How Noah's Ark Worked

You never know what you're gonna get when you walk in in the booth. Here, let's dusk the place with this. That is lovely um essential oil, which means all natural and that it's necessary. Well, it's not a fragrant soil, right, which is not all natural? Oh yeah, you would know all about that. Yeah, yeah, Emily's all over that stuff. Sure, mamabout the body Love your Mama dot com. And that

is Emily's soap and toiletries and candle toiletries. Yeah, like brushes and stuff, right, lotion and scrubs and candles are all essential oils, all natural. Boy, this is just really sure. All right, we haven't done that in a long time. Um, hey, Chuck, I know I asked you, so I know the answer. But have you seen Zeitgeist the movie? I have not. I have heard about it before you even said anything. Yeah, it's definitely out there in the Zeitgeist guest producer Maddie

it was all over that stuff when it came out. Yeah, I finally saw it. Um Like I would have these conversations with you. Mean, she's like, you really need to seize, Like, guys, how have you not seen? Like guests, Well, we finally sat down and watched it, and it's it's really really good. I mean, like the guy made it for seven grand and um, I just did an incredible job with it. And there's I'm not going to give it away. I

would recommend everybody seeing it. I'm sure it will like offend a lot of people and it'll take a lot of people off. But then there are some people out there who will be like, wow, this is really cool. But one of the um one of the things, one of the first ones, first segments is talking about how there is um like basically all of the religious figures are cold can be dated back to or trace back to Horse, the ancient Egyptian god. We I think we've

mentioned that before too. Well. The Zeitgeist, the movie like really goes into detail about this um but the whole thing kind of begs a question that's related to um Noah's ark, which we're about to talk about, and that how when when you have cultures all over the world that share a similar story or have a similar um idol or something like that, there's there's just some sort of commonality and it's so they resemble one another so much.

Is that evidence that it something took place, or is the evidence of cultures borrowing from one another and forming a cultural tradition that can be traced back to a single source. Yeah, I mean it definitely can be both to an extent. I mean there is a disparence, the

disparity between the two. Also, I mean, you know, um but the flood definitely falls into that because there are stories of the flood of a global, worldwide catastrophic flood that just changed everything all over the place and many many religions, in many religious texts. Yes, it's usually accompanying that flood legend is a man who built a boat was commanded by God or warned in some traditions, and

built a boat. UM, put two of every animal you could find on them, or two of every animal, and uh basically sat there and waiting for the rains to come. Steve Carrell, exactly did you see that? No? Never did you. I saw parts of it enough to know that I was disappointed in Steve carl I got that in from the TV heads. Oh sure, yeah, but they that you know. That's kind of the story, though, is that a man named Noah is chastised by the people in his UH town,

in his area for being foolish. I know there's not gonna be a flood. He's warning ins of this flood. You're silly, silly man, building your crazy silly arc. Right, And there's that's definitely part of the allegory. The moral tale is, you know, you should be able to withstand the ridicule of your nonbelieving heathen neighbors when God talks to you. That's right, right. Let's talk about the other

more possibly scientific aspects of the flood, because it's so ubiquitous. UM, A lot of people have dedicated scientific inquiry to a big time UH. This article says outright, that a literal flood that would submerge the Earth to its mountaintops is not possible because that would require five times the amount of water in the oceans and atmosphere put together. Right, Because one of the aspects of this flood legend is that the whole earth was flooded up to the mountaintops. Right.

And here's where we get into that whole balle yarn of literal Bible literalists or Biblical fundamentalists. You know, maybe the whole world at that time meant that area, you know, the Middle East. Well, yeah, I mean, like this is a time when there was no communication other than maybe a bake clay tablet um and travel was fairly limited in regional in nature. So if you have a big enough flood by all intensive purposes, like the world is flooded,

the world as they know it, Yes, yeah, right. I just found out the Bible literalists they don't literally believe every word of the Bible. Is like, they still believe in in metaphor, in horrible and allegory and stuff like that. I kind of thought that that those people believe exactly what you see in the Bible is exactly what happened. Yeah, what did they Why would they call themselves literalists? Well, because they're more literal than I guess the other camp.

But it's yeah, that's a I mean, that's a entirely different podcast altogether. Oh yeah, there's a lot of a lot of stuff with that, and one will probably never record, probably not um. Well, let's talk about some of the theories behind all this. You said that it's physically impossible, it's bio geochemically impossible for um the earth to have flooded up to the mountaintops. That's what they say, that's what scientists say. You said that it's probably a little

more um. It was probably a little more local or regional, And there's actually evidence of UM flooding in the right place at about the right time, enough to support what's called the Noah's flood hypothesis a k a. Black Sea deluge theory. I like them both. Yeah, they're both good. It don't say the band name thing that Like eight people just went like that's how did you think about that black seas theory? Well, too long from my taste.

Uh So you're talking about William B. F Ryan, Walter C. Pittman of Columbia in New York Times actually before they even published it, and and like journals, the New York Times published it. Um. They postulated a theory that the Great Flood was resulting from rising waters in the Black Sea, just as the last ice age was tapering off, which

makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Um, they're basically their Their whole idea was that the ice caps um overwhelmed the Mediterranean, which flowed across the Bosporus Strait and into the Black Sea, right right, yeah, um. And apparently this would have happened at about two times the force of Niagara falls. Those two guys reckon square miles, so they think would have been flooded. Man. And there's actually evidence, Um. The guy Robert Ballard who discovered the Titanic, who will

visit with later, um found evidence that there is there was. Indeed, the Black Sea was indeed at one time a freshwater lake. Now it is a saltwater sea in Inland Sea. And so most likely that was the result of the Mediterranean infiltrating it. He was that two thousand seven, was at his work, No, no, he was. He Um searched for

evidence of Norzark in the late nineties thousand um. But so they did find incontrovertible natural evidence, but they didn't find evidence that there were people that would have witnessed it. So they don't know if it happened at a time when people noticed it, or if it was cataclysmic, if

it killed a bunch of people. Are watchure to thousand seven, they found evidence that ice caps melting from Greenland kicked the sea level up about four and a half feet between over the course of about what six hundred years or so. But there was a five year study from UNESCO and the International Union of Geological Services in two thousand nine that said if there was a sea rise and a flood like that, it was probably over a

longer period of time and more mild than that. Well, yeah, six hundred years, more mild than six hundred years, they were saying, yeah, like maybe as much as a thousand years. Right, And here's the big problem, um, the Noah's Flood hypothesis and all the supporting evidence doesn't There's a really important peace left out, which is the rain. Depending on who you talked to, it rain for six days up to forty days and forty nights well up to a hundred

and fifty days. Actually, who was that? Well, that's in the Bible, Okay, I thought it was forty days and forty Well it says forty days and forty nights. But then I think, man, I wish I hadn't front of me. So something about the waters for a hundred and fifty days. So maybe it rained that long, and the flooding rose up to a point of a hundred fifty days right before it subsided. And he also took seven pairs of clean animals. Uh yeah, and then to unclean animals a

k a. Ferrets. They're they're really unclean. They're good eating. Though I just left at that. It's also possible improbable that, um, this the whole flood legend, since remember, um, the world was a lot smaller even though it's really large at the time. Um was a larger than usual flooding of the tigers and euphrates, which flood every year and yeah and every summer. I think, yeah, it's it's seasonal flooding. You know, we didn't mention Noah's flood in the How

Floods Work episode. This is the follow up, Um, but the seasonal flooding, if there was one that was really

really really bad. Right. Um, the the these people, the people who started to first record the idea of Noah and this great flood were in that area at the time, the Mesopotamia area, starting with the Sumerians, right, and some postulate perhaps Noah was wealthy and could afford a really great boat and the Tigris and Euphrates flooded, and that became the story that eventually morphed into uh Islamic and

Judeo Christian versions. Right. But about two thousand years before it was recorded in the Old testament Um, the Sumerians wrote of a man named Zeo Sudra, right and uh he was basically the archetype for Noah and the flood story. And then that was followed up by the world's first book, the world's first known book, one of my personal favorites, the Epic of Gilgamesh by John Grisham. Right. Yeah, it

was a good one. Yeah, I can't believe that twist at the end the attorney the lady with forty million dollars. So you're right. That is the oldest book in recorded history. In the Babylonians say there was a man named uh utna Una pished him and he warned of a great flood, built a boat about the size of an acre, and uh, there were six days and nights of rain, and he

sailed to modern day bah Ran. Right. What what's interesting is that the the size of the boat is found just about the same in all of these traditions, starting with Gilgamesh about an acre in size, up to the Bible, which mentions that it's three cubits. And let's just go ahead and discuss cubits for a moment. Okay, I think it's time in the history of stuff, you should know

that we finally got the cubits. But a cubit is an ancient measurement of length that runs from the tip of the middle finger of the inside of the elbow. It's usually about fourteen inches or something like um forty five point seven two centimeters eighteen inches or forty centimeters right, um, So three hundred cubits is fifty inches or thirteen thousand, seven hundred sixteen centimeters, which means it's four fifty or a hundred thirty seven ms right long. Three decks made

of gopher wood. All that equals would cover about an acre in areas it is, But it is strange that it does appear with about the same dimensions in all these traditions. So it makes you wonder if there was a wealthy merchant um in the area at that time, did he really have an acre sized boat or was it just like that's the opposite of an allegory for a really big boat. It's like really specific rather than hyperbolic. Maybe it would be high bobollic. That's a big boat

for today with today's technology. Uh So. In the Koran and for people out there that are going what no one's in the Koran? No in u h He's one of the five prophets of Islam, along with Abraham, Jesus, Moses, and Adam. Did you just say, Jesus, I did did you know this before this article? Uh? Yeah, I took religion in college. Okay, I had no idea Jesus is um a venerated prophet in the Islamic tradition. I bet

a lot of people don't know that. Uh So. The Book of Sarah or s u r a h Sarah tells of new or noah Um speaking as a prophet of God, warning his neighbors turned from your evil ways and aside from the name differences and the where the arc eventually lands, which in the Bible it's Mount Ara Rat and the Koran it's Mount Judy or is it Judi I took it as Judy Judy. Um, those are really the only differences other than that they're pretty similar

to each other, right, But those locations are very specific. Yeah, it's not like on a mountain somewhere. And there are also two very different locations, both known at the time, So I mean it's not like they were confused or anything like that. Um. There's also another location, um that people search to, uh Mount Suleiman in Iran. But those are the three big mountains that are being looked at currently. That is correct, So let's talk about, um, the search.

There's there's been uh a lot of There's been a number of searches. I think there still are for the arc. People want to find evidence of the arc because if you find the arc, well then everything really happened, and the creationists and literalists are like, hey, I told you. And so a lot of people have kind of looked into this, and we talked about the geo logical evidence.

There's a little more. UM, there's some evidence that the the tigers and Euphrates river did indeed have a pretty big flood around and that it wiped out entire cities in Sumer. That's that's pretty good evidence that this flood did indeed happen, right, yeah, a flood. But we're still lacking one of the main components as far as biblical scholars are concerned, which is the arc fingerprints. Oh right, so yeah, let's go to aera which is particularly tantalizing

or was at one point in time. Uh the the and I got a little impotent in this special in the Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark. CBS aired this uh special that they later on said was entertainment and not documentary after the fact that had It was hosted by what's his name, Darren McGavin from A Christmas Story. He's awesome and yeah Billy Madison, and um, did I ever tell you? I saw The Christmas Story at a screening in l a and they brought him out. No the

director was there and told stories. He made porkis so he could make a Christmas story. Oh yeah, you did tell And they wheeled out there McGavin or in wheel him out. He was he was in a wheelchair kind of back into my right and everyone stood and clapped and he was just kind of like, it was kind of sad. He was old. He waved like the queen. Yeah, and his wife was like, this is for you, Like, I don't think he quite got it. Oh wow, he's that old. Huh. Yeah. He died not too long after that.

I think when did you see him? So this was definitely post Billy Madison because he was totally sharp and mobile and everything. This is like two thousand one ish or two thousand somewhere in there. Well he went downhill quick. Yeah, it's very sad. He was great and Cold Check too, And what Cold Check? The night Stalker? Don't see that? Is that a movie? That was a TV show? Really? Yeah? It was like kind of like a outer limits kind

of thing, but it was mainly monsters. He was a private detective who would who would like end up on a case and there was a monster behind it or something like that, or a ghost or something crazy like that. It's like a supernatural detective series. Yeah, it's cool. I can't believe I've never heard of that. It's crazy. He had this tagline, who loves your baby? Not a finger all right, boy, we can get distracted so easy. Um. He hosted the show, CBS ran the show, and a

guy named George Jamal Um. Supposedly, his story was that he and a companion named Vladimir crawled into a hole in the ice at the top of Mount Ara Rat into a wooden structure. Um he says. He says, quote, we got very excited when we saw this. Part of the room was divided into pends, like places where you would keep animals. And so this is on TV and people are getting like really excited about this that uh,

he took some wood with them. Then tragedy struck. Vladimir was taking pictures and basically backed up and like fell out and tumbled down the mountain and died, destroying the film evidence. Wink wink. Uh. And as of course, if you can't see where this is headed, as it later comes out, George Jamal is an actor. He'd been telling this story for years. He's never been to Turkey. There is no Vladimir. The whole thing was completely made up.

And uh, it gets a little more fun. Though. They had experts paraded about throughout the show that claimed certain things like Biblical era people developed the batteries and uh, with those batteries they ran air conditioners. Wait, I've heard about batteries. They did have chemical batteries, like back in Egypt. Really, yeah,

did they run air conditioners? I don't believe that. Um. They said that the flood occurred in subterranean chambers, bursting up through the Earth's surface with the blosion explosive power of ten billion hydrogen bombs. And it's important to note that none of this is like substantiated. It was all

just like made up stuff. And then finally they found fossils of animals buried in swimming positions, and fish found in positions of terror, fins extended and eyes bulging, so like these fish were so scared that they were fossilized and uh, flash fossilized, flash fossilized with their eyes intact, bulging at the water, because I guess a lot of water is intimidating to a fish. I would think they would have been like, sweet, do you think they really

need to pile on more lower? It was weird. Can we just stick with the existing lore and try to figure that out? So anyway, that was the big hoax, and it was found out to be a hoax and a big disappointment for some people. I'm sure some people. Other people are probably like um. So I've mentioned Robert Ballard,

the guy who found the Titanic, famed explorer UM. He led an exposition in two thousand UM and he was looking not so much for Noah's Ark itself, although if there's any place on Earth that would be a great place to preserve a wooden boat for several thousand years. The Black Sea, the bottom of it is apparently perfect, very very cold, very low in oxygen um. And they have found some pretty ancient wood structures, but they haven't found any Neolithic structures, although I said they did find

the ancient shoreline. They found seven kinds of muscles, like ancient extinct muscles. Five of them are salt water, two or freshwater. Just incontrovertible evidence that there is that that they found this old ancient freshwater lake shoreline and at some point that's what the Black Sea was, and then it was inundated somehow so quickly. Uh, not from the Neolithic period where it should have where this would have

taken place. Yet he has found some stuff, but not necessarily that, and that would suggest that this flood did happen, and it did happen quickly, and there were people around to witness it and create a story about it. But what experts think that there is no wood that would survive that long. It's that's likely the case in ice and water and whatever. And also, I mean if it was trapped in ice, like say on the side of error, right, Um, a glacier wouldn't have frozen it in place. It would

have moved it down the mountain. That's what they say. So what about Suleiman? Uh? Well, let's talk about the air rat anomaly first, because that's pretty interesting. Okay, I'm sorry, I thought we already had, did I guess not. I think we're about whom we took a step to the left. There are photos that were taken by the c I a UM back in the day, and I think it was I think it was actually film as well, and

they've got film frames now that they've released. They were classified and then released in the Freedom of Information Act. And if you look at pictures, there's a dark spot and it looks like a big old boat. It looks

like a big old boat. And um, so they called that the error at an only but most like experts claim, like you said, that it wouldn't just be stuck frozen up there, it would have moved down from the mountain, not at feet and that's where um uh, George Jamal said he what he found it was on err Rat, yeah, which he had never been tot Um. And then Mount Suleman that's the one in Iran and that's been a particular interest to the Bible Archaeology Search and ex Exploration Institute.

Did you see this one? I have not. Does it look like it too? It looks like a I mean it's rock. Well they're saying like, yeah, it looks like it's rock, but it's actually petrified wood. But it's not the big problem is it's missing like obvious cuts and joints in evidence that it was a man made wooden

structure at some point in time. Yeah. There's there's a Christian apologetics group called Answers in Genesis that you can find on the internet, and they even came out and were like, I think officially they didn't have an official comment, but they said, you know, even Christian creationist geologists say that it's a rock formation and this kind of stuff if you push it just makes us look bad. I got to, but they still said, but you never know, right. But it is in the shape of a boat. Ish,

that's cool. Of roughly the same size. That's very neat. So it's still out there. Possibly. I like Ballard's approach. He's like, I'm not looking for the ark, man, I'm looking for evidence that this flood took place, and there are people around to witness it. If I find the boat awesome, If not, whatever, and everyone else can just do get out. Yeah, exactly, I find it interesting. I did too. I sit ringside. Oh yeah, that's that's a good place to be in this one. Sure, um, you

got anything else? Uh no, My my nephew's name is Noah. I know I met him finally. Sure he is taller than you, taller than me. He's he's getting up there. Choose bigger voice deeper. That's funny, Like this little kid with this deep voice. Now I was waiting for it to crack it anymoret um. Okay, Well that's it. If you want to learn more about Noah's Ark, you can read this pretty cool article on the site by typing Noah's Ark in the search bar at how stuff works

dot com. Our beloved site, and I said how stuff works dot com or search bar or something like that, which means it's time for a listener mail. M hold everything, Josh. Before listener mail, we need to announce one final time, which still won't be enough because some people will still say, well, I didn't know about it. TS. We're doing all we can, yeah, seriously, aside from coming to your house and telling you excuse me.

March eleven, on Sunday, we are live podcasting at south By Southwest three pm to four thirty and at the Drisco Hotel Maximilian Room. That's official. You need to be a badgeholder, you kidd in. That is correct. The following evening Happy Hour Monday March twelve, five to nine Flado Irish Pub to fourteen West fourth Street. What's going on? We're having the stuff you should know, UH live variety show. We're gonna have our buddy John Hodgman. There are soon

to be Buddy Eugene Merman doing some stand up. He's very funny. We're gonna have music by Lucy Wainwright, Roach Crooks local Austin band and UH are good friends to Henry Clay people, your brothers in arms. That's right, And all of this is to show off clips from the public debut of our TV pilot that we made for Science Channel. That's right, half hour TV pilot, half hour show. If you think you know what it's like, you are mistaken.

It ain't no MythBusters, not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, why would we want to do another thing a myth we're doing our own? Is that what people think it is? Well, I mean that's what I would think. It would be sort of like, okay, but this is different. Is definitely fine. Channel is rolling the dice here on us. It's neat and it's very neat and fun and um, please show up to see clips. I mean it's gonna be like the party that evening in Austin, at least that's what

I think. Well, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of parties too, So yeah, it's that's really saying something. So come on down. You don't have to be twenty one to bring your kids. That can have some chicken fingers and iced tea and uh, it would just be a good wholesome night of fun. You're really pimping the chicken fingers lately. Fingers all right, let's get back to it. Yes, uh, this is from Sarah, the amazing fourteen year old fan. Awesome. It's been a while. We even psyched people out with

the Hodgman thing, but this is real. Hi, their epic people. That's the three of us. Wow. I just realized how long it's been since I emailed you guys. It has been forever. Over the past nine months, I've made some pretty big transitions. I'm now a freshman in high school, and it is in my old grade school. We had about thirty kids in the grade. Now I have a hundred kids. May not seem like too extreme to you,

but it's a little bit of a change. I went from knowing all my classmates middle names, birthdays, family members, etcetera. I'm sorry, parentheses, not in a creepy way. If you're with someone for eight years, you get to know a bit about them, she points out, like we would think she's some creepo uh to not knowing everyone. Luckily, I knew quite a few people from the other two towns that we came together with to make a high school,

so the transition wasn't that bad. Um. When I was in grade school, I was involved in almost every extracurricular possible. Not much has changed. I played golf, I'm in fb L A, remember that Future Business Leaders of America. UH, student council. I was in Scholastic Bowl International Club, band and drama club. I'm also taking singing and guitar lessons. So Sarah is continuing to her plot to overtake the world clearly uh. And then she just realized she hasn't

listened to a podcast in over a month. I literally faced palm myself. And then she sent us a YouTube video Josh of a macrom Ay lady who was afraid of owls on PBS. She thought it was very funny. I did too, and it gave her an idea that we should do a podcast on Macroomay, or maybe do one over phobias of animals. And then I thought, maybe do one on public television. So she says, do you see my dilemma? I have too many ideas. In normal circumstances,

this wouldn't be a problem. That's it. That's how she ended that way. There was some other stuff I had to edit. It was a long one. Well, thanks a lot, Sarah. We're glad for yet another dispatch from you, and not a phony one this time, that's right, I was a real one. I I emailed her back. I was like, hey, have you listened? Like we need send you your book and she was like, okay, send me my book. I was like, okay, have your parents send us your address? Did they do that? She goes, I'll have to get

back to you. So I suspect your parents don't know she's an Internet celebrator. Probably so. UM, well, if let's see, what do you want to hear about? Oh, I don't know if you've been If you how about this, if you've visited any uh biblicals famous biblical locations. If you've visited any famous biblical locations, and you know of great restaurants and watering holes in Austin, we want to hear about them one or the other. Um, it's almost one

of the same. Chunk. You can again remember follow us on Twitter at s Y s K podcast UM and you can join us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. And you can also UM send us emails just a great wonderful old fashioned email. UM to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. M be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stop work staff, as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to

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