page_title: Durupınar site
section_title: Discovery and exploration
hierarchical_section_title: Durupınar site / Discovery and exploration
context_page_description: The Durupınar site is a large aggregate structure on Mount Tendürek in eastern Turkey. The site is 3 kilometres north of the Iranian border, 16 km southeast of Doğubeyazıt, in the Ağrı Province, and 29 km south of the Greater Mount Ararat summit, at an elevation of 1,966 to 2,004 m above sea level.
  The size and shape of the structure has led to its promotion by some believers as the original Noah's Ark, but geologists as well as some creationists argue that it is a natural formation. The site is near several officially-unnamed peaks, though locals call one of the nearby peaks Cudi Dağı in Turkish and Çîyaye Cûdî in Kurdish, which David Fasold linked to Mount Judi, the mountain named in the Quran as the final resting place of Noah's Ark. Some researchers place Mount Judi in another location farther south near the Turkish/Iraqi border.
context_section_description: According to local reports, heavy rains combined with three earthquakes exposed the formation from the surrounding mud on May 19, 1948. It was discovered by a Kurdish shepherd named Reshit Sarihan. It was subsequently identified by Turkish Army Captain İlhan Durupınar — for whom it was subsequently named — in a Turkish Air Force aerial photo while on a mapping mission for NATO in October 1959. Durupınar informed the Turkish government of his discovery and a group from the Archeological Research Foundation which included George Vandeman, İlhan Durupınar, and Arthur Brandenberger, professor of photogrammetry, surveyed the site in September 1960. After two days of digging and dynamiting inside the "boat-shaped" formation, the expedition members found only soil and rocks. Their official news release concluded that "there were no visible archaeological remains" and that this formation "was a freak of nature and not man-made".
  The site was then ignored until 1977, when it was rediscovered and promoted by self-styled archaeologist and amateur explorer Ron Wyatt. Throughout the 1980s, Wyatt repeatedly tried to interest other people in the site, including ark hunter and former astronaut James Irwin and creationist John D. Morris, neither of whom was convinced the structure was the Ark.
  In 1985, Wyatt was joined by David Fasold and geophysicist John Baumgardner for the expedition recounted in Fasold's The Ark of Noah. As soon as Fasold saw the site, he exclaimed that it was a shipwreck. Fasold brought along state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radar equipment and a "frequency generator", set it on the wavelength for iron, and searched the formation for internal iron loci (the latter technique was later compared to dowsing by the site's detractors). Fasold and the team states that the ground penetration radar revealed a regular internal structure and measured the length of the formation as 538 ft (164 m), close to the 300 cubits (157 m, 515 ft) of the Noah's Ark in the Bible if the Ancient Egyptian cubit of 20.6 inches (0.52 m) is used. Fasold believed the team found the fossilized remains of the upper deck and that the original reed substructure had disappeared. In the nearby village of Kazan (formerly Arzap), they examined so-called drogue (anchor) stones that they believed were once attached to the ark.
  Creationist commentators, such as Andrew Snelling in the Creation Ministries International journal Creation, wrote that "there are no scientific principles employed" in the "so-called frequency generator" used by Wyatt's team. He called it a "gadget, which is generally advertised in treasure-hunting magazines, not scientific journals" with "brass welding rods being used in essence, as divining rods, similar to the use of a forked stick to search for water."
  Fasold asserted in his 1988 book that locals call one of the peaks near to the Durupinar site al Cudi (Turkish Cudi Dagi, Kurdish Çîyaye Cûdî) and linked this to the Mount Judi named in the Quran as the final resting place of Noah's Ark. The assertion is controversial and not well supported by local toponymy.
  After a few expeditions to the Durupınar site that included drilling and excavation in the 1990s, Fasold began to have doubts that the Durupınar formation was Noah's ark. He visited the site in September 1994 with Australian geologist Ian Plimer and concluded that the structure was not a boat. He surmised that ancient peoples had erroneously believed the site was the ark.  In 1996, Fasold co-wrote a paper with geologist Lorence Collins titled "Bogus 'Noah's Ark' from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure", which concluded that the boat-shaped formation was a natural stone formation that merely resembled a boat. The same paper pointed out that the "anchors" were local volcanic stone.  The abstract reads:
  A natural rock structure near Dogubayazit, Turkey, has been misidentified as Noah's Ark. Microscopic studies of a supposed iron bracket show that it is derived from weathered volcanic minerals. Supposed metal-braced walls are natural concentrations of limonite and m
caption: An official road sign near Doğubeyazıt in Turkey with the words Nuhun Gemisi ("Noah's Ship") pointing the way to the Durupınar site and away from Mount Ararat
exif: {"Image Make": "RICOH", "Image Model": "RDC-5300", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.8.16", "Image DateTime": "2019:03:21 18:31:43", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "(C) by RDC-5300 User", "Image ExifOffset": "248", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "1999:01:01 01:02:07", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "1999:01:01 01:02:07", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3/2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "15/2", "EXIF ApertureValue": "15/2", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "21/2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/5", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "41/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1792", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200", "EXIF RelatedSoundFile": ""}