CLASSIC: The Search For Noah's Ark

For centuries various groups claimed they'd discovered the remnants of Noah's Ark, the legendary wooden ship of Biblical fame. Despite controversy, skepticism and numerous dead ends, the search continues into the present day. And, what's more, several Ark hunters believe there's a conspiracy afoot -- the secular world knows the Ark is real, they argue, but work to suppress the truth. Why?

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Forget the Titanic folks. If there is one boat that
could properly be called the most famous boat in the world,
then it is Noah's Ark, that's right, the one from
biblical lore where Noah, according to the story, saved multiple
animals and his family from a cataclysmic flood. For centuries,

(00:26):
various different groups have claimed they've discovered the remnants of
Noah's Ark or they've nailed down the location of this vessel.
But despite the controversy in skepticism and numerous dead ends,
the search continues in the present day and might be
surprised to learn there are more than a few Arc

(00:47):
hunters who think there's a conspiracy of foot that the
modern world or some faction of it, knows the arc
is real, but are working to hide that knowledge from
the rest of the world. What are we talking about,
Let's dive in from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back

(01:10):
now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Knowl, and I've been your view that makes

(01:30):
this stuff They don't want you to know. As we
get closer and closer to the end of this calendar year,
we're looking back into the past, way way way back
into the past. I have a question of you, matt Old.
Did you guys ever go to Sunday School growing up?

(01:51):
I did? And Bible Camp and Bible Camp. Here what
happens at Bible camp? You'd just been a play Bible games,
sing Bible songs, watch Bible programs. Did uh? Did you
guys ever spend any time in Sunday School or Bible
Camp looking at the story of Noah. Absolutely, so it's

(02:11):
gonna be familiar to almost everybody listening. I would be
a little surprised if this was a spoiler for anyone,
but we have learned to be careful of spoilers, right,
so most people know the gist of the Noah story.
There's a man named Noah who receives messages from God,
and God tells him to build a massive wooden boat,

(02:34):
which we call an arc uh. And this is to
ensure the safety of his family and all of the
animals in the world during a massive flood that sweeps
across the planet. Yes, and nobody believed him that this
was gonna happen when he was trying to warn people,
and as he's building this thing, and he looks like
crazy person out in his yard somewhere building a boat.

(02:57):
And here is a spoiler alert. Seriously, if you have
seen the movie Noah, featuring Russell Crowe playing the titular character,
it features giant rock monsters that tell Noah what to do.
They're referred to as the Watchers often and they are
worthy of a podcast all on their own. Uh. And
that is a film by Aronofsky taking taking a little

(03:19):
bit of Uh, let's say, you know, the writers on
that used a lot of old pre Christian Jewish sources
as well, which is why for many evangelical people in
the crowd it uh, it had some unfamiliar elements. Of course,

(03:40):
two Knowel's point, Uh, I don't believe anywhere in any
of the Holy Text does does it ever say that
these Watchers are you know, rock monsters. But they look cool.
It's like those old Ray Harry Housen uh stop motion
animations from like Sinbad and things like that. That's what
reminds me. But anyway, moving on. Uh. Yes, according to

(04:03):
the Book of Genesis, God gave Noah these instructions for
building the arc, but didn't really do anything to back
the guy up in his community, didn't really tell anybody else,
just told the one guy built a boat. UH. Seven
days before the flood begins, God tells Noah to enter
this art with his household and again all the animals

(04:25):
in the world too, by two right. Spoiler alert. It worked,
you guys. According to the story, Noah, his household, and
all of the animals were spared. They they survived as
the ark was afloat for a hundred and fifty days
before coming to rest on the mountains of Air Act. Yes,
and we know some of the specifics from the story

(04:49):
of you know, sending out birds to UH search for
dry land. The story is repeated with variations in the Koran,
where the arc appears as Safina the Uh the genesis
flood story let's call the flood narrative. Here's the thing
about it. It is similar to many, many, many other

(05:10):
floodness from a variety of cultures. The earliest known written
example is the Sumerian version UH found in the Epic
of Zia Sudra. And people have been searching for this
arc for centuries and centuries and centuries, and uh you know,
there have been various claims that have been made that

(05:31):
pieces of an arc have been found. You may have
seen stories before online. Um, but people have been searching
this for this arc since what to seventy five C. Yeah,
at least since the time of Eusebius up to the
present day. Here are the facts. We'll do some bubble

(05:52):
busting first. There is no scientific evidence for a global
flood as disc gribed uh in in this literature. And
we are not, of course disclaimer, we are not in
any way denigrating a person's religion or anybody's faith. We're

(06:12):
we're looking at, you know, the way this story is
told and what the evidence scientists can find now tells
us about the veracity there. So right now, there's no
scientific evidence for a global flood of this proportion, and
despite many many expeditions, no universally agreed on evidence of

(06:34):
the arc has been found for well over century. Scholars
have recognized that the the story here is based on
these older stories, these Mesopotamia models and stuff. Because, uh,
one thing we notice when we do any kind of
comparative literature, when we start to trace the d n

(06:55):
A if you will, of a story is that many
many story These are newer versions of earlier mints. Uh.
There's a great series of books by a fellow named
Joseph Campbell that you can read. For more information on this,
I would recommend UH Hero with a Thousand Faces, which
looks at everything from the it sets forth the rules

(07:20):
of stories and the way that humans right and experienced stories,
everything from the epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest
known works of literature, to UM. I don't know, lethal
weapon lethal, I guess it would work. I got it
my favorite lethal weapon three. I just think, you know,
Joe Pesci finally took on a much larger role in

(07:41):
that particular film. I feel like it's highly underwritten. Without
having talked to him. In my head, I can imagine
Joe Pesci saying, that is the role he was born
to play. It's true. You know, if you've seen the
Zeitgeist films, that book in particular was highly influential on
how they looked at some of the religion aspects of Zeitgeist.
So because all of these flood stories in this in

(08:06):
this Zeitgeist, if you will deal with events that allegedly
happened at the dawn of history. They give us the
impression that the myths themselves must be very, very old.
And that's kind of weird because we can sort of
roughly trace back where this myth of a global flood began,

(08:26):
and we can also find a little bit of evidence
that might surprise some folks. Uh, here's let's let the
badger out of the bagh. The myth of the global
flood that destroys almost all life begins to appear what's
known as the Old Babylonian period, that would be the
twenty to sixteenth centuries b c E. And I know

(08:47):
what a lot of people are thinking, You guys, like,
that's a four hundred year margin. Yeah, that's that's Uh,
that's the closest that history can get. And they're print
versions of this Mesopotamian flood story. Now there nine different
known versions. Each is more or less adapted from the

(09:08):
previous version. In the oldest version, the hero is King
Zia Sudra, and this version was inscribed about six hundred
b c. E. In the Sumerian city of Nippur. It's
known as the Sumerian Flood story and probably derives from
some earlier version. From that happened before that one um
and the Zia Sudra version tells how he builds this

(09:29):
boat and rescues all different forms of life when the
gods just just decide to destroy the whole thing, and
it's this would be multiple gods, this would be a
pantheon of gods at this point. But the basics are
the same, you know. There there are other stories that
descend from this and now in our present day and age.

(09:52):
The most popular one, or most well known one, is
the story of Noah. The version closest to the present
day version, the oldest version, it's probably the closest, is
that in the epic of Gilgamesh, the character Pishtam who
does the same thing, builds about saves the world. Flood

(10:13):
myths occur in cultures across this planet, across time. We're
not just talking about the Middle East. We're talking about
not just Mesotamia Mesopotamia, but India, Greece, Norse mythology, the
Key j and Maya people in Mesoamerica, uh different Native
American tribes and both North and South America. People have

(10:35):
been searching for this legendary arc ever since. But here's
the thing. Some people believe that they have already found it. Whoa,
and we will talk about them and more when we
return from a quick break. Here's where it gets crazy.

(11:02):
In two thousand seven and two thousand and eight, a
team of evangelical Christians claimed to have discovered the remains
of Noah's Ark on the peak of Mount Era Rat
in modern day Armenia, and specifically they believe they found well,
what they actually found was seven large compartments that were
buried about thirteen thousand feet four thousand meters above sea
level um. They then returned to the site with a

(11:24):
film crew in October of two thousand and nine. The
team says that radio carbon dated wood taken from the site,
whose location they're keeping under wraps for the time being,
show yeah that the purported arc is about forty eight
hundred years old, which checks out. It's about right roughly
the same time period as Noah's flood that's implied in

(11:47):
the Bible. So let's do some pros and cons. Sounds
good first. The pros, it's completely possible that they found
something up there. It's even possible, if not plausible, that
this is some sort of ship what on top of
a mountain? Stranger things have happened, my friend. Uh. The

(12:10):
team themselves say that they are ninety nine point nine
percent sure that this is the indeed the remnant of
the biblical arc. Uh. This the name of the outfit
that went to search for this was Noah's Arc Ministries International.
It's fairly specific and it doesn't do the best for impartiality,

(12:33):
but it is a It does show us that they
wanted to find this thing for sure. So I've got
a quote here from the filmmaker who accompanied the explorers
of fellow named Uh Young Wi Chung, who said, it's
not that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it

(12:55):
is nine percent. Oh that is really Yeah, well they
got a margin of error there. Uh. So let's let's
talk about some of the cons there. There are quite
a few cons. First, the existence of arc itself. While
there are very specific measurements in the UH in the

(13:18):
canonical text, UH, existence of an arc doing the kind
of stuff that it's described as doing is wildly implausible.
So the big sticking point for people whould interpret this
literally is the idea of the animals. Human beings still

(13:39):
have no idea exactly how many species of animals exist
when you count insects, right, It's true, multiple species of
insects are dying every year before humans even know what
they are. And there's no man made structure capable of
holding all the animal in one place. If there was,

(14:02):
you need more than two for suitable breeding population for
most animals, especially manimals. Even if you broke it down
into this. This sounds crazy when you think about it,
but I'm just thinking of earlier versions of this, where
there's an ARC that has all of the DNA stored
of every you know, living species that is known just
in tubes somewhere on the ship, it would still be impossible.

(14:25):
That's you know, that's a really good point. And think
about that. We are kind of building arcs. Our species
is now with the doomsday vault in uh Scandinavia that
holds hold seats, right. Can you guys think of any
analogs and science fiction films, It feels like they're that
is just ripe for it, like a kind of a
space Noah's Ark, you know, going out into the universe

(14:48):
trying to re establish civilization, where like you know, samples
of all kinds of different pieces of d N A,
there was some of that in Um Interstellar Actually no
spoilers there, well a little bit, but watch there's there's
a whole thing about like kind of like starting a
new civilization, and it has that feel of kind of
like a Noah's Ark vibe, which I think it's cool.
That's that's a really good point because we are still

(15:11):
you know, we forget sometimes that mythology is not this
old dead thing. Mythology is alive, and we are participating
in it every time we tell the stories. So well,
hence the repeated flood stories. I mean, it's a narrative
that makes sense in terms of fearing some sort of
intense natural disaster that also has sort of like a

(15:33):
cleansing quality where there's always like a need for a
reset kind of society, civilization has devolved in some way.
And and and it's a very interesting literary device, I
will say. And you get a rainbow at the end,
like a mint, like an Andy's mint after after dinner
on your pillow, yeah, or on your pillow. So yeah,
there are a couple of There are many science fiction

(15:54):
films actually that do have some sort of arc like thing,
because it's one of the best guesses people have about
how to take the human species through space and time. Uh,
you know, we can't most of the places that we
want to go, we can't reach in one person's lifetime.
So we'd have to have a self sustaining thing, you know,

(16:16):
take the mountain to Mohammed sort of idea. One one
example would be Pandorum, which is a film that I
don't think it's enough credit, which I thought the one
about like space madness. Is there some space madness in
all then there's some space bandness. Yeah, I'm a fan
of space madness because they're out there in the in
the ink for a while, in deep space. But with

(16:37):
deep space, you know, allegorically here replacing the ocean. Uh.
If we look back at the earlier search, right, the
idea that the idea that yes, there was some sort
of large wooden boat that survived a flood, that idea

(16:58):
is not implausible. The the the idea that it holds
all the animals is a little bit fanciful. Um. But
the other thing is that this mount error at belief
is very specific and it's been a while around for
a while. According to Jack Sasson, uh, professor of Jewish

(17:19):
and Biblical Studies of Vanderbilt, University out in Tennessee. The
whole belief amount er At as the resting place of
the art comes from a kind of loose interpretation of
Biblical description, because the Bible mentions a place called Aura
to an ancient kingdom in modern day eastern Turkey. And
so people have decided or discovered or come come to

(17:43):
the conclusion somehow that mounts error At is the is
the resting place. It kind of made it fit the
narrative now. Paul Zamanski Uh, an archaeologist who specializes in
the Middle East at stony Brook University in New York,
notes Uh says something that I think a lot of

(18:03):
people find interesting is a little snarky. I don't know
of any expedition that ever went looking for the Ok
and didn't find it. And he adds that nobody associated
that mountain with the Ok until the tenth century BC. Furthermore,
there's no geological evidence for a mass flood and Turkey
round four thousand years ago. I don't know if that's

(18:24):
how he sounds. I like this Paulsky guy. I I
hope that's how he sounds, but I don't I don't
think he sounds that way. Sorry, Paul no offense. So
as you can imagine, the group who claimed to discover
the arc in the early two thousand's believes they were
discriminated against due to their religious beliefs, that there is
a conspiracy a foot. Well, sure I can, I can

(18:48):
see that if you truly believe you found the ark.
I mean, I've seen those Dan Brown movies and read
the books. It reminds me of Indiana Jones too. Sure.
I am always I'm always a sucker for an adventurous
archaeological exploration. And we do know that a lot of

(19:09):
things that were believed to be mythological or fictional are
proven eventually to be real things. Not all the time,
but oftentimes. One great example that we are fond of
bringing up on this show is the city of Troy.
That's right, listeners, depending on your age um. In previous generations,

(19:33):
very close to recent history, people thought Troy was just
ah a pretty story for the Rubes, and anyone who
claimed to believe that Troy was real was either lying
to you to swindle you, or was dumb enough to
be swindled themselves. And then boom turns out ye yep,

(19:57):
good job, human beings. We lost an entire ay for centuries,
and we've and we've done the same. We still have
many lost cities, uh in underwater now, or pyramids that
are essentially hidden into the structure of a mountain right right,
or things that have been eaten by the jungle in

(20:19):
South America which is still possibly which you can still
find via lidar. But as we have mentioned in our
podcast on law civilizations, some of those governments have reasons
to not show them. I'm not talking about some huge
apocalyptic conspiracy. I'm saying that if the United Nations rules
them as historically significant locations, then the government is on

(20:42):
the hook for protecting them and paying for their maintenance.
So unfortunately, that's that's a real thing, because a real conspiracy.
It is. It is, but it seems so not petty,
just like not that big of a deal. I guess
it can get quite expensive to protect a law urge
site in that way, and it would be enough to

(21:03):
prevent a government from wanting to have it on the books,
I guess sure, especially if you're cash strapped and corrupt.
Cash strapped or corrupt, those are two particular particularly interesting
flavors of government. They go great together. Peasing carrots. You
have examples of it, are not those of governments that
are not either of those categories. Well, it's as I'm saying,

(21:25):
it's all gradations of of cast strappedness and corrupt. I
hear Singapore's uh, pretty uncorrupted. However they are also very authoritarian.
That's that's that's one. That's another end of the continuum there,
you know. Yeah, either authoritarian, corrupt, or cash strapped. It's
like that old thing about oh what's We repeat this

(21:48):
a lot when we're talking about video and film off
air U you can have something fast, good, or cheap.
You can only have two of those three. Yeah, choose
because you're gonna miss one. But the idea here that
there would be an archaeological conspiracy is not from from
the people who believe in it. It's not that far

(22:10):
fetched because we know that there has been suppression of
the past before, in multiple instances of dominant cultures seek
to erase the record or the history of the people
who came before or the culture that they that had
been supplanted. And this is not ancient history. This is

(22:33):
happening now around the world. Places with different places are
getting their names changed to match the language of the
dominant culture or the would be dominant culture. UM our
own our own country has a vast and disturbing history
of seeking to eradicate UH native people's right. And so

(22:57):
for people who believe that there is a biblical arc,
for people who literally interpret this UM as you know,
the word of God, not an allegory, then it would
be it would be completely within the realm of hossibility
for a dominant government to suppress the evidence of this.

(23:24):
An author named Carl Bright believes the arc is not
only real, but hidden from the mainstream actively, and he
wrote a book called Quest for Discovery, One Man's Epic
Search for Noah's Ark. He argues that world governments are
suppressing the location of the arc because they don't want
to UM. Well, here we have a quote. I firmly

(23:45):
believe that the governments of Turkey, Russia, and the United
States know exactly where the arc sits. They suppress the information,
But God is in charge. The structure will be revealed
in its time. We climb the mountain insert hoping it
is in fact God's time. As we climb, use are
so Lord is our prayer, so as you can see

(24:10):
this UH. This author also has clearly a an established
belief system here, and it's always tricky when we explore
the nature of belief, being such a fundamentally subjective and
private thing. So we would love to hear from you, ladies, gentlemen, others, shadows,

(24:35):
anyone who happens to be a massive spiders wearing a
bag of flesh. We won't tell your secret, but we
do want to know what you think about the story
of Noah's art. It's generally considered by academia to be
uh what is called the pseudoscience, which I know is
rough for a lot of people to hear. But we
also have to acknowledge that people who are professional biblical

(24:56):
scholars and Christians themselves often note that they believe the
story of Noah's art functions as an allegory for as
an all set a cleansing of sorts, rather than a
physical flood. But but we have more for you, because

(25:17):
we have found a little bit of a little bit
of forensic, archaeological or geological evidence that might support a
seat of truth from which the flood myth began. And
we'll get to it after a word from our responsible
war and we're back. Okay, here's the thing. So originally,

(25:51):
when we first started exploring this idea, we thought, well,
you know, nobody could build a boat now to hold
sufficient breeding population of all the animals in the world.
Just we can't. We we can't do it. It's not
that we can't build something big enough. I'm sure if
all everybody worked together we could we just does it

(26:13):
imply that there was some kind of clown car logic
going on that God sort of like helped out and
gave the ability to fit more stuff. It's like bigger
on the inside, like the tartists, you know. I mean,
do you think there was maybe a little bit of
intervention perhaps, right, a little bit of divine interventions? The
story sure has a lot of magical thinking involved. I mean,

(26:34):
you can't get away from the fact that, like you're saying,
if we can't do this today with all the machinery
and equipment we have, you know, how could it have
been done without some sort of you know, intervention from
a higher power or is it just meant to be
kind of an allegory? Right? And and there's also the question,
you know, uh, what sorts of animals were around at

(26:58):
the time, because we will also here other biblical scholars
who say, well, there were just fewer species of animals, which,
believing what I do about the nature of adaptation, I
find difficult. I've heard several different things in from Bible
study over the years, but one was that it was

(27:18):
just animals from the immediate area. And in this, in
this version of like an interpretation, the flood itself wasn't
perhaps a global flood that was survived. That's one one
version that I've heard. Another one was that, um, it
was never like the magical thinking of you know, changing

(27:41):
the interior of a boat to make it abble to
fit everything in um. The third one is more allegorical,
and this is from a Bible class and it's just
a way to use the wisdom that's found in this
story of when you see something bad happening, prepare and
you know, say of that which is around you as well. Yeah,

(28:03):
that's you know, this, this is the thing. These different versions,
these different interpretations, are all evidence of the unavoidable thing
that occurs when we look in the distant past. History
is a game of telephone with the actions and the

(28:24):
beliefs of the dead. And you know, people might dress
it up, uh and and talk about the great inspiring
moments of history, and of course those do exist. But
what I'm saying is that we tend to add, to
take away from, um modify and re contextualize the stories

(28:45):
of the past. And since most of the people from
the past, statistically speaking, are dead or haven't contacted us, uh,
there's no one to say, hey, that's not how it
actually happened. There's no one around to say, well, we
took the animals on the farm. We took all the
animals on our farm to escape a regional flood or

(29:07):
something like that. Here's something interesting. There's a thing called
the Black Sea deluge hypothesis. So around fifty b c E.
According to this hypothesis, there was a catastrophic rise in
the level of the Black Sea and waters from the
Mediterranean Sea breached a sill in the Bosphorus straight So

(29:32):
this was published in or the New York Times mentioned
it right before it was in an academic journal. And
here's here's the weird thing. People agree that the events
described in this hypothesis happened. They're only debating the details.
How suddenly did it happen, When exactly did it happen?

(29:55):
How bad was the flooding. But in the side of
the authors of this are two guys named William Ryan
and Walter Pittman. So before hundred, glacial melt water had
turned the Black and Caspian Seas into these huge freshwater
lakes draining into the a g and Sea. As the

(30:16):
glaciers retreated, some of the rivers emptying into the sea
UH declined and then lower decline and volume, and they
ended up changing course to hit the North Sea. The
levels of lakes dropped through evaporation. Overall, sea level began
to rise due to worldwide oceanic changes, and finally the

(30:37):
rising Mediterraneans spilled over at the Bosphorus UH and flooded
sixty thousand square miles of land and it expanded the
Black seashoreline to the north and west. So this would
this would be the um for their hypothesis. They would say,

(30:57):
for at least three hundred days, AH, ten cubic miles
of water poured through and that's two hundred times the
average flow of Niagara falls for three hundred days. Yeah,
the days don't match up, but obviously depend on how
quickly this happened. It's like that old that oldie song

(31:20):
nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. I took out
the baby so it sounded more serious. Did that work? Yeah? No,
I think it did, especially if you think about the
modes of transportation that were available at the time. If
this kind of water is just flooding through a most
people are foot, yeah, most people are on foot. An

(31:42):
animal would be a significant investment there. So critics of
this usually focus on how much water was going through
or how rapidly it came through, right, that's time in
the degree. However, Um, if this happened at a certain

(32:04):
you know, past a certain rapidity, then yeah, it would
seem like the world was flooding, right. Uh. This this
idea of remains somewhat controversial. There there are other instances
that are almost have floated. There are other instances that

(32:26):
are proposed as the real life origin of the global
flood myth. But it's kind of weird when you think
about it, isn't it that all these cultures, many of
which are unrelated, have some sort of flood myth? Like
I I accept, of course the idea that from Babylonians, uh,
Samarian and Mesopotamian culture, a lot of later European or

(32:52):
Christian flood myths could originate um and even maybe contact
with India. But what about what about people in North
and South America? Why they keep j Maya have a
flood myth? This ties into a lot of things that
people argue as evidence of lost civilizations, like Limeria or Atlantis.
They say, well, there was this great civilization, incredibly advanced.

(33:17):
They because of some catastrophe or angering the gods or
some sort of forbidden technology, even nuclear power, they destroyed
themselves and then in in the process founded all these
other cultures after they flooded the world. That's that's something

(33:37):
I don't know, we've we've talked about that before this
initial we have, and I think that is one of
the more fascinating things to think about. That's a great
concept to imagine. If you go to the Georgia Aquarium.
I did that. I did that last time. I went
with my son and I just you know that the

(33:58):
large way the tunnel, Yeah, you just walked through that,
And I was just imagining being in Atlantean at lantern.
I don't know, what is that from one from Atlantis
Atlantean Atlantean person. I imagine being a person and just
floating through that thing. Yeah, and I imagine our culture
right now, in our society, and what tales will be

(34:21):
told about it several thousand years from now. How this
kingdom existed in this continent and they developed these weapons
and then flooded the world. Oh, here's a here's a
game for everyone in the audience. You might enjoy this.
I enjoy this. It's it's a little bit dark. Next
time you're around really densely populated area in terms of structures,

(34:43):
like you're going through a city, imagine what future historians
and archaeologists will will I think these things were, um,
thousands and thousands of years in the future, maybe human,
maybe alien, Because what always gets me when I see
big interstate interchanges is I can easily imagine some smug
jerk again human alien, thousands and thousand years in the future, going. Uh,

(35:07):
their aqueduct system was quite advanced with the highways for
biological entities, spaghetti junctions, water flow. Yeah, that's that would
be the idea. And then skyscrapers, how are you going
to explain those? Those are kind of phallic. There's gonna
be what monuments to whatever weird god they imagine we

(35:27):
worshiped other excavations have revealed evidence of localized flooding. So
in the modern day Telfara a rock there are there's
evidence of flooding. There's evidence of localized flooding in er
Kish Rook Lagash Nineva, and we see that more and more.

(35:52):
The answer to the flood myth is maybe not one
single flood taking over the planet as much as it
is series of catastrophic, horrific regional floods that occur in
a in a time when most people lived and died within,
you know, easily within twenty miles of where they were born.

(36:13):
So our our answer here is still it's still up
for debate. Is it is it possible that someone saved
all of the animals in the world in a single boat? Literally?
It's highly implausible, right, right, But the more we learn

(36:40):
about the history of flooding right and and even controversial
things like this black seed deluge hypothesis, the more we
have to ask ourselves is this story is some some
part of this story based in truth? Did someone actually
survive a regional flood and I save a whole bunch

(37:03):
of animals by building a boat in time? Yeah? What
do you guys think? I think that's highly plausible that
there was a much smaller scale, non global flood threat
that one person was either knew about through you know,
some kind of higher means, or maybe he just kind
of had some abilities to look for those signs. You know,

(37:26):
maybe there were some clues and the environment changing in
the weather, and there was just one guy that was like, Hey,
here's an idea. Let's go ahead and do a little
doomsday prepping right now and build ourselves a big old
boat and take all the animals we have on the farm.
Maybe on a large enough scale that it impressed people
to such a degree that the story, like a game
with telephone, gradually morphed a little bit of that boat

(37:46):
got bigger and bigger, and it went from being just
about this area to being about the entire planet. You know.
I mean, but if Noah and the people on the
boat and the animals on the boat were the only
ones who survived in the area, who told the story,
was it no Uh? Because I can imagine no I
a little bit. It was Babe the pig who got

(38:06):
to start on Noah's ark before going to Hollywood. Uh.
We are going to end this today, of course, we
want to hear from you if you have if you
have a take on the arc, if you have a
take on the evolution of mythology, or if there's stuff
you heard um in your own research that lends lends

(38:29):
a different perspective to this. Uh. We we would love
to hear about it. You can find us on Facebook
and Twitter. But before you do, if you're on the Internet,
I want to leave you with some interesting news. As
of July. If you would like to see a full
scale replica of the arc built according to the biblical specifications,

(38:54):
you have but to travel to Kentucky, Yes, where a
group of people have built a full scale replica of
Noah's Arc ft long ft why fifty one ft high? Um.
This is part of a theme park, Biblically oriented theme park,

(39:19):
So we'd love to If you live around Kentucky and
want to send us some pictures, we'd also love to
check those out. I want to see inside, you know
what I mean. Oh, and there's a Christmas special going
on right now. I think it's half price admission. Man.
All right, Well, I've got to get on the road then. Uh.
If you want to learn more about the about some

(39:40):
of the topics we addressed here, including historical suppression, UH,
including conspiracies to keep knowledge from the masses. Then you
can check out our website Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know dot Com, where we have not one, not two,
not three, not seventeen, but every single audio podcast we
have ever done in the history of this show for free.

(40:05):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are

(40:25):
conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't
Want You to Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.