c. 190
Greater Armenia evolves.
Common Era (CE)
0 to 300 CE
Ongoing developments of Judaism and Christianity. Ongoing, interrelated writings, and evolution of differences in faith and documents.
301–14 CE
Armenia adopts Christianity as state religion.
428
Kingdom of Armenia ends.
570
Birth of Islam’s founder, Muhammad, in Mecca.
c. 632
Nûh’s Ark story written down (earliest known). Qur’an (Koran) revealed to Muhammad, including the story of the great flood; hero is Nûh.
1271
Travels of Marco Polo, reference to the Ark being on Mount Ararat.
1299
Establishment of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
1453
Constantinople’s name changed to Istanbul. Straddles Bosporus Strait; territory on the west side of the city seen as Europe; territory on the east side of the city seen as Asia.
1647
Adam Olerius (German) wrote of seeing wooden remains of the Ark on Ararat.
1829
Dr. Friedrich Parrot (German), first official ascent of Mount Ararat.
1835
Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, British envoy in Baghdad, began deciphering the Cuneiform alphabet.
1840
Most recent volcanic activity of Mount Ararat (earthquake/destruction of Ahora monastery).
1845
Austen Henry Layard (British envoy) begins excavating Assyrian ruins at Nineveh with Hormuzd Rassam.
1845
Herman Abich (German), ascent of Mount Ararat.
1850
Colonel Khodzko (Russian), ascent of Mount Ararat.
1853
Hormuzd Rassam (Assyrian), Layard’s successor as envoy for the British Museum, excavated the Library of Nineveh.
1856
Major Robert Stuart (British), ascent of Mount Ararat.
1868
Douglas Freshfield (American) comes within a thousand feet of reaching the peak of Mount Ararat.
1872
George Smith (British) rediscovers the Epic of Gilgamesh by translating the “Flood Tablet” while working at the British Museum.
1876
Sir James Bryce (British), ascent of Mount Ararat.
1888
E. de Markoff (Russian) claims to have found wood from the Ark during his successful August summit.
1908
“Young Turks” become an influential party in Turkey under the banner of the Committee for Union and Progress.
1914
World War I begins.
Mount Ararat is under Armenia’s jurisdiction.
1914–18
Mount Ararat situated in disputed Turkey/Russia jurisdiction.
1915
“Red Sunday,” April 24. Beginning of the Armenian genocide and Turkish civil war. Estimated deaths: Armenians 500,000 to 1 million; Kurds 30,000; Turks in the tens of thousands.
1916
Lieutenant W. Roskovitsky (Russian) makes widely reported flyover of Mount Ararat and claims “sighting” the ruins “of a boat.”
Mount Ararat under Ottoman Empire’s jurisdiction.
1918
World War I ends.
1918
First Kurdish petition for an independent Kurdistan country; Mount Ararat possibly in Kurdish lands; petition unsuccessful.
1920
Treaty of Sèvres: considers an independent Kurdi-stan, though the city of Van, for example, would not be part of it.
1920
British mandate over Iraq and French mandate over Syria granted by the League of Nations
1923
Birth of the Republic of Turkey.
1923
Treaty of Lausanne: revokes pledge to create an independent Kurdistan, and establishes the modern borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Bulgaria, Egypt and Sudan.
1932
Iraq independence declared.
1935
Persia is renamed Iran.
1939–1945
World War II.
1945
Eryl and Violet Cummings begin decades-long collecting of all known Noah’s Ark research, establishing the Cummings Archives, later aligning with the Institute for Creation Research.
1948
Reşit Sarihan (Turkish) claims to discover Ark formation on his farmland near Mahşar, eighteen miles from Mount Ararat.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
1951
Oliver Crosby (American) forced back from summit of Mount Ararat.
1952
Fernand Navarra (French) summits Mount Ararat.
1954
John Libi (American), ascent of Mount Ararat (again in 1969).
1955
Publication of Navarra’s The Forbidden Mountain.
1959
Lieutenant A. Kurtis (Turkish), flyover and photo imaging of Ark structure near Mahşar.
1960
Captain Durupinar (Turkish), military photo specialist, reviews Kurtis images, then co-leads an expedition to Mahşar; the area becomes known as the “Durupinar site.”
1960
Life magazine (USA) publishes a purported image of Noah’s Ark near Ararat at Mahşar (Durupinar site).
1963
The Anatolian Smile, a film about the Armenian diaspora.
1970
Kurdistan’s status as a semi-autonomous state recognized within Iraq but not enacted in law.
Publication of Violet Cummings’s Noah’s Ark: Fact or Fable? The Cummings Archives give rise to the term “Arkaeology.”
1972
John Warwick Montgomery publishes The Quest for Noah’s Ark, a comprehensive overview of available research, relying heavily on the Cummings Archives and recounting his own ascent in 1970.
1973, 1982, 1983, 1984
Astronaut Col. James Irwin (American), expeditions to Mount Ararat.
1978
Abdullach Öcalan founds rebel PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) in Turkey, seeking Kurdish independence.
1979
Islamic Revolution in Iran.
1980
Iraq invades Iran.
1982
Publication of Violet Cummings’s Has Anybody Really Seen Noah’s Ark?
1988
Earthquake in Armenia, December 7.
Iraq–Iran war ends.
1990–99
Mount Ararat “closed” to expeditions.
1990
First USA-led “Iraq War” begins.
1992
Formal establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government as a semi-autonomous regional state.
1993
Russian Academy of Sciences expedition to the Black Sea, drilling sediment cores.
1997
Australian court case: geologist Dr. Ian Plimer vs. creationist organization Ark Search.
1998
Publication of Ryan and Pitman’s hypothesis about a Bosporus flood into the Black Sea: Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed the World.
1999
PKK’s Abdullah Öcalan imprisoned by Turkey’s government.
Robert Ballard (American), “discoverer of the Titanic,” mounts National Geographic expedition in search of a possible Great Flood and Black Sea relationship.
2001
Noah’s Ark National Park established at Durupinar site, near Uzengili (previously known as Mahşar), by Turkish government.
2002
Durupinar site (Mahşar) claims made by Ronald Wyatt (American) are labeled bogus by former associates and under scrutiny by international media.
2002
Film Ararat, written and directed by Atom Egoyan, starring Arsinée Khanjian.
2003
Second USA-led “Iraq War” beg
ins.
2003
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan elected president of Turkey; re-elected 2007, 2011.
2004
Film Women of Mount Ararat, directed by Erwann Briand.
2005
Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) with own parliament extends semi-autonomous boundaries
2009
Publication of study (in Quaternary Science Reviews) by Liviu Giosan, disputing magnitude of Black Sea rise of water levels post last ice age.
2010
Chinese/Turkish team ascends Mount Ararat, claims discovery of Ark.
2011
Earthquake near Van.
2013
PKK and Turkish government agree to a ceasefire.
Ban on using the Kurdish language is somewhat relaxed to allow the use of W, Q, and Z in personal names.
2014
Noah, film starring Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins.
Ark Tablet revealed; publication of The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, by Irving Finkel.
2015
BBC/Blink Films documentary on replica of round ark: The Real Noah’s Ark.
Release of the film 1915, Alec Mouhibian and Garin K. Hovannisian, co-writers/directors.
Play Women of Ararat, by Judith Boyajian, performed in Watertown, Massachusetts.
ISIS destroys antiquities at Nimrud.
Pope Francis acknowledges the Armenian genocide as “the first genocide of the 20th century.”
PKK and Turkey government 2013 ceasefire is canceled.
October, Erdoğan returned to power with majority in Turkey election.
2016
January, EU foreign affairs chief called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Turkey’s Kurdish region where PKK militants and the Turkish army remain in conflict.
February, Kurdistan Security Council announced the arrest of an ISIS “cell” in Erbil, Iraq.
February, Azerbaijan warned of a military option to resolve “the smoldering conflict with Armenia.”
February, President Erdoğan threatened Turkey will “open the gates,” allowing hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees through his country and into Europe.
APPENDIX
I take this opportunity to share a few remnants of research.
A residuum: Genealogical charts created from ancient Hebrew texts imply an actual building schedule of 75 to 120 years for Noah’s Ark. According to the early math, Noah was (on the speculative calendar) not yet 500 years old when word came down from on high, initiating project timelines including design, sourcing materials, erection, gathering animals, and stowing provisions. Inferred by such extrapolations, Noah would have been 600 years old when floodwaters set his Ark adrift.
While there are no recorded directions to Noah (or Nûh or Utnapishtim or Atrahasis) about building on budget, today’s full-sized replicas of Noah’s Ark often face financial woes and missed deadlines. Whether motivated by dreams, religion, architectural challenge, or the curiosity of construction, such endeavors give insight into what a replicated Ark might look like. Each differs in appearance, while keeping with the general schematics of common Biblical reference.
In Hong Kong, two billionaire brothers built a full-scale ark in front of the Tsing Ma Bridge and on Ma Wan Channel as the cornerstone for their Noah’s Ark theme park, which opened in 2009.
With modern construction equipment and investment of over one million US dollars, Johan’s Ark (or Ark van Noach) took three years to complete. It opened to the public in 2012 in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. Johan Huibers conceived it after a nightmare in which a massive flood washed his home country away.
Nearing completion is a full-sized replica as part of Ark Encounters, a themed attraction affiliated with a new Creation Museum in Kentucky. Tagged as the “Hidden Ark,” a separate destination attraction is planned for the Miami area.
Visiting one of these, as I did in Hong Kong, brings to mind the challenges of housing what one published estimate put as over 1.5 million species (let alone the invertebrates): “A cow weighs about half a ton; so, for the clean cattle alone, we’re talking three and a half tons. Ditto for camels, perhaps three-quarters of a ton for sheep, and half ton for goats. Add in all the marsupials, bison, rhinoceroses, elephants, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and so on, and we quickly exceed sixteen-hundred tons for animals alone.” That weight total was absent their feed (or what one presumes a daily throwing overboard of mounting excrement).
In 2014, a scaled-down model in the round design of a coracle was constructed in India, following the Ark Tablet’s four-thousand-year-old “blueprint.” It leaked.
The concept of preserving existence of life following an earth-destroying catastrophe seldom avoids inferring the story of Noah’s Ark. The (inactive) NASA Lunar Ark project contemplates the moon having an outpost as a “sanctuary for civilization.” Originators call for “creation of a space age Noah’s ark.” Separately, the Frozen Ark Project, by the Zoological Society of London with the University of Nottingham, “aims to preserve the DNA and living cells of endangered species to retain the genetic knowledge for the future.” And in remote northern Norway, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a “secure seed bank to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds that are duplicate samples, or ‘spare’ copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide.”
Radically more efficient are efforts to ensure humanity’s ability to survive a scourge, bringing the “Ark” connotation new meaning. The Smithsonian Institution and partners have the Global Genome Initiative, which includes 200,000 samples of “tissue extracted from a living thing somewhere in the world” in the Natural History Museum’s collection. The goal is five million vials with “DNA that holds the key to each species’ unique identity,” creating the “largest museum–based biorepository.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Books are hybrid creations, brought about with the ideas and collaboration—sometimes unwitting—from many interested and caring individuals. This work benefited from the early guidance of mentor and editor John Eerkes-Medrano, who passed away suddenly and with parts of this manuscript-in-progress on his desk. Dania Sheldon has been permissions editor and a believer in where this book was going, helping with many images that were difficult to source and being a trusted sounding board on matters of content and approach. Cory Allyn of Skyhorse Publishing has been the book’s editor, patiently shaping and nudging it toward publication, always insightful, often inspiring—ever remindful of the eventual reader’s needs and expectations. Those three have their fingerprints on this work, and I am indebted to each.
I have learned much and gained greatly from those who read the manuscript in part or in whole during various stages, and among these are Darren Johner, Karen von Muehldorfer, Jon Hutchison, Jess Ketchum, Dean Peter Elliott, Scott Wayne, and Paula Salloum. Some of those mentioned in the book took a helpful look at sections involving their names and those include Dr. Jonathan Taylor, Tigran Zargaryan, Taha, and Andam Jabbar. My expedition mates (Ian Moffat, Goran Jovanovic, Patricia Ristich, Charles Crockatt, and Nicholas (Nico) Vanderstoop) were each offered the opportunity to review the chapters about our time together for their comfort and corroboration. I was in touch with Zafer, wanting to know about his planned drilling at the Durupinar site, and initially he was open to sharing an update but then went silent, repeatedly so. At a crucial stage in this book’s development I met paleontologist Dr. Susan Turner, of Australia, who proved to be a wealth of advice, as has been Theresa Jackson, International Studies Department, University of North Carolina, Wilmington. I did my best to meet the heightened expectations that came for the book from each of those individuals, and where it falls short, the responsibility rests with the author alone.
I thank Garry Marchant, one of a rare breed who’ve made a successful lifelong career of travel-related writing, published around the globe, for his foreword to this book.
Eric Leinberger is an extraordinary mapmaker, and I thank him for creating each map herein to tell a story. Sim
on Carr’s Ark Comparison Chart and individual portraits are impressive additions. Photographer Don Waite patiently ensured all images were converted into workable quality for publication. This is the third book of mine these three have accented with their professionalism, and I thank them.
I’m grateful to my agent Robert Mackwood, principal of Seventh Avenue Literary Agency, who brought about my relationship with Skyhorse Publishing for this and two earlier books, as well as one in the future.
There’s the “Antonson focus group” as well: my brother, Brian, and sons, Brent and Sean, with whom I bounce around endless questions or avenues I’m exploring—about everything from the book’s title to writing challenges to various iterations of the maps, always receiving crisp responses and judgment; I’d not want to embark on a writing project without them. My wife Janice fashioned a wonderful writing space for me in Australia (and until she read an early draft of the manuscript, did not know how long it took me to find someone to read Taha’s letter …); her encouragement on all things book-related has been pivotal to its eventual completion.
Any errors, omissions, or conflicts of hypotheses are my own responsibility—let them encourage others toward more research.
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