered the ark it began to rain non-stop for forty days and forty nights. The water became so deep that even the mountains were covered by it. Every living creature on earth died in the flood, but the ark continued to float above the flood waters and the people and animals in the ark were safe.

As the days passed, the water began to descend again, and the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat. After about 11 months in the ark, Noah sent a dove to see if he could find land, but he found no place to rest and returned to the ark. Seven days later, Noah sent the dove again.

This time, the dove flew carrying an olive leaf, and Noah knew he had found land. After a full year in the ark, God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your children and their wives: Take out all the living creatures that are with you, the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move on the ground, so that they may multiply in the earth and be fruitful and increase their number in it”.

Characteristics of Noah’s Ark

Among the main characteristics that can be mentioned of Noah’s Ark are the following:

• The ark was 450 feet (137 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide and 45 feet (14 m) high.
• It had three decks that were divided into rooms and a side door.
• Inside the ark Noah was to place a male and a female of all kinds of animals and birds.
• It took Noah 120 years to build the ark.
• It was similar to a rectangular box with a flat bottom and no bow or stern.
• The ark was only designed to float but not to navigate.

Characters

The first character in this story was God, who ordered Noah to build the ark. Noah had a wife and three children, Shem, Ham and Japheth who also had wives.

Animals

Many studies have been done on the number of animals that could have housed Noah’s Ark and taking into account its measures and capacity, it is considered that it could have carried 51 million kilograms without sinking, equivalent to 70,000 animals, so it is estimated that they reached approximately 35 thousand species saved by Noah. A pair of each species, a male and a female with the aim of perpetuating species.

Theories about its location

According to history, Noah’s Ark is located on a volcano more than 5,000 meters high, the Ararat. According to Genesis, this is the place that functioned as a port after the flood, after 40 days and 40 nights of rain, of the ark in which Noah and his family were saved from divine punishment.

Curiosities about Noah’s Ark

• The story of the Ark told in Genesis is similar to the Sumerian myth of Utnapishtim, which tells how an ancient king was warned by his god to build a boat to escape a deluge sent by the superior council of the gods.
• After World War II, many climbers have reported seeing or finding fragments of the ark near the top of Mount Ararat.
• In 1949, a Turkish-American expedition took photos of what would later be called the Anomaly of Ararat.
• In 1955, the discovery of the French mountaineer Fernand Navarra, who said he had observed a wooden structure at more than 4,000 meters above sea level, is discussed.
• In 1965, a Turkish aviator took a picture of what he believed to be the footprint of a boat among ice fields in Ararat. It would later be known as the Ararat anomaly. This anomaly is an unusual geological formation that seems to have been depositary of the ark since it presents the form of a ship as currently known and whose measures are quite similar to those described in the Bible.
• In 2010 Chinese and Turkish researchers claimed to have found a portion of Noah’s Ark. These findings included a compartmentalized section of wood dated by the carbon 14 method over 4800 years and which could have housed animals as it looked like a manger.