East Mountain Telegraph, NM
April 8 2004
Where Did Noah Park the Ark?
By Kathy Louise Schuit
Telegraph Staff Writer
Almost since Moses reported the great flood and the ark that
survived it in the Bible’s book of Genesis, men have searched Mount
Ararat for remains of the life-saving craft.
In this century, Ed Davis of Albuquerque was one of the few who,
before his death in 1998 at age 95, claimed to have seen the ark.
But it was Mountainair’s Don Shockey who told Davis’ story to the
world in his book “Agri-Dagh, Mount Ararat – The Painful Mountain” and
who continues trying to prove that what Davis saw in 1946 was indeed
Noah’s Ark.
In the book, Davis recounts to Shockey his experiences in and
near Hamadan, Iran, while serving with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers in 1943. Mount Ararat rises from within the Turkish borders
near Iran and Russia.
Davis said he was shown artifacts from the ark and held them in
his hands. Then, accompanied by the family of a man who represented
himself as a guardian of the ark, Davis said he was taken to it.
Since writing the book Shockey has himself scaled Mount Ararat
three times – in 1984, 1989 and again in 1990.
Countless TV and radio appearances, including an episode of the
popular “Unsolved Mysteries” series, have given thousands of people a
look at Shockey’s own photographs of the mountain and what appears to
be an object resting high on a northern slope. Shockey believes this
object is the ark.
But Shockey, a true New Mexican who made all three climbs to the
snowline in cowboy boots, has never been able to get close enough to
gather conclusive evidence of his find.
On the 1984 trip that resulted in the now-famous photos, he said,
climbing permits issued by the Turkish government and enforced by
guides did not allow him to cross into the distant area where the
object was resting.
On subsequent trips – including 1989, when Shockey rented a
helicopter to photograph the object from the air and hopefully land
nearby – he said he was prevented by border hostilities and military
actions taking place in Russia and Iran.
If proven, the finding of Noah’s Ark would validate Christianity
and set the world on its ear, Shockey said in a recent interview at
his Mountainair home.
“Gilbert Grosvenor (chairman) of National Geographic said it
would be the single most important archaeological find in the world,”
Shockey said.
Anthropology past
Though Shockey is retired from a long career as an optometrist,
he is no anthropological amateur.
Under the tutelage of Dr. Frank Hibben, renowned anthropology
professor, Shockey graduated from the University of New Mexico in
1957 with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology with a minor in biology
and then went on to finish a degree in secondary education.
While completing his anthropology studies, he said, he was
privileged to assist in the excavation of a site near Lucy, N.M. –
between Willard and Encino.
The location, Shockey said, has since been officially designated
as a site once occupied by Sandia Man, considered by anthropologists
to be one of the most ancient inhabitants of North or South America.
The original Sandia Man site centers on a cave in the Sandia
Mountains.
Findings doubted
Despite Shockey’s expertise and connections in the scientific
community, many people challenge his belief that he, with the help of
Ed Davis’ recollections, has found Noah’s Ark. The “Unsolved
Mysteries” episode, which aired in 1993, also examined the findings
of archaeologist Dave Fasold.
Fasold claimed at that time to have found the ark’s resting place
14 miles away from Shockey’s site, and from Mount Ararat.
According to “Unsolved Mysteries,” disagreement between biblical
scholars about whether the ark actually came to rest on Ararat itself
adds plausibility to Fasold’s claim.
The Bible says the ark landed on “the mountains of Ararat.”
Unfortunately for ark hunters, Shockey said, the mountains of
Ararat are one of the world’s largest – not tallest – mountain ranges,
and include greater and lesser Ararat in a mountainous region that
geologically extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Himalaya
Mountains. At high elevations, they are mostly covered with snow and
ice year-round.
The size and shape of Fasold’s find – a depression in the earth
near Ararat – coincide roughly with archaeologists’ best calculations
of the ark’s dimensions, said “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Additionally, the depression is filled with what Fasold claimed
were regularly spaced iron deposits – something, he said, you might
find after 5,000 years of deterioration left behind only the traces
of iron studs that once possibly held the ark’s framework together.
Shockey, however, said Fasold’s claims are completely
manufactured.
“If that’s Noah’s Ark, Noah had a fleet,” said Shockey.
He explained that similar iron deposits occur throughout the
Ararat range.
Based on his photographs and his research into historically
recorded sightings of the ark throughout recorded time, Shockey said
he is offended by Fasold’s claims that the ark is today nothing more
than a deteriorated depression in the side of the mountain.
Ark sightings
According to Arktracker, an obscure ark timeline on the World
Wide Web, ark sightings date back to the year 275 B.C., when
Berossus, a Babylonian priest, scholar and astronomer, claimed that
“pilgrims went up a mountain in Armenia to carve amulets from the
petrified pitch that covers the ark.”
In the fourth century, Faustus of Byzantium reported the
experiences of bishops who said they saw it, and in the 13th century
Marco Polo wrote an account of seeing the ark in his book “The
Travels of Marco Polo.”
In 1883, Turkish officials documented avalanches on Ararat that
they said revealed the scattered remains of the ark and left them
fully visible for six years.
Davis was just one of five American servicemen who between 1942
and 1946 claimed to have seen the ark, either from the ground or from
their planes.
Shockey credits his belief in the ark’s continued survival to its
construction from “gopher wood.”
There is no Hebrew word for gopher wood, said Shockey, but the
Bible says it is the material from which the ark is constructed. Most
biblical scholars believe gopher wood to be a type of cypress or
cedar, but Shockey has a different theory.
“What if gopher wood is a process, not a species?” said Shockey.
Much like the process used to create modern-day laminates, gopher
wood, Shockey said, might have been a composite material formed from
strong wood and tree sap that hardened to steel strength.
Shockey said he discovered the possibility of a gopher wood
process in talking with members of the Jewish community in the Middle
East.
“If we didn’t know what plywood was, we might be looking for a
tree,” he said.
Today’s stealth bomber technology includes some construction with
a similar, “para-laminate” material, which contains no metal, Shockey
said.
Whether the ark actually rests on Mount Ararat or ever existed at
all, the probings of Shockey and other ark hunters will likely
stimulate thought, interest and discussion from now until the matter
is finally proved one way or the other.
However, no one can dispute the geological facts that from the
icy center of the mountains of Ararat, the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers are born. Between these two rivers Mesopotamia, the historical
“seat of civilization,” took shape.
Historians can’t say for sure whether a great flood preceded
these events, but if Noah did come down off the mountain to
re-establish life on earth, scholars agree it was a fertile place
that guaranteed humanity’s success.