LOCATION Mount Ararat, Turkey
NEAREST POPULATION HUB Dogubayazit
SECRECY OVERVIEW Site of historic mystery: an unexplained object seen on satellite photos that some claim is Noah’s Ark.
In 1949, a US Air Force surveillance plane took pictures above Mount Ararat where, according to the Book of Genesis, Noah’s Ark came to rest after the retreat of the biblical flood. When the images were inspected, some claimed they revealed a partially buried object on the northwest corner of the mountain’s Western Plateau. Was it, some have asked, the remains of the Ark?
Mount Ararat, situated close to the sensitive border of Turkey, Iran and what was then the Soviet Union, understandably became a site of great interest to the US government in the early years of the Cold War. The 1949 images, taken during a reconnaissance flight authorized by Headquarters US Air Force Europe—reveal a strange anomaly about 4,700 meters (15,500 ft) up the mountain, which has a summit of some 5,100 meters (16,700 ft). The pictures were immediately classified as secret, and a file was opened which would go on to include numerous other images of the anomaly taken from a variety of aircraft and satellites over the ensuing decades.
Expeditions have been attempting to track down the remains of the Ark on Ararat since at least the 19th century, and rumors insisted that the various reconnaissance flights and other missions had seen something. However, it was only in 1995, thanks to the persistence of University of Richmond Professor Porcher Taylor, that stills from the 1949 footage were finally declassified. Other images still remain secret even today.
What exactly is depicted is a source of heated debate. In the opinion of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the images show nothing more than “linear façades in the glacial ice underlying more recently accumulated ice and snow.” Meanwhile, Dino Brugioni, the founder of the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, concluded that: “Oh, it looked like a bow of a ship stuck in the mountain. But it did not conform with the Bible dimensions. It was much too large.” Others have claimed that they can make out a number of carved wooden beams.
Of course, the chances of a wooden boat surviving several thousand years up a mountain are remote. Furthermore, no one has yet brought back physical evidence from the site of the anomaly. But if it’s all just a trick of the light, why does so much official secrecy still surround the images?
1 QUICKBIRD CLOSE-UP The DigitalGlobe QuickBird satellite made this image of the Ararat Anomaly in 2003, revealing that its surface is apparently quite smooth in relation to the rougher rocks around it (though not as smooth as the overlying snowcap).
2 BIBLICAL PEAK While Mount Ararat itself has become associated with the Ark in the Western imagination, the biblical text actually says that the ship came to rest in the Mountains of Ararat—a far larger region straddling the borders of Turkey. The Armenian monastery at Khor Virap (above) commands spectacular views of the mountain.