1 00:00:00,779 --> 00:00:07,779 This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. 2 00:00:07,779 --> 00:00:18,780 The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine. 3 00:00:18,780 --> 00:00:25,780 According to the Bible, God said unto Noah, Make thee an ark. 4 00:00:25,780 --> 00:00:31,780 Behold, I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth. 5 00:00:31,780 --> 00:00:40,781 No written word has survived as much skepticism as the story of Noah's ark. 6 00:00:40,781 --> 00:00:44,781 A century ago, scholars dismissed it as a quaint old legend. 7 00:00:44,781 --> 00:00:50,781 Then, evidence of its authenticity began to appear. 8 00:00:50,781 --> 00:00:58,781 In 1870, a young British clerk found an ancient account of Noah. 9 00:00:58,781 --> 00:01:06,782 Recently, divers in Florida found human bones submerged by an ice age global flood. 10 00:01:06,782 --> 00:01:17,782 And now, climbers are risking their lives on treacherous Mount Ararat for the greatest archaeological prize of all, remains of Noah's ark. 11 00:01:21,782 --> 00:01:29,783 A few feet of snow, a few days of rain can destroy a city. 12 00:01:29,783 --> 00:01:36,783 In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after only two days of rain, the river rose 46 feet. 13 00:01:36,783 --> 00:01:39,783 25 people were killed. 14 00:01:39,783 --> 00:01:46,783 When rivers burst their banks or tidal waves sweep onto land, the death toll can be staggering. 15 00:01:51,784 --> 00:01:59,784 Time and again, in the 20th century, we've witnessed the awesome destructive power of a flood. 16 00:02:03,784 --> 00:02:07,784 The greatest legend of all is the flood. 17 00:02:07,784 --> 00:02:12,785 The story of Noah has been told in many fanciful ways. 18 00:02:21,785 --> 00:02:33,785 A recent recreation, the world that perished, made by an organization called Films for Christ, tells the tale in a literal fashion. 19 00:02:33,785 --> 00:02:39,786 According to this recreation, Noah's ark was 450 feet long. 20 00:02:39,786 --> 00:02:45,786 Such an enormous barge could contain enough animals to repopulate the earth. 21 00:02:46,786 --> 00:02:51,786 The Bible says Noah took seven of every clean animal aboard. 22 00:02:55,786 --> 00:03:02,787 It rained for 40 days and nights, but the waters were on the earth more than a year. 23 00:03:03,787 --> 00:03:12,787 Bible scholars have estimated that the deluge would have killed one billion humans and 35 trillion animals. 24 00:03:12,787 --> 00:03:19,787 They say that is exactly what God intended, to erase a wicked, violent world. 25 00:03:19,787 --> 00:03:27,788 So, searching for proof of Noah's flood is like trying to solve the greatest mystery story of all time. 26 00:03:27,788 --> 00:03:35,788 Clues are everywhere and have been found in the most unexpected places. 27 00:03:35,788 --> 00:03:42,788 The modern search for Noah's ark began in 1870 with George Smith, a British bank clerk. 28 00:03:42,788 --> 00:03:54,789 Tons of broken, 4,000 year old tablets had been dug up near the Persian Gulf and stored in the British Museum. 29 00:03:55,789 --> 00:04:03,789 Smith was translating the cuneiform writing when he noticed a line that sent chills up his spine. 30 00:04:03,789 --> 00:04:12,790 An old man named Utnapishtim took his family and all kinds of animals aboard the great boat and the flood. 31 00:04:15,790 --> 00:04:17,790 The next piece was missing. 32 00:04:18,790 --> 00:04:25,790 Smith struggled with the puzzle for nine years. When he published his findings, they created a sensation. 33 00:04:25,790 --> 00:04:37,791 The London Daily Telegraph raised enough money to send him back to Nineveh, where against all odds, he found the missing piece. 34 00:04:38,791 --> 00:04:48,791 The details were so exact, it seemed to confirm that Utnapishtim was just another name for Noah. 35 00:04:48,791 --> 00:04:58,792 It told of sending forth a dove, then a raven, to test for dry land and the great boat landing on a mountain. 36 00:04:59,792 --> 00:05:07,792 The Bible says, and the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. 37 00:05:10,792 --> 00:05:18,792 For more than 2,000 years, mountain climbers have told of a huge ancient boat hidden in the glaciers of a mountain called Ararat, 38 00:05:18,792 --> 00:05:24,793 near the Russian-Turkish border and now surrounded by top secret missile sites. 39 00:05:29,793 --> 00:05:37,793 In the last 30 years, several research teams have braved the storms and avalanches to hunt an elusive prize. 40 00:05:40,793 --> 00:05:46,794 Many people thought this picture caught a glimpse of Noah's Ark, but it turned out to be just a boulder. 41 00:05:48,794 --> 00:05:56,794 Some observers have seen the Ark in a tiny blip on this satellite photo, but an active imagination can see many things. 42 00:05:59,794 --> 00:06:07,795 In 1969, members of the search foundation climbed Ararat with modern equipment. 43 00:06:12,795 --> 00:06:19,795 Risking their lives in a crumbling crevasse at 14,000 feet, they managed to film an incredible find. 44 00:06:19,795 --> 00:06:36,796 Beams of hand-hewn wood were discovered. A piece of Noah's Ark would be the greatest archaeological find of all time and would discredit the theory of evolution. 45 00:06:37,796 --> 00:06:51,796 Hoping to date the wood to 5,000 years ago, the search foundation sent samples to Reiner Berger, professor of geophysics at UCLA and a world leader in radiocarbon dating. 46 00:06:52,796 --> 00:07:02,797 It consists of oak wood that is very dark. It looks like it has been exposed to lots of water or melt water. 47 00:07:02,797 --> 00:07:11,797 And obviously it must have been brought onto Mount Ararat because it's way above the timber line where that piece was found. 48 00:07:12,797 --> 00:07:18,798 These reports of wood being 5,000 years old from Mount Ararat, I think are erroneous. 49 00:07:18,798 --> 00:07:34,798 A number of my colleagues and I have separately dated separate pieces of wood from there and found it to originate from around 8,700 to 900, in other words the Middle Ages. 50 00:07:35,798 --> 00:07:43,799 Although some scientists challenge the validity of radiocarbon dating, the presence of the Ark on Ararat has not been confirmed. 51 00:07:45,799 --> 00:07:49,799 There is however overwhelming evidence for the flood. 52 00:07:53,799 --> 00:07:58,799 Nineteenth century scientists delighted in poking holes in the story of Noah. 53 00:07:59,799 --> 00:08:04,799 For a time, the theory of evolution seemed to sink the Ark for good. 54 00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:14,800 Many twentieth century scientists however have come to believe in the story of Noah and the Genesis Flood. 55 00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:22,800 Chief among them is Dr. Henry Morris, an expert in geology and the flow of water. 56 00:08:23,800 --> 00:08:33,801 We have in our Creation Research Society, for example, at least 600 scientists and then there are thousands of others who are scientists, that is, they're trained, qualified scientists in different fields of science. 57 00:08:34,801 --> 00:08:39,801 Some of them geologists, some of them biologists, chemists and so on, the whole range of science represented. 58 00:08:39,801 --> 00:08:44,801 And these men all do believe in the worldwide flood as well as a special creation. 59 00:08:45,801 --> 00:08:52,802 So there's a real revival of interest in what we might call biblical creationism and catastrophism today among many scientists. 60 00:08:52,802 --> 00:08:55,802 It's still a minority, but it's a significant minority. 61 00:08:56,802 --> 00:08:59,802 There were two main causes of the flood, we believe. 62 00:08:59,802 --> 00:09:04,802 One is that there were great subterranean pressurized reservoirs under the Earth's surface. 63 00:09:05,802 --> 00:09:11,802 These erupted, bringing with them tremendous quantities of volcanic materials, magmas as well as water, steam and so on. 64 00:09:15,802 --> 00:09:22,803 And then that together with a tremendous downpour of rain all over the world, 65 00:09:23,803 --> 00:09:34,803 resulted from the condensation of a pre-flood worldwide vapor canopy around the Earth, a blanket around the Earth that kept the Earth as a giant greenhouse in the time of order flood. 66 00:09:35,803 --> 00:09:36,803 This all condensed and precipitated. 67 00:09:36,803 --> 00:09:44,804 There were tremendous torrents of rain all over the world for a long time, at the same time these subterranean mountains and reservoirs burst over. 68 00:09:45,804 --> 00:09:51,804 And so both from above and from beneath, Earth's crust just literally was eroded and transported and redeposited. 69 00:09:52,804 --> 00:09:58,804 The Earth was destroyed essentially in its original form and then redeposited and a new world emerged then after the flood. 70 00:09:59,804 --> 00:10:04,805 Then wherever you look in the mountains or in the valleys, everywhere all over the world, you find evidence of the flood. 71 00:10:04,805 --> 00:10:10,805 The entire geological column really speaks of catastrophic hydraulic burial. 72 00:10:11,805 --> 00:10:12,805 And this is a flood. 73 00:10:15,805 --> 00:10:20,805 Henry Morris founded the Institute for Creation Research at San Diego, California, 74 00:10:21,805 --> 00:10:27,806 where those scientists who call themselves creationists are gathering data in support of a worldwide flood. 75 00:10:28,806 --> 00:10:34,806 One dramatic example of rocks telling the story of the flood is the Grand Canyon. 76 00:10:41,806 --> 00:10:47,806 Not only here, but all over the Earth, sedimentary rocks are found in great thicknesses. 77 00:10:48,806 --> 00:10:56,807 Since there is no worldwide time gap or unconformity recorded in these sediments, Morris reasons they must have been deposited in the ground. 78 00:10:57,807 --> 00:11:01,807 They were then deposited by a single worldwide event, the flood. 79 00:11:02,807 --> 00:11:03,807 This took about a year. 80 00:11:04,807 --> 00:11:08,807 Canyons were then quickly carved in the soft sediments as the flood waters receded. 81 00:11:09,807 --> 00:11:12,807 The present Colorado River just simply does not have enough energy in it. 82 00:11:13,807 --> 00:11:18,808 There's not enough energy in the dynamics of the water to cut that canyon even in a trillion years. 83 00:11:19,808 --> 00:11:22,808 In other words, the only way you could have that canyon before there to have been soft sediments, 84 00:11:23,808 --> 00:11:26,808 a tremendously greater quantity of water than now flow through the river, 85 00:11:27,808 --> 00:11:34,808 then cut down rather rapidly, maybe starting with giant opening, maybe sort of giant mud cracks or something in these uplifted flood sediments. 86 00:11:35,808 --> 00:11:43,809 So the whole Colorado plateau area and the canyons going through it really speak of catastrophism, not of uniform tyranny. 87 00:11:51,809 --> 00:11:55,809 Other independent geologists have found evidence for the flood. 88 00:11:55,809 --> 00:11:59,809 Dr. Clifford Burdick has been to Mount Ararat four times. 89 00:12:00,809 --> 00:12:06,810 He failed to locate Noah's Ark, but his scientific mind recognized other clues. 90 00:12:07,810 --> 00:12:09,810 We did find many evidences. 91 00:12:10,810 --> 00:12:15,810 We were going to surprise about what we did find to support the theory that there was an Ark, 92 00:12:16,810 --> 00:12:20,810 and because that the mountain was covered with water at one time, and this is one of the evidences. 93 00:12:20,810 --> 00:12:27,811 We found great bodies of salt at 6,000 feet, which indicate that the water was much higher than 6,000 feet at one time. 94 00:12:28,811 --> 00:12:33,811 And also at 13,000 feet we found conglomerate rock which is rounded and formed under water. 95 00:12:34,811 --> 00:12:37,811 And also all the way up and down we found what is known as pillow lavas. 96 00:12:38,811 --> 00:12:46,811 That is liquid lava is poured out under the water and it freezes quickly in the form of pillow shaped ferret. 97 00:12:46,811 --> 00:12:53,812 So we have three principle evidences I think that there was a flood, although we didn't get to see the ship itself unfortunately. 98 00:12:54,812 --> 00:12:59,812 Many of his fellow scientists would say that Burdick is off by 100 million years. 99 00:13:00,812 --> 00:13:05,812 However, evidence for the global flood came from another field of research, folklore. 100 00:13:09,812 --> 00:13:15,813 On every continent are countless cultures, each with its unique collection of myths. 101 00:13:17,813 --> 00:13:24,813 At least 200 amazingly tell the same story of an ancient flood. 102 00:13:25,813 --> 00:13:31,813 We have a story like Noah from India too, and it's about Manu who caught a little fish who told him about the flood. 103 00:13:32,813 --> 00:13:35,813 And so he went and built himself a boat because of which he survived. 104 00:13:36,814 --> 00:13:41,814 And when the water went down he found himself on top of a mountain which is still called Manu's descent. 105 00:13:42,814 --> 00:13:48,814 And when the water receded it left the valleys that we still see in India today. 106 00:13:49,814 --> 00:13:50,814 From Kenya. 107 00:13:51,814 --> 00:13:57,814 Yeah, we have a story like the Noah's flood and this was actually caused by a woman who was a rain maker, 108 00:13:58,814 --> 00:14:06,815 who was disappointed by some people in a party and she decided to tell her friend to take away all her belongings and she brought a big rain. 109 00:14:07,815 --> 00:14:09,815 From many American Indian tribes. 110 00:14:10,815 --> 00:14:17,815 In the beginning of time there was a great fall of snow, then a mouse came and nodded at the leather skin and let out all the heat. 111 00:14:18,815 --> 00:14:22,815 Which caused a great flood that covered the fir trees and all the rocky mountains. 112 00:14:23,816 --> 00:14:27,816 There was an Indian man who came and saved all the animals and put them in his canoe. 113 00:14:28,816 --> 00:14:31,816 Even evolutionary scientists were puzzled by this consistency. 114 00:14:32,816 --> 00:14:37,816 They began searching for a source of water which could have flooded an entire planet. 115 00:14:38,816 --> 00:14:40,816 They found one in melting ice. 116 00:14:41,816 --> 00:14:46,816 When the last ice age melted the oceans of the world rose 300 feet. 117 00:14:49,817 --> 00:14:56,817 Now scientists suspect this may have happened very rapidly and could have been the basis for the stories of Noah's flood. 118 00:15:02,817 --> 00:15:06,817 Chaser A. Amigliani, professor of geology at the University of Miami, 119 00:15:07,817 --> 00:15:15,818 was investigating ancient tide marks and made a surprising discovery about the effect on North America of melting polar ice. 120 00:15:16,818 --> 00:15:20,818 At a certain point in time when this ice cap had thinned out considerably, 121 00:15:21,818 --> 00:15:25,818 seemed to have collapsed and produced this flood down the Mississippi Valley and elsewhere, 122 00:15:26,818 --> 00:15:29,818 there were also floods in the west and so on, in fact giant floods in the west. 123 00:15:29,818 --> 00:15:35,819 Research vessels sent Amigliani samples collected from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. 124 00:15:36,819 --> 00:15:39,819 A heavy probe punches out long cylinders of mud. 125 00:15:40,819 --> 00:15:47,819 By measuring oxygen isotopes in this mud, Amigliani found that almost 12,000 years ago, 126 00:15:48,819 --> 00:15:53,819 fresh cold meltwater suddenly flooded across North America into the Gulf. 127 00:15:53,819 --> 00:16:00,820 There is no question that the sea level rise in the Gulf of Mexico would in fact affect the rest of the ocean 128 00:16:01,820 --> 00:16:04,820 because the Gulf of Mexico is open to the rest of the ocean. 129 00:16:05,820 --> 00:16:09,820 So if we did a sea level rise in the Gulf of Mexico, it would affect the entire world ocean. 130 00:16:10,820 --> 00:16:17,820 We have been able to estimate that peak flooding down the Mississippi Valley might have reached occasionally 131 00:16:17,820 --> 00:16:24,821 and amount about 10, maybe even 20 times larger than peak flooding in historical time. 132 00:16:25,821 --> 00:16:30,821 So a very huge flood or a series of flooding, but a relatively short period of time. 133 00:16:31,821 --> 00:16:36,821 Amigliani's theory was confirmed when Florida scuba divers found human skeletons and cave dwellings underwater. 134 00:16:37,821 --> 00:16:41,821 Warm mineral springs were found in the Gulf of Mexico. 135 00:16:41,821 --> 00:16:45,822 A popular health spa is a 250 foot deep sinkhole. 136 00:16:46,822 --> 00:16:53,822 When divers stumbled upon remains of a community, now submerged, the experts dismissed it all as a laughable hoax. 137 00:16:54,822 --> 00:16:59,822 Sunny Cockrell, Florida state underwater archeologist, proved the experts wrong. 138 00:17:00,822 --> 00:17:02,822 He created a new world of water. 139 00:17:02,822 --> 00:17:09,823 Sunny Cockrell, Florida state underwater archeologist, proved the experts wrong. 140 00:17:10,823 --> 00:17:17,823 He created an elaborate videotape system to record every dive and eliminate any possibility of fraud. 141 00:17:18,823 --> 00:17:23,823 He confirmed the amazing fact that these caves were dwellings. 142 00:17:23,823 --> 00:17:30,823 Well, the fact that we have a human burial, an intentional human burial, a man buried with his favorite tool, the spear thrower, 143 00:17:31,823 --> 00:17:37,824 with stalactites placed in to cover up the burial crevice indicates that that was a one time drive. 144 00:17:42,824 --> 00:17:50,824 Cockrell found an 11,000 year old human skull preserved by the oxygen-free, high-intensity, 145 00:17:50,824 --> 00:17:57,825 mineral water. His discovery offers new proof for Noah's flood. 146 00:18:08,825 --> 00:18:16,825 Is it possible this Indian was a victim of that flood or a witness to rising oceans at the end of the Ice Age? 147 00:18:17,825 --> 00:18:28,826 It depends upon whether or not the sea level rise occurred rapidly enough to be noticed by the people. 148 00:18:29,826 --> 00:18:41,826 There was a period from around 11,000 years ago to 6,000 years ago when the sea level came up from about 100 meters to about 10 meters below present sea level. 149 00:18:41,826 --> 00:18:47,827 That was very, very rapid. Geologically, the question remains, was it rapid in terms of human behavior? 150 00:18:48,827 --> 00:18:50,827 We'll need further research. I think it's an answerable question. 151 00:18:52,827 --> 00:18:58,827 Geologists now believe the collapse of the ice cap was in places devastating. 152 00:18:59,827 --> 00:19:10,828 When Glacier Lake, Missoula broke through a huge ice dam, parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana were scoured by a 1,000 foot high wall of water 153 00:19:11,828 --> 00:19:19,828 for the last single day. Was this Noah's flood? Scientists disagree. 154 00:19:20,828 --> 00:19:31,829 So we would say that the flood probably preceded the Ice Age and that the melting of the ice cap that they're talking about, it might have produced a local flood, and no doubt did, 155 00:19:32,829 --> 00:19:39,829 maybe around the sea coast of the world, but this was sometime after the biblical flood and probably was on the order of a few thousand years ago rather than 11,000. 156 00:19:39,829 --> 00:19:51,829 Now there were times in which there was a lot more ocean water on land that is a capacity of the ocean basin was smaller, but last time that happened was about 70 or so million years ago. 157 00:19:52,829 --> 00:19:58,830 And there were areas that had been flooded every now and then, for instance, North and Europe was flooded about 30 million years ago. 158 00:19:58,830 --> 00:20:10,830 It really didn't even exist until they relatively recently came out from the ocean and sound, but a major flood covered the whole earth in a period of one year, absolutely not. 159 00:20:12,830 --> 00:20:22,831 It's been said if Noah's Ark were found tomorrow, believers would say we told you so and skeptics would still doubt. 160 00:20:28,831 --> 00:20:35,831 .