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The Ararat Anomaly
'Noah's Ark' may reside on a site first identified by Defense Intelligence Agency aerial images.
Further evidence thought to be captured on Spot satellite image of Mount Ararat.
By Anthony Montasano For over 5000 years, Agri Dagi, or Mount Ararat, situated in the remote northeast corner of Turkey, 18 miles south of the Georgia border and 12 miles west of Iran, has been believed to be the legendary resting place of Noah's Ark.
For over a century, mountain explorers, archeological researchers and people of faith have attempted to prove the existence of a massive wooden boat sitting about 2000 feet south of the mountain's summit. Eyewitness accounts and artist renditions have given way within the last 30 years, to satellite imagery, 3-D computer modeling and sharper aerial photography which have played more important roles in the quest.
There is no question that the story of a great flood and of a man who built a boat to escape it has fascinated the world for thousands of years. Tales independent of the Judeo-Christian Bible point to such an event. A flood seems to mark a certain age in the ancient Middle East. Unlike many archeological endeavors, the search for Noah's Ark is fraught with a complex agenda. For some fundamentalists, the discovery of the Ark is tantamount to proving every word of the Creation story as written in the Judeo-Christian Bible. For others, it means at least substantiating the account of a worldwide flood (also exclusive to the Judeo-Christian telling of the story). In fact, "Ark fever" has hit many who are anxious to attach the discovery to some specific religious meaning. As a result, "phantom arks" have been sighted all over the mountain. Many of these so-called sightings have turned out to be rock formations.
But for others, a discovery would simply serve as a major archeological find and proof that some significant occurrence took place in that region over 5000 years ago. Discovery of an Ark may not prove anything more than a legend - so wide reaching that it is told in over 200 cultures worldwide - had some basis in fact. Uncovering an Anomaly
On June 17, 1949, a U.S. Air Force plane was flying a classified photographic mission over Mount Ararat. As the plane reached the 15,500 foot level, about a mile away from the mountain, its cameras inadvertently recorded - in two frames - a massive linear shaped anomaly protruding out from a glacial ice cap at the southwest edge of the nearly mile long western plateau.
The plane then flew around to the north side of the mountain and recorded three photos (from distances ranging from two miles) of another large structure on the western plateau, apparently in close proximity to the first anomaly. This adjacent anomaly was also fully visible and exposed all the way across the plateau. Three apparently huge, thick, symmetrical protrusions merged together and appeared to be jutting straight up into the air out of a large wing like portion of the adjacent anomaly. Parts of the protrusions seemed to be severely damaged.
The photos from this 1949 mission were not released to the public until 46 years later when, citing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Porcher L. Taylor III, a University of Richmond professor, successfully lobbied the government for the images. The 1949 photo was given to Taylor on March, 14, 1995, from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) along with an analysis.
From a map, it was determined that the anomaly was located at approximately 39 42' 10" N 044 16' 30" E at an elevation of approximately 14-15,000 feet and approximately 2.2 KM horizontal distance west of the summit. Analysis of the anomaly was conducted through stereoscopic analysis of duplicate positive imagery of two frames of the HQ USAFE mission dated June 17, 1949. One monoscopic enlargement of the anomaly and three anaglyphic stereo enlargements were produced through digital manipulation of each frame and rendering of a composite image.
The DIA determined that the location of the anomaly was unstable, as evidenced in the photos by an apparent avalanche east of the anomaly. The DIA went on to say that "The accumulated ice and snow along this precipice obviously fall down the side of the mountain at frequent intervals, often leaving long linear facades. It appears that the anomaly is one of these linear facades in the glacial ice underlying more recent accumulated ice and snow." The DIA further concluded that "the tone and texture of the anomaly and the avalanche debris immediately below are consistent with that of the shadowed snow, ice and debris prevalent along the face of the precipice."
On March 19, 1995, Taylor approached The Palm Beach Post to have their photo lab analyze one of the 1949 photos at 1200 dots per inch (dpi) on their computerized photo scanner. David Barak, a photo-journalist with some military photo interpretation experience, discovered the "anomaly" that night while scanning the photo under digital enlargement. He commented that it "looked like a large submarine shaped like structure" jutting out of the ice cap.
At a NASA-sponsored imaging systems laboratory at a university in Florida, Taylor had imaging engineers spend about 15 hours scanning the "Anomaly" at 2000 dpi. They concluded that the plane was too far away to determine if the anomaly was a man-made or natural structure.
Next, Taylor went to DNA Electronic Imaging Specialists in Hollywood, Florida. Using a LVT Saturn Film Recorder - a computer system that can scan and produce film at 4064 dpi - DNA produced a 40" x 50" digital enlargement of the anomaly area.
Imaging specialist Roman Gomez, who helped the military make sharper original photos during the Persian Gulf War, scrutinized the photo and transparency at his workstation. DNA concluded, in writing, that the "anomaly quite possibly could be man-made in origin, or formed by other geological formations that are created by natural events."
On May 23-24, 1995, as a guest of the CIA, Taylor attended the CIA's historic symposium on Corona, the CIA's first reconnaissance satellite. At the symposium in Washington, Taylor talked to several current and retired CIA officials about his Project. He shared Frame 2 from the 1949 Pentagon mission with a senior retired CIA photo interpreter who had briefed President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. According to Taylor, this official had seen and evaluated for the CIA photos of an "anomaly" taken by a U-2 recon plane circa 1959 - 1960. He said the anomaly in Frame 2 was "too linear to be natural and that most of the structure appeared to be under ice." Furthermore, he said that it could be the same anomaly "that he [the CIA] had evaluated in 1959 - 1960 for a congressman," but "that ship-like anomaly was too big to be Noah's Ark."
On October 10, 1995, the Pentagon released Photo Frames 4, 5 and 6 from the 1949 mission to Taylor. DNA Photo Lab produced an impressive digital enlargement of the "Adjacent Anomaly" in Frame 6. Taylor intends to ask the remote sensing experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to conduct an evaluation of Photo Frame 6 of the "Adjacent Anomaly" from the 1949 mission. Additional Satellite Images
Most reported sightings of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat are near the northeast and northwest glacier areas between 14,000 and 16,000 feet.
In September 1973, on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, a CIA reconnaissance satellite reportedly captured images of a "boat like object" on Mount Ararat.
As a junior cadet at the time, Taylor was among those at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who considered this unconfirmed "boat report" then verbally circulating at the Academy and around the country, to be plausible.
According to the alleged report, the CIA satellite was flying a routine mission when someone accidentally turned on the space-based cameras too early and picked up Mount Ararat. The rumor went on to say that a few days later CIA photo interpreters in Washington were startled when they discovered in the high resolution photos what appeared to be the "heavily damaged bow of some kind of huge ship protruding out of the glacier during a major glacial meltdown." A debate among photo interpreters immediately erupted in the CIA as to the identity of this structure.
SPOT imagery from September 1989 containing Mount Ararat data was analyzed by computer scientist Mike Holman to help pinpoint the exact location of the anomaly. The SPOT imagery, when enhanced by computer, shows an S-shaped, 1500-foot-long crevasse above the Ahora Gorge about 90 feet wide. Along the crevasse is a defined object approximately 80 feet wide, with 90 feet of length extending out of the snow over a rocky ledge. An additional 200 feet of the object is under the snow protruding downward. Holman concluded that the object "is not part of the natural terrain."
LANDSAT imagery of this same area analyzed by Dr. Fred Waltz in the 1970s in conjunction with the EROS Data Center, when studied at 6x magnification indicated that the object held a reflective spectral band different from all of its surrounding terrain. More Images to Come
On November 18, 1997, The Washington Times reported that over the next few months the CIA will be releasing U-2 spy plane photographs of the Ararat Anomaly as part of a batch of hundreds of thousands of spy photographs taken on U-2 and SR-71 spy plane missions between the 1950s and mid-1970s.
CIA spokesman Tom Crispell was reported as confirming that the release of the U-2 photographs will contain pictures of the Ararat Anomaly. But other photos taken by KH-9 and KH-11 high-resolution spy satellites are not likely to be made public any time soon, intelligence sources said.
"The pictures are real clear. You see the whole summit and lots of rock formations," said Dino A. Brugioni, a retired CIA photographic specialist who was directed to study the high-resolution photographs of the unusual Mount Ararat site two decades ago.
Taylor is quoted in The Washington Times article as saying, "It doesn't really matter what the anomaly may be. The CIA has photographic evidence that can shed light on the enduring mystery of Mount Ararat, and it has a duty to the public, archaeology and the scientific community to release all of its Ararat Anomaly file, be it photos of a bunch of rocks or a nautical structure of unknown origin."
Ararat explorers are now turning to even more sophisticated satellite capabilities to search for the Ark. Researcher and mountain climber BJ Corbin is considering the use of Space Imaging EOSAT's 1-meter satellite, IKONOS 1. Images from this satellite are the equivalent of aerial photography taken from 3,000 meters up and accurate enough to replace traditional 1:2400 U.S. Map Scale line maps. Designed to take both black and white images with 1-meter resolution and multispectral (color) images with 4-meter resolution, the satellite incorporates a key color-enhancing algorithm that allows multispectral information to achieve 1-meter sharpness. In addition, a near-infrared band at 4-meter resolution will also be collected. The combination of data collected in each of these four bands will provide a new level of information content for applications that require analysis, identification, characterization and other monitoring capabilities for natural and cultural features.
The 1-meter satellite system's quantum improvement is possible, in part, because of a telescope whose mirror has been ground to an accuracy measured in atoms. This allows the telescope to resolve terrestrial objects less than a meter across as it passes 680 kilometers overhead traveling at more than 7 kilometers per second. The telescope, being built by Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester, New York, has a 10-meter focal length collapsed to roughly 2-meters through the use of a unique tertiary mirror that is the most advanced ever built.
The satellite is capable of pointing to a new target and stabilizing itself within a few seconds. This agility gives the satellite robust imaging capabilities. These range from sweeping a single 11 kilometer strip as it passes directly overhead, to following a meandering coastline or power line, as well as to imaging a specific location as it passes over the horizon and then tilting back to image the same spot just before it disappears again, providing optimal stereo imaging.
This performance is enhanced by the fact that the satellite's polar orbit allows it to traverse the planet every 98 minutes and download as many as 600 images per day, with each image measuring 11x11 square kilometers. The satellite is thus able to collect vast areas of imagery with unprecedented speed. The satellite's sun-synchronous orbit allows it to cross the equator at the same time - around 10:30 a.m. - in every orbit and insures image consistency and quality. It also allows specific sites to be revisited with regularity allowing information-rich, change-over-time analysis. Modeling and Simulation
In a project for the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), TASC (The Analytic Sciences Corporation) - one of the world's premier providers of high-end information systems engineering and integration services, specializing in diverse areas such as modeling and simulation, document management, weather information, geographic information, and management consulting - created a 3-D computer animation of the flood waters receding from Mount Ararat. Such modeling is helpful in mapping areas of exploration for the anomaly. Historical Accounts
The use of modern technology in many ways is also trying to substantiate claims that have been made throughout the centuries regarding a ship on Mount Ararat.
Berossus, a Babylonian historian, wrote in 275 B.C. of a "ship" being on the mountain. In the first century A.D., the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus stated that part of a "vessel" stood on the mountain. Nicolaus of Damascus, another secular historian of the first century, reported that "timbers from a ship rested near the summit."
Marco Polo wrote: "In the heart of Greater Armenia is a very high mountain, shaped like a cube (or cup), on which Noah's Ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark. It [the mountain] is so broad and long that it takes more than two days to go around it. On the summit the snow lies so deep all the year round that no one can ever climb it; this snow never entirely melts, but new snow is forever falling on the old, so that the level rises."
In 1829 Dr. Frederich Parrot, a German professor of natural philosophy from Estonia, visited St. Jacob's monastery at the 7,000 foot level on the northwest side of the mountain at the village of Ahora, prior to his historic climb to the summit. The monastery had stood for 800 years. There he wrote in his subsequent book that the monks showed him wood, manuscripts and artifacts from Noah's Ark. Eleven years later in 1840 the monastery and all of the people in the nearby village of Ahora were obliterated in the cataclysm caused by Mount Ararat's "last volcanic eruption," which left a deeply scarred gorge on the north side of the mountain nearly a mile deep - the Ahora Gorge.
In the summer of 1883 a severe earthquake shook the mountain and destroyed a number of villages. Turkish officials, along with a British attache' went to evaluate the damage and purportedly "came upon a huge wooden boat like structure" jutting out from "an overhanging glacier." The team entered the structure but terminated any further investigation for fear that the glacier might fall on them.
In 1887 Prince John Joseph of Nouri is alleged to have found Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat. In 1893, stating his intention to organize an expedition to dissemble the Ark and reassemble it for exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair, he applied for a Turkish permit for such an endeavor. The government rejected his request.
In 1905 after a 3- or 4-year drought in the region, George Hagopian, eight years old at the time, and his uncle found a fully-exposed Ark resting on the mountain. Many years later, Hagopian recalled for archeological artist Elfred Lee that the Ark was of wood and he could see the grain, color, fitted joints and wooden dowels. There was a green moss growing on it.
In 1916 several Turkish soldiers reportedly stumbled upon a large damaged wooden ship, coincidentally in the general vicinity of the "Anomaly" photographed by the Pentagon in its 1949 aerial mission. In the summer of 1916 a large Russian military expedition supposedly examined the Ark after one of their pilots claimed to have discovered it accidentally while testing a new high altitude engine.
On July 5, 1955, Fernand Navarra, a noted French industrialist and explorer, made history when he became the first person in modern times to find a 5-foot piece of ancient, hand-crafted wood on Mt. Ararat some 40- feet under the Parrott Glacier on the northwest slope. Much of the world press reported the discovery. Coincidentally, the site of Navarra's discovery was just a few hundred meters from the location of the "Anomaly" filmed by the Pentagon in 1949. Since the 1949 photos were not declassified by the U. S. Air Force until 1982, Navarra had no access to it or knowledge of there existence.
Navarra submitted his findings to scientific testing at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, the Forestry Institute of Research and Experiments of the Ministry of Agriculture in Madrid, Spain and the Department of Anthropology and Prehistoric Studies at the University of Bordeaux in France. The age of the wood was determined to be "around five thousand years-old."
In the 1980s, the late Apollo astronaut, Colonel James Irvin mounted unsuccessful expeditions to find the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.
Photographer John McIntosh, an educator and expert on Mount Ararat, has captured intriguing photos from his aerial and ground expeditions over Ararat in the 1980s.
No scientific expedition, however, has ever found or excavated the "Anomaly" or "Adjacent Anomaly" on Mount Ararat. So what do the 1949 Pentagon photos actually depict? What will the newly released spy photographs show? Are they photos of nothing more that an unusual rock formation resting in the ice cap on Mount Ararat's southwest plateau at 15,500 feet, or are they photos of the remains of a large wooden ship? About the Author:
Anthony P. Montesano is a freelance writer specializing in articles about the high-tech, communications and entertainment industries. He may be reached through his company Montike Publications, Inc. P.O. Box 86-4101 Ridgewood, NY 11385.
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