Where have I heard that before? At any rate there are some interesting facts reported recently that seem to point to an obvious conclusion. We do not know if this conclusion is correct, therefore your decision is as good as anyone’s.

In 2006 Mr. Arch Bonnema, along with several other explorers, climbed the 15,000 foot high Mt. Suleiman in Iran. At the 13,126 foot level they found petrified wood beams and other artifacts. The wooden beams had asphalt pitch between them and sand was stuck to the pitch. They brought samples back to the United States and sent them to five separate laboratories for analysis.

The labs returned unanimous opinions. The petrified wood was from a ship. Burrowed into some of the wood were salt-water creatures. Included in the samples were petrified barnacles. “Barnacles are exclusively marine, and tend to live in shallow and tidal waters,” according to Wikipedia.

The explorers also found a chunk of something. It was lying against wood, so it had a wood grain pattern on one side. The labs subjected a small piece of this “chunk” to analysis and found that it was animal waste. That in itself is interesting, but embedded in the waste was cat hair from four different large cats. There was hair from African lions and Indian tigers. There were also pieces of South American butterfly wings and plant material that only grows in the South Pacific.

So, we have a ship, the beams of which were sealed with pitch; the beams had salt-water creatures burrowed into them; there were barnacles attached; there was animal waste and samples of animal hair, insect parts and plant material from Africa, India, South America and the South Pacific. And it was all found at 13,126 feet in Iran.

Scripture tells us that Noah’s Ark settled on the “mountains (plural) of Ararat.” (Genesis 8:4) I am told that Mount Ararat in Turkey is the only mountain in the area. Conversely, Mount Suleiman in Iran is part of a mountain range. The explorers reported seeing the clouds descend one morning. As they descended, the tops of various nearby mountains (plural) came into view. It was much as Noah would have seen as the waters receded.

I wonder why this more recent discovery has not been loudly promoted by our media. Of course, we do not know that this is the remnants of the Ark, but it is certainly interesting.

Now, if we can only determine where Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb really is . . . .