HOT NEWS !

By Lauren Green - Fox News

Earlier this week a group of Chinese Christians held a news conference to announce they were 99.9 percent sure they had found Noah's Ark — the boat the Bible says was built by God's most righteous man before a "sinful" human race drowned in the Great Flood.

Maybe the find on Mount Ararat in Turkey really is Noah's Ark. More likely, it isn't. But if it isn't, that won't stop Ark enthusiasts from believing it is out there somewhere.

Immediately in the wake of the news flash, experts weighed in to shoot it down. "The wood in the photos is not old enough" ... "There are no location pictures to verify the site" ... "No independent experts have looked at the data" ... "There's never been evidence of a great flood."

And the people voicing the loudest caution are biblical archeologists who believe the ark is real and that it can be found. Dr. Randall Price, head of Judaic Studies at Liberty University, had been a cohort of the Noah's Ark International team until two years ago.

He pulled out of the project, sensing they were being taken advantage of by Kurdish guides, who've turned Ark searching into a cottage industry.

"I think we can't rule out the possibility that this is a hoax, because a lot of the things that happen in that region of the world, and especially with the Kurdish guides that are involved, are designed to try to extract money from gullible people," Price said.

But he added: "I'm reserving my opinion at this point until I see how things are developing."

Dr. John Morris, lead archeologist at the Institute for Creation Research, says "I'm leaning towards that the Chinese people have been deceived."

Morris has led 13 expeditions to Mount Ararat looking for the ark. He knows the area well and says of the recent find, "At best, it is an elaborate deception."

Morris and Price were contacted by the Chinese team to take part in the press event, but they declined based on how little evidence they saw. Professor Porcher Taylor at the University of Richmond says he, too, believes it is not Noah's Ark, because "they're digging in the wrong place on Mt. Ararat."

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By Jeff Hampton - The Virginian-Pilot

Remains of a ship nearly 400 years old salvaged from the surf early this month will be moved from Corolla, N.C., to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.

The wreck now sits exposed to the elements under an oak tree near the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.

State and local officials agreed it would be better off out of the weather. Typically, sand and salt water protect old wrecks but once up on land and dried, they tend to deteriorate.

Plans are to move the wreck about 90 miles south the museum within the next few weeks, said Joe Newberry, spokesman for the North Carolina Maritime Museums.

Held together with wooden pegs, the skeleton of large timbers, 17 feet wide and 37 feet long and weighing 12 tons, could be the oldest ship wreck ever discovered on the North Carolina coast.

State underwater archaeologists plan to study the wreck further to document its construction and try to identify the ship.

When the remains appeared years ago deep in the sand near the Currituck lighthouse, local beachcombers found coins and other artifacts around them.

Severe winter storms late last year fully exposed the timbers and grabbed the attention of state scientists.

In the last few months, surf and tide moved the wreck two miles south and washed away some of its pieces.
 

By Alex Wilson - VCR Reporter Online

A dedicated group of volunteer scuba divers employ their expertise surveying underwater archeology in the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary.

Coastal Maritime Archeology Resources members spend about a week living aboard research vessels twice a year, to measure and map shipwrecks, sunken airplanes and archeological sites scattered on the ocean floor.

CMAR Director of Operations Patrick Smith says there’s nothing quite like seeing a shipwreck for the first time. “It’s indescribable. There’s excitement, maybe a little bit of trepidation,” says Smith.

“There’s that wonderful feeling of breaching the unknown. There’s the anticipation of seeing something that nobody has seen for scores of years, or maybe hundreds of years.”

Smith says diving on shipwrecks evokes thoughts about the people who sailed on the historic vessels and sometimes perished aboard them.

“Each shipwreck is unique. They are a snapshot of that period of time, and they become a time capsule of that period of time,” says Smith.

“A shipwreck goes down, and it freezes that moment. It freezes all aspects of the human environment. What the people were eating and wearing. You can tell what their technology was.


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By Joe Kovacs - WorldNetDaily

Has the real Noah's Ark spoken of in the Bible truly been found ? 

At least two seasoned archaeologists who have made numerous expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of Noah's Ark are throwing cold water on this week's claim the Old Testament vessel has finally been discovered, saying it's a hoax involving wood hauled in from the Black Sea region.

"To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake," said Randall Price, director of Judaic Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

"This is not Noah's Ark," adds Bob Cornuke of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute. "This is a fake. It's a fraud and it's of the highest caliber according to what I can assess from the evidence and talking to eyewitnesses and people from Turkey."

WND reported yesterday that Chinese and Turkish explorers with Noah's Ark Ministries International said they were "99.9 percent sure" they found the remnants of the legendary biblical vessel high up on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.

The 15-member team claims it recovered wooden specimens from a structure at an altitude of 13,000 feet and that carbon dating suggested it was 4,800 years old.

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Several compartments, some with wooden beams, are said to be inside and could have been used to house animals, the group indicated.

"The search team has made the greatest discovery in history," declared Prof. Oktay Belli, an archaeologist at Istanbul University. "This finding is very important and the greatest up to now."

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By Benjamin Radford - LiveScience's Bad Science

A Chinese Christian filmmaker claims to have found the final resting place of Noah's Ark on Turkey's Mount Ararat.

Yeung Wing-Cheung says he and a team from Noah's Ark Ministries found the remains of the Ark at an elevation of about 12,000 feet (3,658 meters).

They filmed inside the structure and took wood samples that were later analyzed in Iran. He claims the wood was carbon-dated to around the reputed time of Noah's flood, which would be remarkable since organic material should have long since disintegrated in the last 5,000 years.

Yeung said that he is "99 percent certain that it is Noah's Ark based on historical accounts, including the Bible and local beliefs of the people in the area, as well as carbon dating."

While news of the find is making headlines around the world, there's one part of the story that Yeung is conspicuously silent about: He is only the latest in a long line of people who claim to have found Noah's Ark.

In fact, there have been at least half a dozen others — all of them funded by Christian organizations — who have claimed final, definitive proof of Noah's Ark. So far none of the claims have proven true.

Noah's Ark is routinely re-discovered, because there are many who fervently want it to be found. Biblical literalists — those who believe that proof of the Bible's events remains to be found — have spent their lives and fortunes trying to scientifically validate their religious beliefs.

There are several reasons why the new claims should be treated with skepticism. For example, Yeung refuses to disclose the location of the find and is instead keeping it a secret. This of course is inherently unscientific; for the claims to be proven, the evidence must be presented to other scientists for peer-review. Nor has the alleged 5,000-year-old wood been made available for independent testing.

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From STV

The passenger ship City of Adelaide, which travelled between Australia and Britain, is lying in Irvine.

A firm has been appointed to review options for the future of the 145-year-old City of Adelaide, currently resting on a slipway in North Ayrshire. The Sunderland-built ship, which predates the Cutty Sark, took people and wool between Australia and Britain on 28 round trips.

Later known as the Carrick, it has been left to the elements at Irvine and could still face deconstruction for display in a museum. Campaigners are competing to re-float the vessel and take it to Australia or back to Sunderland.

Scottish Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop announced that Historic Scotland had commissioned a firm, DTZ, to review the category A-listed ship's options.

Ms Hyslop said: "The appointment of DTZ to carry out this review is a very positive step and will help us to determine the best outcome for the SV Carrick.

"There are several options to consider: whether the Carrick is moved to Sunderland, Adelaide in Australia or retained in a different location in Scotland. The alternative is a managed deconstruction of the vessel.

"Officials from Historic Scotland and the Scottish Government have held a wide range of discussions with a number of bodies and individuals regarding this category A-listed ship."

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From Wicked Local Cape Cod

Back in 1746, the famous HMS Somerset was built in England to be a British Man of War ship. It wrecked off the cost of Truro Nov. 2, 1778. Back in 1775, ‘’hardly a man is now alive that still remembers’’ the British warship floating off of the Charlestown shore.

But on April 20, 2010, the Truro Central School 5th grade class went to Race Point Beach in Provincetown and hiked about two miles into Truro to see the remnants of the wreck of that same British warship.

With the crashing waves and the beautiful blue skies, we made it just in time for low tide and saw the ribs sticking out of the sand. The remains were beautiful.

After braving the white, explosive waves to take some pictures, we all emerged with frozen toes. It was absolutely amazing to touch an important part of history, to feel something that people sailed on 232 years ago.

It was astonishing to know that the ship that we touched was the same ship that Paul Revere rowed past in a small rowboat on his fateful midnight ride.

Our visit also just happened to be the day after that famous day- April 19- what we now know as Patriot’s Day.

By Sandy Semans - Sentinel

While State archaeologists try to determine the logistics needed to move the remains of a shipwreck from Corolla to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, the identity of the colonial-period vessel seems more uncertain.

Initially, it was thought that the pegged hull could be what is left of the HMS Swift, which went aground off of Virginia in 1698 and later ended up coming ashore in Currituck, where it was scavenged by locals. If that was found to be the case, it would make it the oldest shipwreck ever recovered in North Carolina.

But, according to Richard Lawrence, deputy State archaeologist in the Underwater Archaeology Branch, that's beginning to seem an unlikely possibility. The ship actually may be older the the Swift.

"After the first trip when we looked at it, we thought the Swift was a possible candidate but the more we have learned about the Swift, the less likely that seems," said Lawrence. "This seems to be larger, and the artifacts seem to pre-date the Swift. We are not seeing any artifact from 1690s, but, instead, more like the 1640s.

"We might be able to look at the construction techniques and come up with a time frame, but there are no physical tests we can do such as carbon dating."

Lawrence said that they will continue to look for candidates but they have searched the North Carolina database and none match. They might look at ships reported as sinking off Virginia to find a better match.

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