- 20 hours ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:02Noah's Ark
00:03Noah's Ark
00:04It is one of the most famous and terrifying tales of the Old Testament.
00:09Thousands of years ago, after creating humanity,
00:13God became so displeased with them that he unleashed a flood of epic proportions,
00:18one of such cataclysmic scale that it brought the human race to its knees.
00:23Before releasing the waters, God ordered a man named Noah to build a ship to save himself,
00:30his family, and all animal species of the world,
00:34to repopulate the planet in God's image.
00:39And on that day, all the springs of the great deep burst forth,
00:44and the floodgates of the heaven were opened.
00:47But what's historical record for some remains a storybook legend for others.
00:52Is there proof that the Ark really existed?
00:55Many expeditions have searched for its wreckage.
00:59Okay, there's the Ark.
01:00There's the remains of the Ark.
01:03But beyond the existence of the Ark itself, there is another divisive issue.
01:08Is there proof that an end-of-the-world flood took place?
01:13We will navigate through the mystery of this legendary flood
01:17and the boat that saved life on Earth.
01:29For millennia, historians, theologians, and archaeologists
01:34have tried to unravel the mysteries hidden in the sacred books
01:37of the three monotheistic religions,
01:40Judaism, Christianism, and Islam.
01:43Of all the stories in the Bible, the tale of Noah's Ark is one of the most memorable
01:48and probably the most fascinating.
01:52The Earth cleared of humanity.
01:55All our animal species lining up to board the Ark in pairs.
01:58A world-ending flood that lasts for 40 days and 40 nights.
02:05To try to understand the myth of Noah's Ark,
02:08we must first explore the secrets and mysteries of the Old Testament,
02:12the Hebrew Bible where this event was first recorded.
02:19The book of Noah's Ark is written for the first time in the Tanar,
02:23the Hebrew Hebrew Bible.
02:24It is composed of 24 books,
02:27which some have names that are all about something.
02:30There are the book of the Exodus, the book of the kings,
02:34or even the Genesis, the first book of the Bible,
02:37in which is precisely the myth of the Ark of Noah's Ark for the first time.
02:43The content of the Tanar constitutes for Christians the Old Testament.
02:47Several of these texts are also present in the Quran.
02:51Noah is also called Noah's Ark.
02:56The story of Noah's Ark is one of the foundational stories in the Bible.
03:03According to this legend, after creating humans,
03:06God became so displeased with their violence,
03:09their greed, and their moral deprivation,
03:12that he brings down the flood on Earth.
03:17This cataclysm of unprecedented scale is designed to wipe the slate clean.
03:23Humanity will be eliminated.
03:26Only the patriarch Noah, his family,
03:29and a pair of each animal on the planet will be spared,
03:32safely riding out the flood on a gigantic wooden ship.
03:37Noah's Ark.
03:39Noah, a descendant of Adam the first man,
03:42finds favor in the eyes of God,
03:44because he appears to be righteous, blameless in his generation.
03:48He is chosen to survive and continue the human race.
03:52He is a central figure in Judaism and Christianity,
03:56and is even considered a prophet in Islam.
03:59God chose him not only because he belongs to his lineage,
04:03but also because he is morally irreproachable.
04:07In chapter 6 of the book of Genesis, he says to him,
04:10So make yourself an ark of cypress wood.
04:13This is how you were to build it.
04:15The ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.
04:21According to the legend, these measurements correspond to a large, massless barge,
04:26around 137 meters long, 26 meters wide, and 16 meters high.
04:32In the biblical passage, God tells Noah to gather food in the boat,
04:37then take with him his wife, his sons Sham, Ham, and Japheth,
04:41as well as their wives, and to be joined by specimens of every animal species.
04:48Go into the ark, you and your whole family,
04:51because I have found you righteous in this generation.
04:54Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate,
04:59and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,
05:03and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female,
05:07to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.
05:10Seven days from now, I will send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights,
05:15and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.
05:23The waters will eventually cover the highest mountains by more than 15 cubits, or about 22 feet.
05:31All living creatures will die out, and only Noah and his people will survive.
05:51Noah sent a raven as a scout, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up
05:58from the earth.
05:59Noah then sent out the dove, who found no dry place to land, and returned to him.
06:06He tried again seven days later, and this time the dove returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf in its
06:14beak,
06:14which told Noah that the water had finally receded.
06:18He released the dove again after another week, and this time the bird did not return,
06:24presumably because it had found a place to nest.
06:29Then God said to Noah,
06:31Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.
06:35Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you,
06:38the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground,
06:43so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.
06:50Though the bones of the story never change, details have shifted over the millennia.
06:55The story of Noah and the ark was the subject of numerous embellishments and contradictions in late Jewish rabbinical literature.
07:03For example, the fact that Noah did not warn the people around him of the danger that awaited them has
07:09been widely questioned.
07:10How can this man, considered so good and just by God, be so selfish?
07:18According to another tradition, Noah actually spread the divine warning, but nobody listened.
07:25Disagreements also persist around the number of pairs of each kind of animal aboard the ark,
07:30and even over the duration of the flood itself.
07:35Some say 40 days, others 150.
07:40The story seems to have different versions.
07:43The reason for this is that the five books of the Pentateuch,
07:47Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,
07:50were compiled in the 5th century BCE from several independent sources.
07:56The first would have been between the fall of the kingdom of Israel in the north in 722 BCE,
08:03and that of the kingdom of Judah in the south in 586 BCE.
08:10There's another older version of the story, probably written in the kingdom of Judah around 920 BCE,
08:18which is much simpler than the other.
08:20In this story, God sends the waters for 40 days.
08:24Noah, his family, and seven pairs of each clean animal are saved,
08:30or perhaps just seven clean animals, the Hebrew text being ambiguous on this point.
08:38The two distinct sources depict two very different faces of God.
08:43God's anger at the corruption of men, his decision to unleash vengeance,
08:48and his subsequent regrets dominate the oldest text,
08:53which presents God as a human entity appearing in person in the biblical story.
08:59But the more recent text tends to present a more distant and inaccessible God.
09:06Beyond theological debates, it's the practical challenges of building Noah's Ark,
09:11an architectural wonder that captivates the imagination and raises the most questions.
09:19Were people really capable of building such a ship more than 3,000 years ago?
09:25And if Noah and his family did succeed in building it,
09:29how could the Ark endure the violent forces of the great flood depicted in the Bible?
09:38The Ark, according to God's instructions, was to be 300 cubits long.
09:44A cubit is the distance from the elbow to the fingertips.
09:48Most literal studies agree the boat was about 137 metres long,
09:54or half the length of the Titanic,
09:57much larger than any wooden ship from antiquity even.
10:01The Ark was able to carry a load of around 22,000 tons,
10:07almost half that of the Titanic.
10:12The Bible helpfully provides the Ark's specifications.
10:16So what better way to see if the story holds water than to build another Ark?
10:22Building such a boat at the time,
10:24which is assumed to be at the start of the Bronze Age, would be impossible.
10:28But it's entirely possible to build a boat like Noah's Ark with modern techniques.
10:33In 2021, a Dutchman, John Ebers, made an identical replica of the biblical Ark.
10:40But it's not really navigable, and it certainly couldn't hold all the font of creation.
10:46Recent other attempts to recreate the boat propose a round version,
10:50which would be more comparable to the original Mesopotamian tradition.
10:56But then there is the intriguing question of the sheer number of animals.
11:01How could a vessel, even a gigantic one, possibly house such a massive menagerie?
11:07Noah's Ark was supposed to contain pairs,
11:10so two of each species of insect, mammal, reptile, bird, and terrestrial invertebrate.
11:19Estimates of the number of non-marine species range from 5 to 130 million.
11:26At the most conservative estimate, that's still 10 million creatures on board.
11:31It defies human logic.
11:34Some have speculated that the boat may have housed what are called
11:37large genera of animals, rather than all the species.
11:40For example, a single male and a single female of the feline genus,
11:45rather than specimens of tigers, lions, leopards, and cheetahs.
11:50Today, the scientific community, the public, and also most theologians,
11:55tend to consider the story of Noah's Ark as a metaphorical tale.
11:59But some believers still insist on a literal read.
12:03And some of these believers feel it is their mission to prove it.
12:08A natural catastrophe of such a large number seems little probable.
12:12And yet, many adventurers went to the hunt to the archaeological indices
12:17to confirm the existence of the Ark of Noah.
12:20Some even launched into a lost quest to try to find material traces of the boat.
12:28By way of clues, these raiders of the lost Ark will refer to text stating back to antiquity,
12:36referring to the precise location of the shipwreck.
12:40During the 4th century CE, a Christian historian, Eusebius of Caesarea,
12:46found a text dating back more than 700 years,
12:50written by Barossus, a high priest of Babylon.
12:53He tells the legend of Zisithras,
12:57a myth resembling the story of Noah's Ark,
13:00which mentions that its remains are located at the summit of Mount Ararat in Armenia.
13:13Eusebius of Caesarea relates the testimony of Nicholas of Damascus,
13:18a Greek-speaking historian and philosopher who claims he saw the ship
13:23while climbing the mountains of Armenia.
13:28In the Middle Ages, the explorer Marco Polo referenced the presence of the wreck in his travelogue,
13:35The Travels of Marco Polo.
13:38The Venetian adventurer describes Ararat.
13:41In the heart of the Armenian mountain range,
13:44the mountain's peak is shaped like a cube on which Noah's Ark is said to have rested,
13:49whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark.
13:52The mountain is so broad and long that it takes more than two days to go around it.
13:57However, despite all these stories, a problem remains.
14:02Assuming that the Ark existed and assuming that part of it still remains,
14:06theologians can't agree on its precise location as described in the Hebrew Bible.
14:12According to Genesis,
14:14the Ark stopped on the mountains of Ararat.
14:18But there was no peak called Ararat.
14:21Rather, there was a mountain range in the ancient kingdom of Uratu,
14:26a massive region that today encompasses Armenia and parts of eastern Turkey and Iran,
14:32rather than the single summit which bears the name today.
14:39For several centuries, the existence of this wreck was little more than a rumor
14:44passed down from generation to generation by oral tradition,
14:48but without anyone ever managing to pinpoint a location or to provide the slightest concrete proof.
14:56Explorers would have to wait until the 19th century for the disputed and inhospitable region
15:02to finally become accessible and for expeditions to begin.
15:16In his work, Journey to Ararat, he writes,
15:20All the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark exists to the present day on the summit of Mount Ararat,
15:28and that in order to preserve it, no person is permitted to approach it.
15:34Could it be real?
15:35How do we finally find the resting place of Noah's Ark?
15:41In 1876, James Bryce, professor of civil law at Oxford, historian, and member of the House of Commons,
15:50set off an expedition to the summit of Mount Ararat.
15:53His mission, to find physical evidence of the Ark.
15:59According to him, he succeeded.
16:01James Bryce climbed Mount Ararat, and at an altitude of 4,500 meters,
16:08he discovered a hand-cut beam 1.3 meters long and 12 centimeters thick.
16:14He brought it back to England and claimed it was a piece of Noah's Ark.
16:19He's said to have declared at the London Academy of Science, I quote,
16:25This piece of wood meets all the requirements of the case.
16:29At the time, his discovery sparked debate and controversy in London's scientific circles.
16:36Though many declared him a fraud, Bryce still attracted believers.
16:40But this was only the start of a long quest for proof of the Ark.
16:49At the beginning of the 1950s, a Frenchman, Fernand Navarra, also attempted to find Noah's Ark.
16:59Fernand Navarra is a Bordelais.
17:01He is an entrepreneur in demolition of ships.
17:04He has heard talk about the expedition of Bryce,
17:08and he has to heart to verify if all his writings are true.
17:11So in 1952, he decides to do the ascension of the Mount Ararat
17:17to try to find the traces of the Ark of Noah,
17:20as it describes the Genesis in the Bible.
17:24So in 1952, he and his 11-year-old son Raphael also climbed Mount Ararat to seek traces of Noah's
17:33Ark.
17:34They climbed 3,750 meters and camped near Lake Cop.
17:39Then they continued to 4,250 meters and spotted a black shape in a glacier.
17:50Fernand Navarra was convinced that this was the wreck of Noah's Ark.
17:55After returning to France, he knocks on doors and begins to raise the funds needed for a new expedition.
18:01This time, to return with physical proof of what he and his son were convinced they discovered.
18:08During his first expedition, he only had basic equipment.
18:12This time, he brought gear suitable for climbing glaciers and excavating pieces of what he claims is Noah's Ark.
18:19He will even succeed to convince a editor, in addition to the Paris Match, to help him to finance his
18:26voyage.
18:28He will use a part of this sum to buy a camera.
18:33So, he will film his expedition in July 1955.
18:39These astonishing images of Fernand Navarra's ascent of Mount Ararat will be the first ever filmed and broadcast on television.
18:49Navarra's expedition is hailed as an unqualified success when, just like James Bryce a century earlier, he finds carved wood
18:58in a crevasse.
19:00He will cut a piece of 1,50 m, which he divided into several pieces of more easily easily easily
19:07transported.
19:08At the time, when he enters Europe, his discovery is considered by some as proof that the Ark of Noah,
19:15or at least his rest, exists there where the Bible places the place, at the Proche-Orient.
19:20He will even publish a book telling his adventure with a title racoleur,
19:26I found the Ark of Noah.
19:28The Mount Ararat, in Armenia, which is located at more than 5,000 mètres of altitude, is the place where
19:33the Ark of Noah was deposited by the Eau of the Deluge.
19:36The Bible and many traditions assure it.
19:39It is at the discovery of this epave extraordinary that is launched a bordelain, Mr. Fernand Navarra, accompanied by his
19:45son of 11 years old.
19:46His expedition, the IIIe, was crowned by success.
19:49At the summit, he discovered, under the lake of a moraine, the wooden wooden wood vestiges of a legendary construction
19:55which could be the legendary Ark.
19:57Fernand Navarra now had no doubt that he had discovered Noah's Ark, so he continued to try to find definitive
20:04proof.
20:06Fifteen years later, he returned to Mount Ararat, this time accompanied by a team of American mountaineers.
20:13Television host, Alain Decoe, invites the explorer to share his discovery.
20:20Decoe, a devout Roman Catholic, tries to remain neutral, but seems inclined to believe Navarra's story.
20:27Alors, ce bois, c'est quoi, Fernand Navarra ? Quelle est son origine ?
20:31Ce bois, c'est un chêne, et on a pu quand même détecter dans les environs, dans une plaine du
20:38mont Ararat, l'arche a été faite dans les parages même.
20:42Alors, Fernand Navarra, vous venez à plusieurs reprises de prononcer le mot. Vous avez dit l'arche.
20:48Alors, pour vous, ça vient de l'arche.
20:49Pour moi, j'ai réuni tellement de documents que chacun m'ont apporté la preuve qu'elle existait. Je ne
20:56peux pas dire le contraire. D'ailleurs, la Bible le confirme.
20:59In the early 1970s, despite Fernand Navarra's confidence in his discovery, science would contradict him.
21:07Carbon-14 analyses of the samples indicate that the wood he found in the frozen lake on Mount Ararat is
21:15much more recent,
21:16dating from the 4th or 5th century BCE, almost 3,000 years after the supposed construction of Noah's Ark.
21:26But, as is often the case, the verdict of science struggles to outweigh the power of faith and the unwavering
21:33belief that the story of Noah's Ark was real.
21:37In 1959, one single photograph will ignite the debate once again that the story of Noah's Ark was real.
21:54In 1959, Ilhan Durpanar, a Turkish military pilot, took a rather astonishing aerial photograph of a site 29 kilometers south
22:06of Mount Ararat,
22:07not far from the village of Uzangili.
22:12The geological formation resembles the shape of a large boat or ark.
22:19The following year, in 1960, this photo was published in the famous American publication Life magazine.
22:27This story riveted many Americans.
22:31Creationists, who reject evolution in favor of literal biblical accounts, were especially enthusiastic about the find.
22:41Among them was Christian fundamentalist Ron Wyatt, who was an avid amateur explorer.
22:46He is convinced that this photo proved that the sacred ark was on the site discovered by Ilhan Durpanar.
22:56In 1985, Ron Wyatt, accompanied by former Merchant Navy officer and rescue expert David Fasold,
23:04geophysicist John Baumgardner and former astronaut James Irwin,
23:09set up an expedition to the Durpanar site.
23:15David Fasold was convinced that the site was indeed the resting place of the ark.
23:21The team used what they called a frequency generator to scan the site.
23:26It revealed a formation which matched the estimated measurements of the biblical ark.
23:34Because of its historical significance, Ron Wyatt and David Fasold made a documentary about their 1985 expedition.
23:45Okay, there's the ark.
23:47There's the remains of the ark.
23:49All right, now, whether we're looking at the bow or the stern, I don't know.
23:53Let's suppose that, uh, we're looking at the stern.
23:56Then, uh, where the guys are standing right now, right up here we're outside.
24:00In their search for evidence of the ark, David Fasold and Ron Wyatt discovered carved rocks.
24:08Fasold deduced they were anchor stones used to stabilize large ships during storms.
24:15Since these stones were found miles from any body of water,
24:19and because they were determined to be of ancient origin,
24:23he concluded that Noah had used them for the ark.
24:29But the scientific community isn't quite so enthusiastic about Wyatt and Fasold's procedure or claims.
24:37Geologists, geophysicists, and archaeologists criticize the frequency generator method for scanning geological data from the site.
24:47The controversial search technically lacks scientific credibility.
24:54As for the famous anchor stones, an expert determined that these blocks are traditional gravestones,
25:01local to the area and similar to others found in the region.
25:05The quest for proof fails again.
25:08Former astronaut James Irwin, who accompanied them, declared that he had discovered no tangible proof of the existence of the
25:17ark.
25:17I have done everything possible, he declared, but the ark continues to elude us.
25:26Around the same time in which the Alain de Rupinur site is ruled out, another potential location pops up in
25:33the region.
25:36It's called the Ararat Anomaly.
25:42The so-called Ararat Anomaly is a landform at the northwest end of the western plateau of Mount Ararat.
25:48It was first spotted in 1949 during a U.S. Air Force aerial reconnaissance mission.
25:56At that time, Mount Ararat, on the border between Turkey and what was then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia,
26:04had an important strategic interest in the Cold War.
26:07So the photos remained classified for a long time.
26:10Six were declassified in 1995 under the Freedom of Information Act.
26:17In 2004, nine years after these aerial photos were declassified, Daniel McGivern, a businessman and devout Catholic from Honolulu,
26:27announced that he was in possession of new photos taken from very precise satellite images.
26:32He claimed to be 98% certain that the object we see is indeed Noah's ark.
26:40Daniel McGivern boasted of having invested more than $1 million to mount an expedition to be led by Ahmed Ali
26:48Aslan,
26:49a Turkish-English teacher who claimed to have climbed the mountain more than 40 times.
26:56After highly publicised preparations, McGivern pulled the trip at the last minute,
27:01claiming that the Turkish authorities denied him access to the summit, which was in a military zone.
27:08It was never clear whether the story was serious or a hoax.
27:13But the CIA examined McGivern's so-called satellite images
27:17and concluded that they showed nothing more than accumulated layers of ice and snow.
27:24They also investigated Ahmed Ali Aslan, the supposed leader of the expedition,
27:30and found that he was a con man who had already been accused of falsifying photographs and claiming there were
27:38pictures of the ark.
27:40While most explorers claiming to have discovered the wreck of Noah's ark have been discredited or disproved by science and
27:48historians,
27:48many people continue to believe in the account of the ark as described in Genesis, particularly in the United States.
27:59In 2016, Ark Encounter, a Noah's ark theme park, opened its doors in Williamstown, a small city in the state
28:08of Kentucky.
28:10They've put forward theories focusing on the fact it was made from wood, suggesting that Noah and his family repurposed
28:18that material to build a shelter.
28:20Today, the historical credibility of Noah's ark, described in the Bible as a boat of gigantic proportions,
28:28capable of housing pairs of every species of terrestrial animal, remains difficult to demonstrate.
28:35On the other hand, a possibility of the biblical flood having occurred on Earth is a hypothesis that is taken
28:42seriously by many researchers.
28:47A possibility of the biblical flood having occurred on Earth is a hypothesis that is taken seriously by many researchers.
28:57For some, the ubiquity of ancient flood myths before the writing of the Old Testament is historical proof of the
29:04existence of the horror foretold by God in the Bible.
29:08Like today's American creationists, some Judeo-Christian theologians are committed to proving the historicity of everything recounted in the Bible,
29:17and have even performed calculations to date biblical events.
29:22As for the date of the flood, biblical literalists count the genealogies in Genesis chapters 5 and 11.
29:29Using that method in the 17th century, Archbishop James Usher calculated that the flood occurred in 2349 BCE.
29:37While this date remains authoritative for many, more recently, fundamentalist researcher Gerhard F. Hazel consulted several other biblical manuscripts and
29:48concluded that the flood occurred between 3402 BCE and 2462 BCE.
29:58This literal reading of Genesis, which dates the flood to 1600 years after the creation of Adam and 2300 years
30:07before the birth of Christ, is contradicted by archaeology.
30:12Many Egyptian buildings, including the pyramids at Giza, were constructed at roughly the same time as the supposed biblical flood
30:22date.
30:22But none of them show the damage that would have been caused by their total immersion for 12 months.
30:32Other theologians don't hesitate to draw on the mythology of even more ancient civilizations to try to prove the historical
30:40veracity of the flood.
30:43The dates may be off, but that doesn't mean a flood never happened.
30:47Remarkably, stories of monumental floods and the survival of a chosen few are widespread, with examples in almost every society.
30:58On a des textes écrits au 8e siècle avant notre ère qui évoquent des événements similaires.
31:03Par exemple, on trouve des légendes qui parlent d'un déluge si important qu'il aurait anéanti toute une civilisation
31:10sur l'ordre d'une divinité surnaturelle dans de nombreux textes mésopotamiens et sumériens.
31:16On September 3, 1872, George Smith, a young scientist then completely unknown to the British scientific community, gave a memorable
31:26speech at a conference in London.
31:28He had just translated a text from Mesopotamia, Cradle of the Ancient Sumerian Civilization,
31:34which dates from the second millennium BCE.
31:37It was a triumph of perseverance.
31:40George Smith worked at the London Mint, but studied antiquities in his spare time.
31:45often visiting the British Museum.
31:48One day, an employee showed him some baskets of broken clay tablets discovered in Nineveh, Iraq, between 1849 and 1860.
31:59The man behind this incredible discovery is Austin Henry Layard.
32:04It was in 1851, while excavating in the ancient city of Babylon, that this British archaeologist and specialist in Mesopotamian
32:14civilization recovered these puzzling bits of clay.
32:24These 25,000 tablets had been transported by mule and thrown into the holds of ships before being stored at
32:32the British Museum.
32:36Smith obsessively began trying to piece together all this debris.
32:41And after nine years of relentless work, he read on these tablets, in cuneiform characters, the epic of Gilgamesh,
32:51a tale astonishingly close to the pre-biblical flood.
33:00The Sumerian Noah was a king called Utanbishtim.
33:03His god Enki urged him to build a ship so he could escape the flood sent by the assembly of
33:09gods to destroy mankind.
33:11He was advised to dismantle his house of reeds and use them to build an ark.
33:15He was loaded with gold, silver, and the seeds of all living creatures.
33:21Since George Smith's painstaking translation at the end of the 19th century,
33:27archaeologists have uncovered other myths with uncanny similarities to the tale of Noah's Ark.
33:36In certain Sanskrit texts, a terrible flood is said to have left only one survivor,
33:42a saint named Manu, saved by the Hindu god Vishnu in the form of a fish.
33:49Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion founded by Zarathustra
33:54under the Persian Empire in the second millennium BCE,
33:58tells the story of Yima Jamshid, which is very similar to the Noah story.
34:03Except the deadly water is not a flood, but ice.
34:11Noah's counterpart in Greek mythology is called Deucalion.
34:15Noah, a goddess in Chinese mythology, is said to have created man from clay
34:20and then to have filled the holes in the sky with colored stones
34:24following a great flood caused by Gong Gong, the god of water.
34:31But the fact that the flood myth exists in many civilizations
34:34is no proof that a cataclysm of this magnitude ever took place.
34:41Geology shows no signs of the entire Earth's surface ever being covered by water.
34:46The same goes for the archaeological research.
34:48There's no evidence that a flood covered the globe or the entire Middle East in any period.
34:55That doesn't mean the epic floods didn't happen.
34:58It just seems more likely that the floods occurred in various places and times
35:02and then naturally found their way into the oral and written traditions of the region.
35:07While no single person has ever found evidence of the world-ending deluge,
35:12several archaeologists and geologists have discovered traces of colossal floods
35:17that have wiped out huge areas.
35:19These natural disasters may be the fountainhead of the biblical flood story.
35:29Several archaeologists and geologists have discovered traces of colossal floods
35:35that have wiped out huge areas.
35:37These natural disasters may be the fountainhead of the biblical flood story.
35:45Between 1922 and 1934, eminent archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley excavated on the site of ancient Ur,
35:52the biblical city in Chaldea, the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham.
35:57Here, he uncovered traces of a Sumerian civilization, the people who wrote the original flood story,
36:02which was very close to the myth of Noah and inspired the epic of Gildamesh.
36:09On this site, Leonard Woolley uncovered a layer of sterile clay,
36:13more than three meters thick and sandwiched between two archaeological layers.
36:18He concluded that a huge amount of water had swept through the region, leaving this deposit.
36:23Too thick to be from seasonal river flooding, it seemed to be the consequences of an unprecedented deluge.
36:30He described his discovery as proof of the biblical flood.
36:36Woolley never specifically asserts that the cataclysm in question would be on the same scale as described in the Bible.
36:44Nevertheless, his discovery and conclusions will prove highly controversial and will spark a new mystery
36:51and encourage later researchers to seek evidence that other floods could have reached biblical proportions.
37:01Two American geologists from the Lamont-Doherty Observatory in New York will dispel Woolley's theory.
37:10They say later scholars learned that this silt layer covered only a few square miles.
37:19Thus, it was no more significant than many other localized floods in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
37:30Instead, Ryan and Pittman will float the hypothesis that the myth of the deluge may have been inspired by a
37:37catastrophic event
37:38that occurred approximately 9,500 years ago at the very moment the Black Sea was created.
37:45They confidently call this theory Noah's Flood.
37:49After examining the geological record, Ryan and Pittman suggested that the flood may have raised the level of the Mediterranean,
37:57which would have opened a breach in the Straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, creating what's now the Black
38:04Sea.
38:05Its perimeter could have been expanded at the rate of up to one kilometer per day.
38:13In less than a year, the former freshwater lake would have risen 180 meters.
38:19And as the sea invaded the region, freshwater shells from the Black Sea were replaced by saltwater species from the
38:26Mediterranean.
38:27Carbon dating showed that it happened around 7,500 BCE.
38:36Ryan and Pittman's hypothesis was supported by Frederick Heibert, the chief archaeologist of a Franco-American expedition in the Black
38:45Sea in the year 2000.
38:48He showed that the rivers of the ancient lakes were well inhabited 8,000 years before our era,
38:53and that they were submerged by a gigantic inondation.
38:59And yet, this catastrophe would not have destroyed the entire humanity.
39:04It would have simply chased the local population,
39:07whose Exode would have given birth to the myth of Noah.
39:12Seabed analysis has also provided new evidence.
39:17Remains of dwellings, the ancient shores of the original lake, sediments,
39:22all consistent with Ryan and Pittman's theory.
39:26Core samples from a depth of 15 meters confirm a sudden massive influx of saltwater around 7,000 BCE.
39:39Even if it didn't end the world, this climatic catastrophe, unprecedented in the history of mankind,
39:46could indeed have inspired the story of Noah's Ark and similar legends in other cultures.
39:52Assuming a worst case scenario, could there ever really be a storm so massive that it could flood the entire
39:59surface of the earth
40:00and lift a vessel like Noah's Ark to a mountain summit almost 5,000 meters high, as it is described
40:08in the Bible?
40:11Even if we assume that the flood waters could submerge the entire planet, which is a wild assumption,
40:19when the waters receded, where did they go? There are no plug holes on planet Earth.
40:27If, as it is said in the Old Testament, the water had covered all the Earth,
40:32it would mean that the level of the sea would have increased several dozen meters over their actual surface.
40:40And all this water would be removed from the Earth.
40:44Even if the level of the sea could vary over the years and re-design our coasts,
40:49it would never be so high at the scale of humanity.
40:55Although many religious communities continue to question scientific theories of human evolution
41:01in favor of literal interpretation of the Bible,
41:05historians and scientists consider those sacred texts as the aggregation of myths and legends,
41:12even if sometimes they draw their inspiration from real historical facts.
41:17Despite the desire of biblical literalists to prove that Noah's Ark was a real historical event,
41:23anthropologists and mythologists advise taking the legend with a grain of salt.
41:29Like many myths, it was probably written to satisfy our fundamental human need to explain natural disasters,
41:35at a time when people would have felt even more powerless than we do today.
41:42Despite all the efforts made to find Noah's Ark, it remains undiscovered to this day.
41:50But the story of Noah and his Ark is as indelible as it is implausible.
41:56Even a flood of facts won't wash it away.
41:59The story of the N crocks
41:59The story of Oro
Comments