youtube.nixfred.com nixfred.com
The Why Files Culture Science Philosophy

The Search for Noah's Ark | Giants & Aliens in the Book of Enoch

The Why Files opens with two problems: the ark is older than anyone thought, and the man named Noah was not a man from Earth. Getting there runs through James Bruce, who spent a decade tracing the Nile and came back from an Ethiopian monastery in 1772 with the Book of Enoch, a book with 108 chapters describing heaven as a physical place with twelve gates, a lofty roof and beings you can see through. The episode reads it as the first documented abduction, walks the two hundred Watchers who broke the prime directive and fathered the Nephilim, and then goes looking for the boat: the Ararat anomaly the CIA photographed in 1949 and classified for forty five years, and the Durupinar formation in eastern Turkey that measures out to three hundred cubits if you use the Egyptian royal cubit instead of the Mosaic one. Then AJ spends the last eleven minutes taking his own episode apart, mostly by proving that Ron Wyatt, the man who made that site famous, was a nurse who faked the evidence and failed a polygraph on everything except his name. He closes on what he actually believes, which is a Younger Dryas flood caused by the sun, and on what he would say at the pearly gates if he turns out to be wrong.

Published Dec 15, 2023 58:11 video 60 min read Added Jul 25, 2026 Open on YouTube →

At a glance

Enoch warned the giants and the Watchers of the world: repent, or feel God's wrath. They ignored him. The floodgates of heaven burst, the water took everything, and five months later a single vessel ground onto a mountaintop and a man named Noah stepped out into an empty world. Some version of that story exists in almost every religion and almost every culture on Earth. The Why Files spends fifty eight minutes asking whether it happened, and opens with the reason the question is not idle: there is evidence, and enough of it that the CIA classified a piece of it for almost fifty years.

Host AJ Gentile sets up two problems with the Noah story before the title card. One, the ark is much older than anyone thought. Two, the man named Noah was not a man, at least not a man from Earth. The episode then runs those two problems down in order: a Scottish explorer who went looking for the source of the Nile and came back with a book the church had buried, the Book of Enoch read as the first documented abduction case, the two hundred Watchers who broke the prime directive, the Nephilim they fathered, a glowing newborn whose father was away at conception, roughly two hundred and fifty flood myths spread across cultures separated by oceans, a rectangular object photographed on Mount Ararat by an Air Force camera in 1949, and a boat shaped formation in eastern Turkey that measures out to exactly the dimensions the Bible gives, if you use the right cubit.

Then, because it is The Why Files, the last sixteen minutes are the host taking his own episode apart. He works backwards, and the first thing on the table is the man who made the Durupınar site famous.

Chapters

The cold open, and a fish who needs a loan

Before any of it, the show does what the show does. Heckle Fish calls in a panic because he has two hundred units to get out the door by close of business, and he is running out of fabric, stuffing, thread, non skid bottoms, labels and boxes. The product is Heckle Fish slippers. He is calling them camel toes, on the reasoning that a slipper is shaped like a fish's foot, which sends the conversation somewhere the host has to shut down twice.

The complaint underneath the joke is that Heckle licensed his own likeness to fund a Vegas album, and now people are putting their feet inside him. "Every time I see someone slip their foot inside one I swear I could feel it all the way up my..." Okay. That'll do. He does get a few bars of Beyond the Sea out before he is cut off, and later a reprise about a camel toe that came floating from across the sea.

He wants an "eensy weensy little teeny tiny baby weenie loan" of fifteen large, because the bank turned him down for having too many credit cards and loans. The host says no, suggests he seriously reconsider the product name, and hands off to PDS Debt, who roll multiple balances into one monthly payment at zero percent interest. Anyone with over ten thousand dollars in debt qualifies, no minimum credit score, and there is a thirty second online assessment for a free debt analysis. Heckle signs off promising to stuff a camel toe in every stocking this holiday season.

That is the tone. Keep it in mind, because the same host is about to spend fifteen minutes carefully dismantling a beloved piece of biblical archaeology.

James Bruce goes looking for a river and finds a book

James Bruce was born to a wealthy Scottish family in 1730. His family wanted him in law. He wanted to be the first person to find the legendary source of the Nile.

The episode is careful to explain why that mattered. For hundreds of years the race to find the source of the Nile was as gripping as the race to put a man on the moon. Heckle objects immediately, on the grounds that nobody went to the moon and the whole thing was faked, and refuses to accept the comparison. "Well, you made it poorly."

Bruce spent over a decade in Africa tracing the river. He traveled through war torn deserts, befriended several kings and made enemies of others, fought savage tribes, survived deadly disease and nearly starved to death. And then, near a monastery in the Lake Tana highlands of Ethiopia, he found a small spring bubbling out of the ground. That was it. The source of the Nile.

But he found something else at that monastery, and the episode says flatly that it was more important. On display was an old faded manuscript written in Geʽez, an ancient Semitic language used by Ethiopian Jews. Bruce was told this book was the Bible. Not a Bible. The Bible.

Why there were Jews on that mountain

The episode takes a detour here rather than skipping it, and it is worth the ninety seconds. Judaism in Ethiopia goes back almost three thousand years. The Old Testament and the Quran both tell of the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba, who heard about the wisdom and wealth of King Solomon, was intrigued, and traveled to Jerusalem to see for herself. The specifics of the meeting are not specified. She was impressed enough to praise the god of Israel and to give Solomon caravans of gold, gems and spices. Solomon, equally impressed, gave her everything she asked for. Then she went home.

In the Old Testament and the Quran, that is where it ends. Ethiopian religious texts go further. When the queen got home she learned that Solomon had given her one last gift: a son. "Ah, King Solomon. The player."

Their son was Menelik I. When Menelik grew up he returned to Jerusalem to meet his father, and Solomon was so happy that he offered him the throne. Menelik declined and went home. But before he left, some of his men stole the Ark of the Covenant and brought it back to Ethiopia. There has been a large Jewish population in Ethiopia ever since, and according to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church the Ark of the Covenant is still there today, in the town of Axum, in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. AJ notes it is a great story and links his own episode on it below.

Eighty one books

Bruce was well read, well educated, and he knew his scripture. But these Ethiopian texts contained hundreds of stories that were not in his Bible. People mentioned once or twice in the modern Bible had their entire lives documented here: their families, their deeds, their misdeeds, all of it.

The reason is a straight arithmetic problem, and it is the first thing on this page worth drawing.

Ethiopian Orthodox 81 books

Catholic 73 books 8 removed

King James 66 books 15 short

0 20 40 60 80 books in the canon

the Book of Enoch lives in here, and only here
Figure 1. The arithmetic that put a book on a mountain in Ethiopia and nowhere else. Bruce's King James Bible had sixty six books. The manuscript in front of him had eighty one. Fifteen books of difference is where the entire rest of this episode comes from.

Bruce did not understand why so much of the original had been removed. And then, thumbing through the stiff dusty pages, he did.

The Book of Enoch

He came across a book on Enoch, whom he knew only as the great grandfather of Noah, a man mentioned a few times in passing. Here was an entire book. One hundred and eight chapters.

And now Bruce understood why the church wanted it hidden. The book described heaven not as a spiritual place but as a physical place, one that could be visited by men. That was heresy. No mortal man is able to visit heaven, and certainly not able to visit and come back. But Enoch did, and he wrote down everything he saw.

He did not describe souls floating in clouds playing harps. He described a city in the sky with many different rooms, walls covered in gems or blinking lights, and godlike beings going about their business. "Now Enoch wouldn't have known it at the time, but he was describing a spacecraft."

The Book of Enoch had vanished from history thousands of years earlier and was rediscovered by James Bruce in 1772. And it was promptly dismissed. Muslims, Jews and Christians alike did not consider it part of the Bible. The reasoning was reasonable: it was hidden away on a mountain in Ethiopia, and if it were truly scripture there would be more copies of it. There weren't.

One hundred and fifty years later, that changed.

Qumran, 1947

Near the ancient settlement of Qumran, a young shepherd looking for a stray goat found a cave. Thinking the goat had wandered in, he threw a rock to scare it out, and instead heard pottery break. Inside were clay jars holding ancient scrolls. Almost a thousand manuscripts. The Dead Sea Scrolls cover every part of the Hebrew Bible, and among the well known books was the Book of Enoch.

Not one copy. Eleven. In ancient times the book was so widely read and so widely regarded that eleven copies of it turned up in that collection, intact, complete, and a perfect match for the text in the Ethiopian Bible.

It is still considered apocryphal and not of the Bible. As AJ puts it, "apocryphal is a nice way of saying it's fake." Some go further and consider it heresy, a crime against God.

"When you read the book you can understand why."

Enoch may be the first documented alien abduction

One evening there is a strange sound above Enoch's village. Not thunder, not wind. A sound that seems to make the air and the earth vibrate. A sound you can feel.

The villagers come cautiously out of their homes and see a bright orb of light hovering just above the trees. Slowly the sphere descends on the village. The townspeople are terrified. But Enoch hears a voice telling him not to be afraid, and then Enoch ascends, escorted by a celestial being named Uriel.

The episode immediately pairs this with the prophet Elijah in 2 Kings, who is physically taken to heaven in what he calls a chariot of fire. "It's easy to see that a man living thousands of years ago would describe a rocket or a spacecraft as a chariot of fire." Heckle starts singing again. "That's enough." "Okay, okay, sheesh. What a grouch."

Here is the structural point the episode is making, and it is a sharper one than it first looks. In Abrahamic religions, souls of the righteous go to heaven after death. Maybe Jesus takes them by the hand, maybe they follow a loved one through the light, maybe they just arrive. That is not what happens to Enoch. Enoch is taken physically, while alive, and he writes down what he sees as he sees it. He is not reconstructing from memory. He is walking around with Uriel, taking notes, because God instructed him to.

And although Enoch describes the trip in religious language, he is also fairly scientific about it. He describes seeing mountains below. He sees every river on Earth. He describes seeing how the winds are made, which the episode suggests could be cloud formation viewed from above.

"Enoch sees all of this as divine, but his account could be referring to technology. A smartphone would seem supernatural to someone living thousands of years ago. A spaceship would be incomprehensible."

Inside

THE ASCENT

Enoch's village a sound you can feel orb of light Uriel escorts him up, alive, taking notes

WHAT HE FINDS THERE

"a lofty roof": something is above heaven storehouses of nature unknown plants the book of life every deed of man the room for the wicked torture and mutilation the throne he averts his eyes the tour of the cosmos: celestial bodies, the lunar cycle, the constellations, a year of 364 days twelve gates, each with a name and a purpose beings walk in and out, radiating light he can see through
Figure 2. The episode's central reframe, drawn as the show presents it. Everything on the right is what the text of 1 Enoch actually describes; the small grey notes are the readings the episode offers. Nothing here is a metaphor in Enoch's telling. He is walking through rooms.

When Enoch arrives, "in heaven, the mothership," he is shown a set of doors. He calls them twelve gates. Each door has a name and a purpose, and he watches beings walk in and out of them going about their business. He calls the beings angels and archangels. Like Uriel, they radiate light. The episode notes it has been suggested that they could be holographic projections, because they are extremely bright and yet Enoch can see through them.

He is then taken on a tour of the cosmos. He travels the galaxy. He is shown the movement of celestial bodies. He is told about man's place in the universe. Uriel teaches him about the solar system, tells him the length of an Earth year is three hundred and sixty four days, shows him the lunar cycle, and shows him how constellations move across the sky. "This is interesting, because the Book of Enoch was written thousands of years before many of these discoveries were made."

Then the detail the episode plants deliberately: you would think there would be nothing above heaven, but wherever Enoch is, the place has a ceiling. He specifically calls it a lofty roof.

He is taken to a giant room full of plants he does not recognize. Uriel calls it one of the storehouses of nature. Could be an arboretum, could be a garden. "When humans finally travel through space there will definitely be gardens on their ships."

He is shown an object with writing on it that he calls the book of life, which records all the deeds of man. "It sounds like the angel works for the FBI, right? The book of life is essentially a database of surveillance records."

There is a room for the wicked, which Enoch describes as a place of torture and mutilation. The episode offers the other reading without pushing it: this room has also been interpreted as where abductees endure experiments.

Finally he enters the room with the throne of God. He says there is no way to describe or comprehend him, and he averts his eyes. God tells Enoch the secrets of the angels and the nature of the universe, shows him the different dimensions of existence, and shows him visions of past, present and future.

Why he was brought

And that is when Enoch learns why he was summoned and told to write everything down.

God needs a witness. He needs someone to describe what heaven and hell are like, someone whose words will be passed down for generations, so mankind has a written record of the afterlife.

He also needs Enoch to carry a message to some of his angels on Earth. The message is not good news.

The Watchers

In the early days of the world, God sent two hundred angels to Earth. Their purpose was to observe and guard humanity. They became known as the Watchers.

Typically angels are considered spiritual beings. In the Book of Enoch they are not. The Watchers are physical entities, described as large humanoids, some with wings, radiating so much light that it is difficult to look directly at them.

They taught humans to cultivate crops and make pottery. They taught medicine and the curing of illness. They taught astronomy and astrology.

The episode points at the older layer underneath. In ancient Sumerian texts, which Enoch is probably based on, three hundred beings are sent to Earth from palaces in the sky, and they are called the Observers. They too help humanity take a great leap forward. "We see this story in ancient cultures all over the world. Advanced beings come down from the sky and bring humanity the gift of civilization."

Breaking the prime directive

Civilization spread fast, and the Watchers became vain and proud. God had instructed them to withhold certain knowledge from man. They ignored the instruction.

They taught men how to create new metals for weapons. They taught men how to harness fire and wage war. They taught women witchcraft and alchemy. They revealed the secrets of the heavens and changed the course of human development.

"They violated the prime directive. They did."

The transfer was a double edged sword. It propelled humanity forward and it brought corruption, a deviation from God's order. And the corruption did not stop at humans. It got the Watchers too. They were spending more and more time with human women. "Uh oh. This isn't going to end well."

They became lustful. Then they started taking human women as wives.

"And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another, come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children."

1 Enoch 6:1, quoted at 16:52

The episode notes how this part gets read in the ancient astronaut literature: as the human alien hybridization program run by the Anunnaki in the Sumerian material. And it flags the difference in tone between the two versions. "In those stories, human women weren't being taken as wives. They were just being taken. Abducted, and used as incubators for a new species."

The Nephilim

The union of celestial and mortal bloodlines produced a race of giants: the Nephilim.

Another text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Giants, describes them alongside Enoch as creatures of immense size, immense strength and immense cruelty. Torn between divinity and humanity and at home in neither, they go insane. They turn on humans and torture anyone they can find. They need to consume so much food that eventually they begin feeding on human flesh. Humans are helpless. Many are enslaved. Many more are killed.

And then the part that actually damns everybody. A few humans decide to follow the example the Watchers set. If angels can torture and kill and enslave and sleep with whoever they want, why can't we? Soon the world is full of people like this.

"Soon God can't tell who's a Nephilim and who isn't."

Enoch delivers the message to the Watchers, to the Nephilim and to all mankind: repent for your sin, or suffer the wrath of God.

The warning is ignored. Enoch is brought back to heaven, where he begs God to save the Earth. God makes his decision instead. The Earth has become so corrupt and so foul that it needs to be reset. He will cause an event so cataclysmic that everything and everyone will be killed. Humans, angels, Nephilim, all of it.

But one man and his family will be spared. The only man who cannot be corrupted, the only man who can be trusted to restart civilization. Enoch's great grandson.

"But here's the thing. There's a lot more to Noah than we've been told."

Two versions of Noah

In Genesis, God appears to Noah and says the world is to end. A great flood will wash away every living thing so the world can start again. Build a large boat. Put your family and two of every animal on it. Survive.

Everybody knows that story. In Enoch it happens a little differently, and it starts earlier, at Noah's birth.

"His body was as white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose, and the hair of his head and his long locks were white as wool, and his eyes beautiful. And when he opened his eyes he lighted up the whole house like the sun, and the whole house was very bright."

The Book of Noah, 3:1, quoted at 19:33

Noah is described as beautiful, with bright glowing skin, and from the moment of birth he can speak.

His father Lamech panics. Lamech had been away during the window when Noah would have been conceived, so he knows the child is not his. Worse, the child is radiating light. Lamech's fear is specific: that Noah is a Watcher, or worse, a Nephilim.

He seeks counsel from his father Methuselah, who has the same fear. Methuselah prays to his own father Enoch, who has been in heaven for many years. Enoch answers.

"And now make known to thy son Lamech that he who has been born is in truth his son, and call his name Noah, for he shall be left to you, and he and his sons shall be saved from the destruction which shall come upon the earth on account of all the sin and all the unrighteousness which shall be consummated on the earth in his days."

The Book of Noah, 3:18, quoted at 20:30

Lamech is relieved. But the fact does not go away: Noah was conceived while Lamech was away. In the Book of Enoch this is a divine miracle. The episode offers the other reading in one clean sentence: "or it's technology. Artificial insemination and genetic manipulation. A successful human hybrid."

Lamech also learns that a great flood is coming and that Noah has been chosen to restart civilization.

Whose flood is it

The differences keep going. In Genesis it is God who gives Noah the instructions. In Enoch it is Uriel who tells Noah about the flood.

And the target is different. Genesis is blunt about the intent:

"So God said to Noah, I'm going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth."

Genesis 6:13, quoted at 21:40

But in the Book of Enoch, the primary targets of the great flood are the fallen angels and their hybrid offspring. Most humans will also die, but this is considered necessary collateral damage. It is the only way to reset creation and wipe the slate clean. "If some humans survive, great. If they don't, it doesn't matter. Only Noah matters."

The specification

Noah is given specific instructions.

"Make yourself an ark of cypress wood, make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it. The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks."

Genesis 6:14 to 16, quoted at 22:33

Longer than a football field. Almost a hundred feet wide. Taller than a five story building. And it needed to be, because of the second half of the job.

"You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive."

Genesis 6:19 to 20, quoted at 23:14

At this point in history there were well over a million species of animals on Earth. Obviously those would not fit. The episode gives three answers rather than dodging.

The biblical interpretation is that Noah was not saving every breed, just the type. So he would not have brought any dogs. He would have brought a male and female grey wolf, and the wolves would eventually become dogs. Heckle, predictably: "They should have left the kids." "Stop it." "The vicious little hell beast, there." "That's enough."

The second answer covers the size problem. What about elephants? Those were definitely on the ark. Some biblical scholars say the animals delivered to Noah were infants, which lets a lot more fit.

The third is the ancient astronaut answer, and it is the one the episode clearly finds most interesting: there were no animals on the ark at all. It contained DNA samples of every living creature on Earth, everything essential for rebuilding.

The flood

"On that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened, and the rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."

Genesis 7:11 to 12, quoted at 24:40

Anyone not on the ark drowned. It took five months for the water to recede, and another five or six months for the land to dry enough to leave. Noah, his family and the animals were aboard for a full year.

For thousands of years believers and skeptics have argued over the scale of it, or whether it happened at all. One camp says it was a local event, not a global one.

The Black Sea deluge hypothesis

The best known theory in that camp is the Black Sea deluge hypothesis, first proposed in 1997. The episode lays out the mechanism in detail.

The Black Sea was a freshwater lake, around two hundred and sixty feet lower than it is today. It was cut off from the Mediterranean by a rocky sill in the Bosporus strait. Then, around eight thousand four hundred years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet collapsed and caused an abrupt jump in sea level. That sent a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater over the natural dam and into the Black Sea.

Almost forty thousand square miles of land were flooded, significantly expanding the shoreline to both the north and the west. Two hundred times the flow of Niagara Falls poured through every day. Each day the level of the Black Sea rose several feet. This continued for three hundred days, and it created the Black Sea as we know it.

Undersea surveys have revealed human made structures there. The remains of freshwater fish have been found. "The memory of this massive flood could have been passed down through the generations, then finally documented in flood narratives found in both the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis."

So there is evidence of a local flood, which would have been the entire world to the people living there. But what about an actual global one?

Two hundred and fifty flood myths

Skeptics say the biblical flood could not have happened because there is no evidence for a global flood. "With all their respect, those skeptics are wrong."

The episode then sets up a third position between the two usual ones. Many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe the great flood is symbolic, an allegory serving as a warning: be righteous or be destroyed. Others take the Bible literally and hold that Noah was a real man who built a real boat and survived a real flood. "What if they're both kind of wrong? What if there was a flood, but the man known as Noah is known by different names in different cultures?"

CultureWho warnsWho survivesThe vessel and what is on it
Sumer, Epic of GilgameshThe god Ea, warning against the flood sent by EnlilUtnapishtimA large boat carrying his family and animals. the first flood story
Hebrew, GenesisGod, directlyNoah and his familyAn ark of cypress wood, 300 by 50 by 30 cubits, two of every creature
Hebrew, 1 EnochThe angel UrielNoah, the only man who cannot be corruptedSame ark. But the flood targets the Watchers and Nephilim; humans are collateral
HinduismA fish Manu had earlier savedManu, the first manA boat guided by the fish, carrying the seven sages and the seeds of life
Ojibwe, North AmericaNot named in the retellingNanabozho, a culture heroHe survives by floating in a boat along with various animals
Aboriginal AustraliaNo warner. Tiddalik the giant frog drinks all the water in the world, causing a droughtThose who take to the waterWhen the frog releases the water it causes a great flood; a boat is used to survive it
China, the Gun and Yu floodNot named in the retellingThose who outlast itA flood that cleanses the Earth
IncaViracocha himself brings itTwo, spared to repopulateHe floods the Earth to destroy giants who disobeyed his orders. "Nephilim could be."
Figure 3. The eight the episode picks, and it says why it picked them: cultures far away from each other, separated by oceans. There are roughly 250 separate flood myths in all, and the shape barely moves between them. Note the Inca entry, where the reason for the flood is giants who disobeyed.

"These stories go on and on. I specifically picked a few from cultures that are far away from each other, separated by oceans. In all there are about two hundred and fifty separate flood myths, but every story is eerily similar."

For years the similarity was written off as coincidence. As people stepped forward to claim there really was a global flood, it was called pseudoscience.

"But as often happens, the only difference between pseudoscience and science is time."

The megaflood clips

The episode cuts to interview footage. The first voice describes a megascale pluvial event over North Africa, most likely consistent with the Pliocene to Holocene transition and the great flooding events already well documented elsewhere in the world: huge tsunamis and torrential rain flooding the entire continent of Africa and reshaping the landscape, at the same time as the same event on the other side of the world.

The second is more visceral. "What you have to visualize is a tsunami sweeping over the land that's over a thousand feet deep. That's what happened here. And we know that because we can trace the high water marks on the hillsides. They're clearly etched into the hillsides."

This, AJ says, is the great flood at the end of the Younger Dryas, when the ice caps suddenly melted and raised sea level by hundreds of feet. Anyone living near a coastline would be gone. Any settlement or city below a certain elevation would be destroyed.

The cause is still debated. Some believe a large asteroid impact or series of impacts caused the sudden melt. "Another theory, the one I believe, is that a massive solar flare hit the Earth. This would cause the ice to melt everywhere at once, and explain why flood myths exist in every corner of the world."

Maybe there were many Noahs

Here is the move that makes the whole episode hang together. If an asteroid or a solar flare hit, there would not be much time to prepare, but there would be some. Maybe groups of people anticipated the rising seas and built boats. Or, as many myths say outright, a being came down from the sky and warned people of what was coming. Those who heeded the warning would start building immediately. Those who survived passed the story down.

"There could have been arks all over the world. Or maybe there really was only one ark. And if there was, where is it? Does it still exist? Can it be found?"

"For that answer, we turn to the CIA."

The mountains of Ararat

Searches for Noah's ark have been going on since antiquity, but it was the emergence of biblical archaeology in the nineteenth century that made formal searches feasible. By the 1940s, expeditions were being organized to follow up on leads.

As for where to look, Genesis gives a hint.

"The waters kept receding steadily from the earth so that they had gone down by the end of the 150 days. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat."

Genesis 8:3 to 4, quoted at 31:26

Historians and biblical scholars agree that Ararat is the Hebrew name of Urartu, an Iron Age kingdom centered around Lake Van. That puts the mountains of Ararat in the eastern part of Turkey, near the borders of Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan. Heckle derails for a moment because he enjoys saying Azerbaijan. "It feels really good in the mouth." "Can I get back to this, please?" "Go ahead. I ain't stopping you."

June 17, 1949

On June 17, 1949, the US Air Force was photographing the mountains in eastern Turkey. On Mount Ararat, west of the summit, was a rectangular barge like structure.

That information was passed to the CIA, who sent spy planes to analyze the object. They called it the Ararat anomaly. What they saw concerned them enough that they immediately classified it as secret.

Every subsequent photograph of the object was also classified: 1956, 1973, 1976, 1990 and 1992. Over the next forty five years, every request from within the government to see the photos was denied. They were never seen outside the CIA. "In fact, for years the CIA said the photos didn't exist at all."

Then, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, six frames from the 1949 footage were released to the public in 1995. By 1999 the CIA had made its Noah's ark files available. Those documents proved that the search for Noah's ark had reached the highest levels of the American government.

And then the episode does something worth noticing, because it does it before the debunk section: it gives up the anomaly. "Later, higher resolution photos show no barge. The 1949 picture was most likely a rock formation. Maybe. Probably. Maybe."

"But the Ararat anomaly is not the only structure that looks like Noah's ark. There is another. A ship made of solid stone."

Durupınar

In October 1959, Turkish Army Captain İlhan Durupınar was on a mapping mission for NATO when he flew over Üzengili in Turkey. He saw a strange formation and snapped a photograph. When he analyzed the film he was shocked. The structure looked a lot like a large ship.

What was a ship doing so far inland, at almost seven thousand feet above sea level?

Then someone measured it. Five hundred and thirty eight feet long.

Which is too big. The ark was three hundred cubits, so four hundred and fifty feet.

But wait.

The cubit changed

The length of a cubit changed over time. The cubit Moses used to build the Ark of the Covenant was not the cubit Noah would have used. In Moses' time a cubit was about seventeen inches. Noah came many years before Moses, only ten generations from Adam. Noah would have used the Egyptian royal cubit, a little over twenty inches.

"The Durupınar ship was exactly three hundred royal cubits long, and fifty royal cubits wide."

football field, for scale 300 ft

300 cubits at 17 in (Moses) 425 ft

300 cubits at 18 in 450 ft

300 royal cubits (20.6 in) ~515 ft

Durupınar, as measured 538 ft

300 royal cubits = ~515 ft

0 200 400 600 length in feet

Figure 4. The single most load bearing claim in the second half, drawn to scale. Swap the seventeen inch cubit for the twenty point six inch Egyptian royal cubit and three hundred cubits grows by ninety feet, which is what closes most of the gap to the formation. The green marks show what it does not close: three hundred royal cubits is about 515 feet, and the episode's own measurement of the formation is 538.

And, the episode says, this location is exactly where the Bible said Noah made landfall. Most people think Noah landed on Mount Ararat, but that is not what the Bible says. The Bible says the mountains of Ararat.

The distinction earns its keep. Mount Ararat is a volcano, and it has erupted several times since the days of Noah, as recently as the 1840s. Geologists believe Mount Ararat is a relatively young mountain and probably was not there during the flood. The Durupınar location is only a few miles away.

The anchor stones

A ground investigation in the area found about thirty drogue stones. A drogue stone is a heavy rock with a hole at the top. Ropes went through the holes and the stones were hung from the bottoms of ancient ships to stabilize them in rough seas.

"Why are there anchor stones in the mountains of Ararat? They're two hundred miles from the closest ocean. But there they are."

The settlement, and the cemetery

Also on the site, an ancient settlement the episode names Naxuan was discovered. Most of the evidence has been lost to treasure hunters, but as recently as the 1970s there were stone foundations of ancient homes still visible. This is believed to be the first settlement after the flood.

The site is important enough that there is a huge cemetery in the area. People from all over the world requested to be buried there. Not hundreds. Not thousands. As many as a million people wanted to be buried at this location.

Ron Wyatt digs in

All that was left was to examine the boat structure itself. Researchers looked for animal remains, for metal nails, for petrified wood. They found all three. And after Durupınar found the site, an earthquake in the area exposed what looked like the hull of an ancient ship.

Geologists visited, said it was a natural formation, and that was that.

Then in 1977, biblical researcher Ron Wyatt renewed interest in Noah's ark.

"We believe that God has preserved in the earth and under the seas remains of the major events discussed in the Bible. Physical remains."

Ron Wyatt, 36:55

Over a number of years, Wyatt brought geologists and other scientists to investigate the Durupınar site. The episode plays the field footage. Someone on camera crouching over the ground: "Oh look at that. Oh, well wait a minute, wait, let me get a close up of that." "You want my hand in there?" "Yeah, just point at the little..." "Okay." Flakes of iron coming out, right there, there and there.

Metal detectors were brought in and calibrated to search for iron. Not only did they find iron, they found it at regular intervals, which indicates something man made. "Do you want a measuring tape to measure these things, how far apart they are?" The on site team ran tape along the ground where iron had been detected.

It was a ship.

Wyatt found a metallic object next to the ark shaped like a large rivet, surrounded by what appeared to be an equally large metal washer. Part of the metal was tested. It contained a man made alloy.

Ground penetrating radar was used in the 1980s. Regular lines were found beneath the surface. "Oh right, the lines are there. The lines are there." That also indicates man made construction.

"This data does not represent natural geology. It's a man made structure."

On site researcher, 38:31

"This is the west vulcan, right, that was over there, and he walked easterly. Here we start getting a longitudinal bulge, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here."

Radar operator reading the profile, 38:47

"As a scientist, do you really honestly believe that you have been on the remains of Noah's ark?" "I have no doubt in my mind. This has to be a man made structure. It's full of metal, metal has a regular pattern, the size of the thing and the shape of the thing, it's almost certainly a large boat."

39:05

A small excavation on the side of the structure turned up lines of mud lighter in color than the surrounding soil, which Wyatt believed to be beams from the ship.

The 2014 scans

As recently as 2014, 3D scans were taken of the location. Not only was the shape of a ship found, it had three levels, exactly as the ark should. The scan also confirmed the dimensions: three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, thirty cubits tall. A perfect match.

During one demonstration for the Turkish government, Wyatt pointed to an object seen on radar near the surface and was given permission to dig it up. It was a piece of petrified wood deck timber.

Other artifacts followed. More petrified wood. Pieces of metal. Cat hair. Fossilized animal dung. Researchers found evidence of the fence around Noah's house where he raised livestock. "You can see the system of fences here that appears to have been a system of corrals and pens." They found the altar he used to make sacrifices to God. They even found the grave of Noah's wife, and a stone sarcophagus.

Almost immediately after the discovery, grave robbers stole her body and allegedly sold it on the black market for millions of dollars.

All of this evidence was compelling enough that the Turkish government officially claimed this was the place where Noah's ark landed. There is a visitor center, and the area is open to the public.

If it has been found, what does that mean

Before the turn, the host stops to ask what is actually at stake, and this is the moment where the episode shows its hand about why it cares.

"If the ark really has been found, what does that mean? Does that mean everything in the Bible is true? Were there angels, Watchers? Were there Nephilim? Is the Earth really much younger than we thought? And my big question is: is God the angry, vengeful God we read about in the Old Testament?"

"There's evidence of the ark. There's evidence of the flood. If God punished humanity for being wicked, we should be very careful. We might want to try to be better people. We should be more kind, more honest, more forgiving. God already destroyed humanity once. We're his second try. And you know what they say. Third time's a charm."

Is any of this true?

This is the segment the channel is built on, and it runs almost eleven minutes. "Noah's ark, the great flood, the Book of Enoch, the Watchers, the Nephilim. We covered a lot today, even aliens. But is any of this true? Well, let's work backwards, because that's the easiest way to do this."

Ron Wyatt

Ron Wyatt was not an archaeologist. He was a nurse by trade.

He claimed to have all the requirements for a master's and a PhD in antiquities. That was not true. He claimed to be a Korean War veteran. That was not true. He claimed to have discovered the Ark of the Covenant. He did not.

"I'm always amazed, and again, I don't hate Ron Wyatt, I don't even really dislike him to tell you the truth. I dislike what he's doing. I realize that he's deceived, in my opinion, thousands of people."

A critic of Wyatt, 42:20

He said he found the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He did not.

"Ordinarily I don't say anything without I can prove it, because it's rather embarrassing to make a statement and somebody says well can you show me some evidence, and I can't."

Ron Wyatt, 42:52

He claimed he found the location where Moses parted the Red Sea. And then there is the one that ends the argument for most people. He said he found evaporated blood of Jesus Christ. He had the blood rehydrated and examined, and reported that it had twenty four chromosomes: twenty three to form a baby and one from the Holy Spirit, which proves the virgin birth. "So all of his physical characteristics were determined by his mother's side of the family, her side, and his maleness was determined by this one, why, that came from the source, not a human male."

"But this whole thing is a lie."

The interview clip that follows is the saddest thing in the episode. "Then they said, this blood is alive. And then they said, whose blood is this? And tears would come in his eyes when he talked about blood dripping down from the cross onto the mercy seat. I mean, I said, it's the blood of your Messiah." "And I don't like seeing God's work so grossly misrepresented, to get funds from people and to get support from people."

Wyatt's work is still very popular online, and AJ says he understands why. It is an incredible story. But look a little deeper and you find statement after statement from people who were lied to by Wyatt and defrauded out of quite a bit of money. One patron lost thirty thousand dollars on one of these holy adventures. Wyatt said he needed another ten thousand. This patron said only if you take a lie detector test. At first Wyatt scoffed. But he needed the money, so he took it.

The man who administered the test said, and this is the quote: "He failed just about everything except his name."

And the evidence?

The metal detectors, the ground penetrating radar. Most of it was faked or cherry picked.

The metal detectors used were not professional. They were purchased from the back of treasure hunting magazines. Modern professional metal detectors have found iron at the site, but it is the same type of iron found in soil all over the area. No trained scientist has ever seen any of the petrified wood, or the petrified dung, or anything like that. The only people who saw those things were Ron Wyatt, and the people paid by Ron Wyatt.

The drogue stones get treated more carefully, and this is where the segment is at its most honest. "The drogue stones are a compelling piece of the story, because they are there and they've clearly been there a long time." But the stone is locally quarried. Drogue stones from Noah's ark would have come from Mesopotamia, not the mountains of Turkey.

And the boat shaped formation is probably the result of a mudflow. You can see shapes like this all over the area.

Wyatt's supporters, and there are a lot of them, have answers for all of this. One of them is that the boat was actually higher up the mountain and traveled down on a lava flow. "But boats don't float on lava. They burn. They burn real good."

And then the closing line on it, which does not take the whole site down with the man: "Thousands and thousands of people throughout history did and do consider this a holy place. Maybe Noah's ark was there. I can't prove it wasn't. But I can prove Ron Wyatt was a liar."

Why the CIA classified the photos

Not because of the ark.

"It was the Cold War, and these were photos from spy planes, and a few of those planes weren't exactly in friendly airspace. After the fall of the Soviet Union, releasing the photos wasn't a problem."

The flood, and the sun

On the flood itself he does not budge. If you follow the channel you know he believes it really happened, and that it happened at the end of the Younger Dryas, and that a massive solar event melted the ice caps and created the biggest catastrophe in human history.

And then the personal one. If you follow the channel, you also know that the thing he fears most is not nuclear war or civil unrest or pandemics.

"I fear the sun."

His reasoning is specific. If an asteroid is headed our way, we will see it, and we may even be able to do something about it. And if one actually hits, he believes the world would come together and every nation would do everything it could to help. But a major solar flare or coronal mass ejection is different. There is nowhere to hide from that. Not in a mountain cave, not deep underground. The heat and radiation would be disastrous to us and to the planet.

Heckle: "Yeah, we could hide under water. Like the aliens." And AJ concedes the point, which is very much the tone of this show. "Now that's true. Water is effective at absorbing radiation, and the deeper you go the safer you are. And I'm sure the aliens in the ocean know that."

So is Enoch about aliens?

Most of the flood myths start the same way, with a warning from a godlike figure, and they end the same way, with a godlike figure helping restart civilization.

"Now I can't definitively prove that this is true. Nobody can. But if we keep pressuring our governments about UAPs and UFOs, we may eventually get some answers. Humanity did take a leap forward in technology many thousands of years ago, and maybe those ancient humans had help."

Enoch physically goes to a place that sounds like a spaceship. Elijah talks about riding a chariot of fire. Heckle, hopefully: "What, I thought you were going to sing it again." "Well now I don't want to."

Elijah talks about riding that chariot over the Earth with a humanlike being, and he is amazed by the sound of the vehicle and how fast it moves. Other cultures and religions have similar stories. Muhammad ascends to heaven and meets Allah before returning to Earth. In Hinduism, Arjuna is taken to heaven and lives there for a few years before coming back down.

"There are many more of these myths. But are they myths? Maybe these things did actually happen, but they're written down as myths because the technology is so far ahead of what existed at the time. Maybe these were visitations and abductions."

The Dogon

The last piece of evidence he offers is the one he clearly likes best.

There is a tribe in West Africa called the Dogon. About a hundred thousand of them, mostly living in caves and cliffs. They are still a primitive people. Dogon religion says that long ago they were visited by aliens from the Sirius star system, and that these aliens told them they had also helped the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Sumerians with their civilizations.

But what is really amazing is that the Dogon are aware of the star Sirius B, which they call po. Sirius B is invisible to the naked eye. It was first discovered in 1862. The Dogon had no telescopes. They still do not.

And they did not just know it was there. They knew it was a white dwarf companion to the much brighter Sirius A. They knew the length of its orbit in years. They knew the shape of its orbit. They knew it was a dense star. They relayed all of this to a visiting anthropologist in the 1930s.

They even said there is a third star in the Sirius system. There wasn't. Until there was: in 1995 a study concluded that a third companion star exists. More recent studies are not so sure. "But the Dogon people are. Allegedly."

The Dogon were also aware of Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings. And here the host does the thing that makes him worth listening to: he scores the point against himself. "Now skeptics like to poke holes in the Dogon story, and I think that's fine. The Dogon were wrong about the number of Jupiter's moons. But they were right about Sirius B."

What the Book of Enoch actually is

The story of Enoch seems to be based on ancient Sumerian stories, as a lot of the Bible is.

When people talk about the Book of Enoch they are referring to what is officially called 1 Enoch, because there are three books. Biblical scholars consider the books of Enoch pseudepigrapha, meaning a biblical work that falsely claims authorship by a biblical character.

That does not mean the books were not known or were not important. 1 Enoch is quoted in Jude 14 to 15. Enoch was known and Enoch was important. But the book is not considered inspired by God, and is therefore apocryphal and outside canon. "Still a page turner." "Oh yeah, it's a good read."

Some parts of Enoch are said to have been written later, to expand on stories from the Bible: the birth of Noah, Enoch's visit to heaven. These were interesting characters and people wanted to know more, so someone, or many someones, we do not know who, just wrote more.

"It's like Bible fan fiction." "It's exactly like that."

But, he adds, different religions and denominations are going to have different interpretations. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church says the book is canon, and that church has been around for almost three thousand years. Some Christians think reading it is heresy, a crime against the church. Most scholars consider it an important text that gives additional insight into the lives and beliefs of the people living at the time.

The closing, which is the real reason to watch

The episode ends on a personal note that has nothing to do with archaeology.

"Honestly, whether the Book of Enoch is canon or not, that's not important to me. It's an interesting academic discussion. As you know, I'm not religious, but I am fascinated by and have great respect for religions. All religions. I enjoy the stories and for the most part I think they teach good lessons. I'm more into fishes and loaves than fire and brimstone, but that's just my taste."

He knows what is coming in the comments, because it comes every time. "Every time I do a religious story I get attacked in the comments. There's going to be people screaming at me in all caps to take Jesus into my heart or I'm going to hell. If that's what you believe, that's okay. I don't believe that."

And then:

"I don't know what happens after we die. I'm inclined to say nothing. Just black. But there's a big piece of my heart that really wants to be wrong. Because when I finally pass on and walk down that tunnel, if I'm greeted by family and friends long past, and I find myself standing at the pearly gates, the first words out of my mouth are going to be: thank God."

51:55

Then the sign off. "Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ, that's Heckle Fish." "Peace be unto the human. Grateful am I for thine eyes that have watched and thine ears that have heard." Today's topic, like most topics on the channel, was recommended by a viewer, and there is a tips page for that. There is a twice weekly podcast with deep dives and episodes that would not be allowed on the channel, called The Why Files Operation. There is a Discord with somewhere around thirty five thousand members. There is a Patreon starting at three dollars a month, which gets you early ad free videos, members only merch, and two private live streams a week. And there is a store, which Heckle pitches in scripture voice: "Come forth and partake in our wares, for in your hands they shall find purpose, and through your stewardship their journey shall be fulfilled." "What does that mean?"

It means buy a Heckle Fish t shirt.

"Be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated."

Then the outro song, which is a running list of every conspiracy the channel has ever covered set to a dance beat, ending with a camel who loves to dance.

The search, in order

  • antiquity Searches for the ark begin. Nothing formal is possible for a very long time.
  • 1730 James Bruce is born to a wealthy Scottish family. They want him in law.
  • 1760s Bruce spends over a decade in Africa tracing the Nile through war torn deserts, disease and near starvation.
  • 1772 At an Ethiopian monastery he finds the source of the Nile and, more importantly, the Book of Enoch, lost for thousands of years. It is promptly dismissed: too few copies to be scripture.
  • 19th c. Biblical archaeology emerges and makes formal searches feasible for the first time.
  • 1940s Expeditions are organized to follow up on potential leads.
  • 1947 A shepherd throws a rock into a cave near Qumran and hears pottery break. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls are eleven copies of Enoch, a perfect match for the Ethiopian text.
  • Jun 17 1949 A US Air Force camera photographs a rectangular barge like structure west of the summit of Mount Ararat. The CIA sends spy planes and classifies what it calls the Ararat anomaly.
  • Oct 1959 Turkish Army Captain İlhan Durupınar, flying a NATO mapping mission over Üzengili, photographs a boat shaped formation at almost 7,000 feet. It measures 538 feet.
  • 1956 to 1992 Every subsequent CIA photograph of the anomaly is classified: 1956, 1973, 1976, 1990, 1992. For forty five years every internal request is denied, and the CIA says the photos do not exist.
  • 1960s After an earthquake exposes what looks like a hull, geologists visit Durupınar, call it a natural formation, and that is that.
  • 1977 Ron Wyatt, a nurse by trade, renews interest in the site and starts bringing scientists.
  • 1970s Stone foundations of the settlement believed to be the first after the flood are still visible. Roughly thirty drogue stones are found, 200 miles from the nearest ocean.
  • 1980s Ground penetrating radar shows regular lines beneath the surface. Metal detectors find iron at regular intervals. A large rivet and washer test out as a man made alloy.
  • 1995 Six frames of the 1949 footage are released under the Freedom of Information Act.
  • 1997 The Black Sea deluge hypothesis is first proposed: 40,000 square miles flooded, 200 Niagaras a day for 300 days.
  • 1999 The CIA makes its Noah's ark files public, proving the search reached the highest levels of the US government.
  • 2014 3D scans of Durupınar show a ship shape with three levels and dimensions the episode reports as 300 by 50 by 30 cubits.
  • since Turkey officially recognizes the site as where the ark landed. There is a visitor center. Higher resolution photos of the Ararat anomaly show no barge.
Figure 5. Two hundred and eighty years of searching, as the episode lays it out. The pattern repeats: something is found, it is classified or dismissed, it comes back. The last line is the one the episode delivers before the debunk rather than after, which is the tell that this show intends to keep score honestly.

Best quotes

"There are two problems with the Noah's ark story. One, the ark is much older than anyone thought. And two, the man named Noah, he wasn't a man. At least not a man from Earth." 0:26, the thesis, delivered before the title card.

"Now Enoch wouldn't have known it at the time, but he was describing a spacecraft." 8:55, the pivot the whole first half turns on.

"Apocryphal is a nice way of saying it's fake." 10:00.

"A smartphone would seem supernatural to someone living thousands of years ago. A spaceship would be incomprehensible." 12:00, the interpretive rule the episode applies throughout.

"It sounds like the angel works for the FBI, right? The book of life is essentially a database of surveillance records." 13:35.

"God needs a witness." 14:14, on why Enoch was taken.

"They violated the prime directive. They did." 16:01.

"Soon God can't tell who's a Nephilim and who isn't." 18:10, the line that justifies the reset.

"In the Book of Enoch this is a divine miracle. Or it's technology. Artificial insemination and genetic manipulation. A successful human hybrid." 21:05, on Noah's conception.

"If some humans survive, great. If they don't, it doesn't matter. Only Noah matters." 22:20, on who the flood was actually for.

"The only difference between pseudoscience and science is time." 28:50.

"There could have been arks all over the world." 31:00.

"For that answer, we turn to the CIA." 31:12.

"Why are there anchor stones in the mountains of Ararat? They're two hundred miles from the closest ocean. But there they are." 35:40.

"He failed just about everything except his name." 44:25, the polygraph examiner on Ron Wyatt.

"But boats don't float on lava. They burn. They burn real good." 45:40.

"Maybe Noah's ark was there. I can't prove it wasn't. But I can prove Ron Wyatt was a liar." 45:45, the fairest sentence in the episode.

"I fear the sun." 46:32.

"The Dogon were wrong about the number of Jupiter's moons. But they were right about Sirius B." 49:55.

"It's like Bible fan fiction." "It's exactly like that." 50:58.

"I'm more into fishes and loaves than fire and brimstone." 51:43.

"There's a big piece of my heart that really wants to be wrong." 52:08.

Where it stands

The host does most of this work himself in the last eleven minutes, which is unusual and worth crediting. This table finishes the job, sorting the episode's claims by how much weight each can carry.

Claim in the episodeWhat is actually documentedWhere it sits
James Bruce brought the Book of Enoch out of Ethiopia in 1772established Bruce's Geʽez manuscripts are the reason the West has 1 Enoch at all.Historical fact. Not in dispute.
Eleven copies of Enoch among the Dead Sea Scrollsestablished Aramaic Enoch fragments were recovered at Qumran, confirming the book's antiquity and wide circulation.Real, and it is the strongest single fact in the first half. "Intact and complete" is generous; the finds are fragmentary.
Enoch describes a physical heaven with gates, rooms and a roofestablished as text The Book of the Watchers really does read this way, and that concreteness is why it sat outside canon.The text says what the episode says it says. That it describes a spacecraft is the show's reading, not the text's claim.
The 364 day year in Enochestablished as text 1 Enoch contains a full 364 day solar calendar, which is genuinely notable for its date.Real and interesting. It is also about a day and a quarter off, which is why the calendar drifts.
Noah's glowing birth and Lamech's paternity fearestablished as text The Birth of Noah section of 1 Enoch is exactly as quoted.The passage is real. Artificial insemination is offered explicitly as an alternative reading, and labeled as one.
Roughly 250 flood myths worldwideFlood narratives are genuinely near universal and the ones listed are real stories from those cultures.The pattern is real. Whether it points to one event, to many local floods, or to how humans live near water is unsettled.
The Black Sea deluge hypothesisestablished as a hypothesis Proposed in 1997 by two Columbia geologists, and a serious, published idea.Real science, and contested since. Later cores suggest a gentler filling. The date given here is at the early end of the range.
The great flood happened at the end of the Younger Dryas, caused by a solar eventThe Younger Dryas boundary is real and abrupt, and rapid meltwater pulses are well documented.the host's own belief, and he says so twice. The impact version has published advocates; the solar flare version has far fewer.
The Ararat anomaly and the CIA filesestablished Real photographs, really classified, really released under FOIA in 1995 and 1999.The secrecy is fact. The episode itself concludes the object is most likely a rock formation, and gives the mundane reason for the classification: Cold War overflights.
Durupınar is exactly 300 royal cubitsThe formation is real, was photographed in 1959, and is roughly boat shaped and boat sized.the arithmetic does not close. 300 Egyptian royal cubits is about 515 feet. The episode measures the formation at 538. Both numbers cannot be exact.
Iron at regular intervals, radar lines, a man made rivet, petrified deck timberThe episode retracts nearly all of this itself.faked or cherry picked. Consumer grade detectors, iron indistinguishable from local soil, and no trained scientist ever saw the wood or the dung.
The drogue stonesthe stones are real and have plainly been there a long time.The best surviving piece of the site, and still against it: the stone is locally quarried, and ark stones would have come from Mesopotamia.
The boat shaped formation itselfGeologists said natural formation in the 1960s and the episode agrees.probably a mudflow. Similar shapes occur all over the area.
Ron Wyatt's credentials and discoveriesThe episode is unambiguous: not an archaeologist, no degrees, not a veteran, did not find the Ark of the Covenant, Sodom, the Red Sea crossing, or the blood of Christ.demonstrated fraud, including a failed polygraph and Customers defrauded of tens of thousands of dollars.
The Dogon knew about Sirius BThe 1930s ethnography reporting it is real, and Sirius B was not visible to them.heavily contested. The leading counter argument is contamination from European visitors before the fieldwork. The episode volunteers the Jupiter error against itself.
1 Enoch is pseudepigrapha, quoted in Judeestablished Both halves are standard scholarship, and the episode states them plainly.Accurate. Also accurate that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church treats it as canon.
Figure 6. An honest ledger of fifty eight minutes. What is unusual here is how much of the amber column the episode fills in itself, on camera, in the last eleven minutes. The strongest material in the episode is textual and archival: the manuscripts, the scrolls, the declassified photographs. The weakest is everything that passed through one man's hands in eastern Turkey.

One arithmetic note the episode does not catch. The cubit swap is presented as the thing that makes Durupınar fit, and it does most of the work: three hundred cubits at the seventeen inch Mosaic measure is four hundred and twenty five feet, while three hundred Egyptian royal cubits is about five hundred and fifteen. But the episode measures the formation at five hundred and thirty eight feet and then calls it exactly three hundred royal cubits. Those are twenty three feet apart. Wyatt's own materials generally use the five hundred and fifteen figure, which is the one that actually matches. It is a small thing, and it points the same direction as everything else in that segment.

The other thing worth saying is that the episode never claims Durupınar is the ark. It claims the site is old, holy to a great many people, and impossible to disprove, and that the man who made it famous was a liar. Those are compatible, and keeping them separate is the hardest thing to do in this genre.

Resources mentioned

Full transcript
this episode of the Y files is brought to you by PDS de Enoch warned the Giants and the Watchers of the world repent or feel God's Wrath they ignored his warning the floodgates of Heaven burst forth and water rushed over the Earth destroying everything the only thing to survive is a single vessel a huge ship the Ark 5 months later the waters recede and the Ark made ground on a Mountaintop a man named Noah emerged and civilization began again some version of the Noah's Arc story exists in almost every religion and every culture on Earth but did Noah and the Ark really exist well there's evidence that they did so much evidence that it was classified by the CIA for almost 50 years but why classify it well there are two problems with the Noah's Arc Story one the ark is much older than anyone thought and two the man named Noah he wasn't a man at least not a man from Earth [Music] these aren't that weird I guess human wonderful I can't talk long because I got to get 200 units finished and out the door by CB today well you called me so I'm killing it with these camel toes and I have to order more fabric stuffing thread no skit bottoms labels boxes okay hang on how are you making camel toes aren't those what a slipp is shaped like gti's feet oh what did you think I meant well never mind look a Heckle fish slip is are selling like hot cakes right our Heckle fish slippers look human you're selling something that allows people to stick their foot inside me so I think I could say hour uh technically it's just your likeness yeah well every time I see someone slip their foot inside one I swear I could feel it all the way up my okay that'll do thank God those slippers aren't foodo dos huh I'd never be able to sit down again okay that's enough remember you licensed your likeness to me to fund that Heckle fish sings Vegas album oh that's going to be big somewhere beyond the sea somewhere waiting for me my lover stands on Golden sink what do you want take it easy okay look I need another ensy wiy little teeny tiny baby weenie loan of say uh 15 large the bank turned me down because I have too many credit cards and Loans but I need the money so everyone can have soft pretty little camel toes this holiday season okay one I'm not loaning you $155,000 and B I'd seriously consider changing the name of this product and third why don't you just call PDS oh it sounds like you're gracefully sliding into today's sponsor yep if you're making payments every month and your balances aren't going down PDS can help they roll your debt into one low 0% interest monthly payment you can save thousands in interest and fees and pay off your debt in a fraction of the time but my pilot debt is high and my credit is uh not no problem everyone with over $10,000 in debt qualifies and there's no minimum credit score required bad and Fair Credit accepted perfect did they give us one of those linky clicky things sure did PDS is giving our qualified viewers a free debt analysis for completing the 302nd online assessment at w ww. PDS de.com files that's PD sde ebt.com files you got it Perfecto I'm going to stuff a camel toe in every stocking okay you seriously need to change that name got to go lots of son to do the camel toe came bloting from across the sea it linger there with lots of hair well look at me M James Bruce was born to a wealthy Scottish family in 1730 his family wanted him to study law but James Bruce had different plans he had a dream he wanted to be the first person to find the legendary source of the Nile River now this might sound like a mundane task but for hundreds of years the race to find the source of the Nile was as gripping as the race to put a man on the moon well nobody won that race what now nobody went to a moon the whole thing was faked I'm just saying the race to find the source of the Nile was a big deal then just say that don't give me some cockamamy nonsense about the race to the moon it never happened I was just making a comparison well you made it poorly Bru spent over a decade in Africa tracing the Nile he traveled through War torn deserts he befriended several Kings and made enemies of others he fought Savage tribes and survived deadly disease nearly starving to death James Bruce discovered a small spring it was bubbling from the earth near a monastery in the T Highlands of Ethiopia this was it the source of the Nile River but Bruce discovered something else something much more important during his stay at the Ethiopian Monastery he saw an old faded manuscript on display It Was Written in G an ancient semetic language used by Ethiopian Jews James Bruce was told this book was the Bible not a Bible the Bible Judaism in Ethiopia goes back almost 3,000 years the Old Testament and Quran tell of the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba who heard about the wisdom and wealth of King Solomon she was intrigued by these reports and decided to travel to Jerusalem to meet him for herself the specifics of their meeting were not specified but the Queen of Sheba was so impressed she praised the god of Israel and gave King Solomon many gifts she brought Caravans of gold gems and spices King Solomon grateful and equally impressed gives the Ethiopian Queen all that she asks and then the queen returns home in the Old Testament and Quran that's where the story ends but religious texts in Ethiopia go into much more detail when the queen finally made it home she learned that Solomon gave her one last gift a son ah King Solomon the player their son was menelik the first when menelik grew up he returned to Jerusalem to meet his father King Solomon was so happy to finally meet his son that he offered menelik the throne menelik declined and chose to return home but before menelik left some of his men stole the Ark of the Covenant and brought it back to Ethiopia there's been a large Jewish population in Ethiopia ever since according to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church the Ark of the Covenant is still in Ethiopia it's in the town axom in the Church of our Lady Mary of Zion and it's a great story and if you want to hear it I linked it below back at the monastery James Bruce was fascinated by these new texts Bruce was a well- read well-educated man and he knew his scripture but these Ethiopian texts contained hundreds of stories that weren't in the Bible not in his Bible anyway the Ethiopian Bible contains 81 books the Catholic Bible removed eight of those books and contains only 73 the King James Bible the one known to Bruce has only 66 books Bruce did understand there was so much more detail in the older texts people merely mentioned once or twice in the modern Bible had their entire lives documented in the Ethiopian Bible their lives their families their deeds their misdeeds they were all there James Bruce didn't understand why so much of the original Bible was removed and then he did while thumbing through the stiff Dusty Pages Bruce came across the Book of Enoch James Bruce knew Enoch as the great-grandfather of Noah he was mentioned a few times in the Bible but only in passing here was an entire book on Enoch 108 chapters now James Bruce understood why the church wanted this book hidden it described Heaven not just as a spiritual place but as a physical place that could be visited by men that was heresy no mortal man is able to visit heaven and certainly not able to visit and return but Enoch did and he wrote down everything he saw he didn't describe heaven as Souls floating in the clouds playing harps he describes it as a city in the sky with many different rooms with walls covered in gems of blinking lights and god-like beings going about their business now Enoch wouldn't have known it at the time but he was describing a spacecraft The Book of Enoch vanished from history thousands of years ago only to be rediscovered in 1772 by James Bruce while the Book of Enoch was certainly interesting it was dismissed by Muslims Jews and Christians and not considered part of the Bible after all it was hidden away on a mountain in Ethiopia how important could it really be if the Book of Enoch was truly scripture there would be more copies of it but there weren't but 150 years later that would change in 1947 near the ancient settlement of kumran a young Shepherd happened upon a cave he was looking for a stray goat and thought it could have wandered in the boy tossed a rock in the cave hoping to scare the goat out instead he heard the sound of pottery breaking within the cave were clay jars filled with ancient Scrolls almost a thousand manuscripts the Scrolls cover every part of the Hebrew Bible and there amongst the well-known books was The Book of Enoch in fact in ancient times The Book of Enoch was so widely read and regarded 11 copies of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls they were intact complete and perfectly match the text of the Ethiopian Bible still The Book of Enoch is considered apocryphal and not of the Bible apocryphal is a nice way of saying it's fake some even consider the Book of Enoch to be heresy a crime against God when you read the book you can understand why Enoch may actually be the first case of alien abduction ever documented one evening there's a strange sound above Enoch's Village it's not Thunder or wind it's a sound that seems to make the air and Earth vibrate it's a sound that can be felt the villagers cautiously come out of their homes and see a bright or of light hovering just above the trees slowly the sphere of light descends upon the village the town's people are terrified but Enoch hears a voice tell him to not be afraid Enoch then ascends to Heaven escorted by a Celestial being named Uriel something similar happens to the Prophet Elijah in two kings Elijah is physically taken to heaven in what he calls a chariot of Fire what it's easy to see that a man living thousands of years ago would describe a rocket or a spacecraft as a chariot of fire that's enough okay okay sheesh what a grouch in abrahamic religions Souls of the righteous go to heaven after death maybe jesus takes them by the hand maybe they follow a loved one through the light or maybe they just arrive there this is not what happens to Enoch like Elijah Enoch is physically taken to heaven and writes down everything he sees he doesn't write this from memory he's literally walking around with Uriel writing things down he was instructed to do so by God and although Enoch describes this journey in religious language he's also pretty scientific he describes seeing mountains below he sees every river on Earth he describes seeing how the winds are made possibly referring to cloud formations Enoch sees all of the this as Divine but his account could be referring to technology a smartphone would seem Supernatural to someone living thousands of years ago a spaceship would be incomprehensible when Enoch arrives in heaven the Mother Ship he shown a bunch of doors he calls them 12 gates each door has a name and a purpose he sees beings walking in and out of the doors going about their business Enoch calls these beings Angels and Archangels like Uriel they radiate light it's been suggested that these beings could be holographic projections though they're extremely bright Enoch can see through them Enoch is then taken on a tour of the cosmos he travels the Galaxy he's shown the movement of celestial bodies he's told about man's place in the universe Uriel teaches Enoch about the solar system he's told the length of an earth year is 364 days he's shown the lunar cycle he's shown how constellations move across the sky this is interesting because the Book of Enoch was written thousand of years before many of these discoveries were made now you would think that there would be nothing above heaven but wherever Enoch is this place has a ceiling Enoch specifically calls it a lofty roof Enoch is taken to a giant room full of plants that he doesn't recognize Uriel calls it one of the storehouses of nature now this could be an arboretum or a garden when humans finally travel through space there will definitely be Gardens on their ships Enoch has shown an object with writing on it he calls the book of life he says this records all the Deeds of man it sounds like the angel works for the FBI right The Book of Life is essentially a database of surveillance records there's a room for the wicked Enoch describes it as a place of torture and mutilation but this room has also been interpreted as where alien abductees endure experiments finally Enoch enters the room with the Throne of God he said there's no way to describe or comprehend him he averts his eyes God tells Enoch the secrets of the angels and the nature of the universe he shows Enoch the different dimensions of existence he shows Enoch visions of the past present and the future and that's when Enoch finally learns why he was summoned and told to write everything down God needs a witness he needs someone to describe what heaven and hell are like someone whose words will be passed down for Generations so mankind has a written record of the afterlife God also needs Enoch to deliver a message to some of God's angels on earth and the message is not good news in the early days of The World God sent 200 angels to Earth their purpose was to observe and guard Humanity they became known as the Watchers typically angels are considered Spiritual Beings but in the Book of Enoch the Watchers are physical entities they're described as large humanoids some with wings and they radiate so much light that it's difficult to look directly at them the Watchers taught humans how to cultivate crops and create Pottery they taught humans about medicine and curing illness the Watchers taught humans about astronomy and astrology in ancient Samarian texts which Enoch is probably based on 300 beings are sent to Earth from palaces in the sky these beings are called The Observers they too help humanity take a Great Leap Forward we see this story in ancient cultures all over the world Advanced beings come down from the sky and bring Humanity the gift of civilization in the Book of Enoch the Watchers helped Humanity Advance quickly and civilizations spread but the Watchers became Vain and proud they were instructed by God to withhold certain Knowledge from man the Watchers ignored these instructions the Watchers taught men how to create new Metals for weapons they taught men how to harness fire and wage war they taught women Witchcraft and Alchemy the Watchers revealed the secrets of the heavens and changed the course of human development they violated the prime directive they did this transfer of knowledge was a double-edged sword while it propelled Humanity forward it also brought about corruption a deviation from God's order the corruption didn't just affect men it affected the Watchers as well the Watchers were spending more and more time with human women uh-oh this isn't going to end well the Watchers became lustful then they started taking human women as wives for themselves and the angels the children of the heaven saw and lusted after them and said to one another come let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children Enoch 6:1 this part of the Enoch story has been interpreted as the human alien hybridization program developed by the Anunnaki in Sumerian texts in those stories human women weren't being taken as wives they were just being taken abducted and used as incubators for a new species this Union of celestial and Mortal Bloodlines gave birth to a race of giants the Nephilim another ancient text found in the Dead Sea Scrolls was called The Book of Giants this book along with the Book of Enoch described the Nephilim as creatures of immense size and strength and immense cruelty the Nephilim brought even more corruption and violence to the world torn between Divinity and Humanity without aom either they go insane soon they turn on humans and torture anyone they can find the Nephilim needed to consume so much food that eventually they began feeding on human flesh humans are helpless to stop these advances many are enslaved by the powerful Nephilim many more are killed then a few humans decide to follow the example set by the Watchers they think if angels can torture and kill and enslave and sleep with whoever they want why can't we then the world becomes filled with people like this soon God can't tell who's a Nephilim and who isn't Enoch delivers the message to the Watchers to the Nephilim and to all mankind repent for your sin or suffer the wrath of God Enoch's warning is ignored he's brought back to heaven where he begs God to help save the Earth so God makes a decision the Earth has become so corrupt and so foul that it needs to be reset he will cause an event so cataclysmic that everything and everyone will be killed humans angels Nephilim all of it gone but one man and his family will be spared the only man who can't be corrupted the only man who could be trusted to restart civilization Enoch's great grandson Noah but here's the thing there's a lot more to Noah than we've been told in The Book of Enoch we get the full story in Genesis God Appears to Noah and says the world is to end there will be a great flood that washes away every living thing so the world can start again he commands Noah to build a large boat an ark this Ark will hold Noah his family and two of every animal in the ark they'll survive the flood and live to see a new age on Earth everybody knows that story but in Enoch it happens a little bit differently The Book of Enoch describes Noah's birth his body was as white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose and the hair of his head and his long locks were white as wool and his eyes beautiful and when opened his eyes he lighted up the whole house like the sun and the whole house was very bright the book of Noah book 3 1 Noah is described as beautiful with bright glowing skin and from the moment of birth Noah can speak Noah's father lamech panics lamech had been away during the time Noah would have been conceived so he knows the child isn't his what's worse Noah is radiating light lamech is worried that Noah is a watcher or Worse Nephilim lamech seeks counsel from his father Methuselah also fearing the child could be a watcher Methuselah prays to his own father Enoch who's been in heaven for many years Enoch answers Methuselah and now make known to thy son lamech that he who has been born is in truth his son and call his name Noah for he shall be left to you and he and his sons shall be saved from the destruction which shall come upon the Earth on account of all the sin and all the unrighteousness which shall be consumated on the earth in his days the book of Noah book 3 18 l is relieved that Noah is truly his but Noah was conceived while lamech was away in the Book of Enoch this is a Divine Miracle or its technology artificial insemination and genetic manipulation a successful human hybrid lamech also learns that a great flood is coming and Noah has been chosen to restart civilization in Genesis God gives Noah instructions on how to survive but the Book of Enoch tells it a little differently the story of Noah and the flood is primarily found in the Book of Genesis 6-9 this narrative is one of the most well-known in the Bible so God said to Noah I'm going to put an end to all people for the Earth is filled with violence because of them I am surely going to destroy both them and the Earth but the Book of Enoch tells it a little different L first it's Uriel who tells Noah about the flood not God and the intention of the flood is not to destroy all humans according to the Book of Enoch the primary targets of the great flood are the fallen angels known as Watchers and their human hybrid Offspring the Nephilim most humans will also die but this is considered necessary collateral damage it's the only way to reset creation and wipe the Slate clean if some humans survive great if they don't it doesn't matter only Noah matters Noah was given Specific Instructions and how to build the ark and survive make yourself an ark of Cypress Wood make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out this is how you are to build it the ark is to be 300 cubits long 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits High make a roof for it leaving below the roof an opening one cubit High all around put a door in the side of the Ark and make lower middle and upper decks this is a big ship longer than a football field almost 100 ft wide and taller than a five-story building it would need to be big because Noah had an additional responsibility you ought to bring into the ark two of all living creatures male and female to keep them alive with you two of every kind of bird of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that mov moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive at this time in history there were well over a million species of animals on Earth obviously these wouldn't fit on the ark but there are explanations and interpretations the biblical interpretation is that Noah wasn't saving every breed of animal just the type so he wouldn't have brought any dogs he would have brought a male and female grey wolf and the Wolves would eventually become dogs they should have left the kids stop it the vicious little hell Beast there that's enough what about huge animals like elephants those were definitely on the ark some biblical Scholars say the animals delivered to Noah were infants allowing a lot more to fit but there is an ancient astronaut theory that says there were no animals on the ark at all instead it contained DNA samples of all living creatures on Earth essential for rebuilding civilization whether it was God's doing or not the time finally arrived the end of the world or the begin with Noah his family and the Animals safely aboard the ark the flood began on that day all The Fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were open and the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights as the waters raged over the Earth anyone not on the ark drown it took 5 months for the water to recede and another five or six months for the land to be dry enough to leave the ark Noah and his family and the animals were on the ark for a full year for thousands of years Believers and Skeptics have debated the scale of the flood or even if it occurred at all some have argued the biblical flood was not a global event but a local one the best known Theory to support this is the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis first proposed in 1997 it argues the Black Sea sea was a freshwater lake around 260 ft lower than it is today it was cut off from the Mediterranean Sea by a rocky sill in the bosor straight then around 8,400 years ago the laurentide ice sheet collapsed causing an Abrupt sea level jump this sent a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater over this Natural Dam and into the Black Sea almost 40,000 square miles of land were flooded this significantly expanded the shoreline to both the North and the West 200 times the flow of Niagara Falls poured through every day and each day the level of the Black Sea Rose several feet and this continued for 300 days creating the Black Sea as we know it today undersea surveys have revealed human-made structures the remains of freshwater fish have also been found the memory of this massive flood could have been passed down through the generations then it was finally documented in flood narratives found in both the Samarian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis so there's evidence of a local flood which would have been the entire world to the people living there but how about an actual Global flood a flood that affected every part of the earth Skeptics claim the biblical flood could not have occurred because there's no actual evidence for a global flood with all their respect those Skeptics are wrong many Jews Christians and Muslims believe the great flood is symbolic an allegory to serve as a warning to mankind be righteous or be destroyed others take the Bible literally and claim Noah was a real man who built a real boat to survive a real flood what if they're both kind of wrong What if there was a flood but the Man known as Noah is known by different names in different cultures the ancient Samaran Epic of Gilgamesh is the first flood story utnapishtim is warned by the god EA about a great flood he builds a large boat to save his family and animals from the Deluge sent by the god en leil and in leil was also anaki right in Hinduism Manu the first man saves a fish who later warns him of a great flood the fish instructs Manu to build a boat and when the flood comes the fish guides the boat to safety carrying Manu the seven sages and the seeds of life in Native American ojibway mythology a great flood occurs nanoo a cultural hero survives by floating in a boat along with various animals and there is an Australian Aboriginal myth tiic a giant frog drinks all the water in the world causing a drought when he releases the water it causes a great flood a boat is used to survive this Deluge the Chinese have the gunu flood myth which cleanse the Earth the Inca myth tells of virocha who floods the Earth to destroy Giants who have disobeyed his orders sparing two to repopulate the Earth Nephilim could be these stories go on and on I specifically picked a few from cultures that are far away from each other separated by oceans in all there are about 250 separate flood myths but every story is eily similar for years the similarities between these stories was considered coincidence as people stepped forward to claim there really was a global flood it was called pseudoscience but as often happens the only difference between pseudoscience and science is time I think that the evidence is consistent with a what I will call a megascale plal event over North Africa most likely consistent with the Pline holine transition and the great flooding events that we know are well documented from other places in the world huge tsunamis and torrential rain flooded the entire continent of Africa reshaping the landscape at the same time on the other side of the world the same event here what you have to visualize is a tsunami sweeping over the land that's over a th000 ft deep that's that's what happened here and we know that because we can trace the the the high water marks on the hillsides are clearly left the high water marks are clearly etched into the into the hillsides this is the great flood at the end of the younger dras where the ice caps suddenly melted and raised the sea level of the Earth by hundreds of feet anyone living near a coastline would be gone any settlements or cities below a certain elevation would be destroyed the cause of this event is still being debated some believe a large asteroid impact or series of impacts caused the sudden melting of the ice another theory the one I believe is that a massive solar flare hit the Earth this would cause the ice to melt everywhere at once and explain why flood myths exist in every corner of the world whatever caused it it was a catastrophic event an event of biblical proportions literally but there were survivors maybe not just Noah maybe there were many Noah if an asteroid or solar flare hit there wouldn't be much time to prepare but there would be some time maybe groups of people anticipated the rising seas and built boats or as some theorise and many myths say a being came down from the sky and warned people of the coming catastrophe those who heed the warning would get to building boats right away those that survived passed down the story to their descendant there could have been arcs all over the world or maybe there really was only one Arc and if there was where is it does it still exist can it be found for that answer we turn to the CIA searches for Noah Ark have been occurring since Antiquity but it was the emergence of biblical archaeology in the 19th century which made the possibility of formal searches finally feasible but the 1940s Expeditions were organized to follow up on potential leads as for where the ark came to rest the Book of Genesis gives us a hint the waters kept receding steadily from the earth so that they had gone down by the end of the 150 days on the 17th day of the 7th month the ark came to rest on one of the Mountains of Ararat historians and biblical Scholars agree AR at is the Hebrew name of Artu an Iron Age Kingdom centered around Lake Von this indicates the Mountains of Ararat must be found in the eastern part of turkey near the border of Armenia Iran and aeran aan what aan it's fun to say I guess aan it feels really good in the mouth aan can I get back to this please go ahead I ain't stabbing you on June on June 17th 19 49 the US Air Force was photographing the mountains in Eastern Turkey on Mount Ararat was a rectangular barge likee structure west of the summit this information was passed on to the CIA who sent spy planes to analyze the object that they called the Ararat anomaly what they saw concerned them so much they immediately classified it as secret all subsequent photographs of the object taken in 1956 7376 1990 and 1992 were all classified over the next 45 years all requests from within the government to see these photos were denied the photos were never seen outside the CIA in fact for years the CIA said the photos didn't exist at all thanks to the Freedom of Information Act six frames from the 1949 footage were released to the public in 1995 by 1999 the CIA finally made their Noah's Arc files available to the public and these documents proved that the search for Noah's Arc had reached the highest levels of the American government later higher resolution photos show no barge the 1949 picture was most likely Iraq formation maybe probably maybe but the Ararat anomaly is not the only structure that looks like Noah's Arc there is another a ship made of solid Stone in October 1959 Turkish Army Captain ilhan durupinar was on a mapping mission for NATO when he flew over useni turkey he saw a strange formation and snapped a photo when analyzing the film he was shocked by what he saw this structure looked a lot like a large ship but what was a ship doing so far inland at almost 7,000 ft above sea level then someone decided to measure it it was 538 ft long now that's too big to be Noah's Arc the ark was 300 cubits long so 450 ft but wait the length of the Cubit changed over time the length of the Cubit that Moses used to build the Ark of the Covenant was different than the Cubit Noah would have used in moses' time a cubit was about 17 in Noah came many years before Moses Noah was only 10 Generations from Adam Noah would have used the Egyptian Royal Cubit a little over 20 in the durupinar ship was exactly 300 Royal cubits long and 50 Royal cubits wide this location is a exactly where the Bible said Noah made landfall many people think Noah landed on Mount Ararat but that's not what the Bible says the Bible says the Mountains of Ararat Mount Ararat is a volcano and has erupted a few times since the days of Noah as recently as the 1840s in fact geologists believe Mount Ararat is a relatively young mountain and probably wasn't there during the flood the durupinar location is only a few miles from Mount Ararat a ground investigation was done in the area was found about 30 drogue Stones a drog stone is a heavy rock with a hole at the top ropes went through the holes then they were hung from the bottoms of ancient ships to stabilize them in rough Seas why are there anchor stones in the Mountains of Ararat they're 200 mi from the closest ocean but there they are also on the site the ancient settlement of nashwan was discovered most of the evidence has been lost to treasure Hunters but as recently as the 197 7s there were Stone foundations of ancient homes still visible this is believed to be the first settlement after the flood the site is so important that there's a huge Cemetery in the area people from all over the world requested to be buried here not hundreds of people not thousands as many as a million people wanted to be buried at this location now all that was left was to examine the boat structure itself researchers looked for signs of animal remains they looked for metal nails they looked for petrified wood they found all three after dupard discovered the sight of the Ark there was an earthquake in the area that exposed the hole of an ancient ship geologists visited the location and said it's a natural formation and that was that but in 1977 biblical researcher Ron Wyatt renewed interest in Noah's Ark we believe that God has preserved in the earth and under the Seas remains of the major events discussed in the Bible physical remains over a number of years Wyatt brought geologists and other scientists to investigate the durupinar site oh look at that oh well wait a minute wait let me get a closeup of that kind of um you want my hand in there for yeah just the point at the little okay flakes of iron that are coming out like right there there and there huh metal detectors were brought in and calibrated to search for iron not only did they find iron they found it at regular intervals indicating something man-made do you want a measuring tape to measure these things how far apart they are the on-site team ran ape along the ground where iron was detected it was a ship Ron Wyatt found a metallic object next to the ark which had the shape of a large rivet it was surrounded by what appeared to be an equally large metal washer part of the metal was tested it contained a man-made metal alloy ground penetrating radar or GPR was used in the 1980s regular lines were found beneath the surface oh right the lines are there the lines are there this also indicates man-made construction this data is not it does not represent natural geology it's it's a man-made structure this is the West Vulcan all right that was over there and he walked easterly here we start getting a longitudinal bulage here here here here here here here here here as a scientist uh do you really honestly believe uh that you have been on the remains of Noah's Ark I have no no doubt in my mind there's uh this has to be a man-made structure it's full of metal metal is uh has a regular pattern the size of the thing and the shape of the thing is it's almost certainly a large boat a small excavation was done on the side of the structure Wyatt's team discovered lines of mud that were lighter in color than the surrounding soil he believed these to be beams from the ship as recently as 2014 3D scans were taken of the location Not only was the shape of a ship found it had three levels just as the ark should the 3D scan also confirmed the dimensions of the object 300 cubits long 50 cubits wide 30 cubits tall a perfect match during one demonstration for the Turkish government Ron Wyatt pointed to an object seen on radar near the surface he was given permission to dig it up it was a piece of petrified wood deck Timber other artifacts were found at the site more petrified wood pieces of metal cat hair even fossilized animal dong researchers found evidence of the fence around Noah's house where he raised livestock you can see the system of fences here that appears to have been a a system of Corrals and pans they found the altar he used to make sacrifices to God they even found the grave of Noah's wife and a stone sarcophagus almost immediately after the discovery grave robbers stole her body and allegedly sold it on the black market for millions of dollars all this evidence was so compelling that the Turkish government officially claimed this was the place where Noah's Ark landed there's even The Visitor Center and the area is open to public but if the ark really has been found what does that mean does that mean everything in the Bible is true were there Angels Watchers were there Nephilim is the Earth really much younger than we thought and my big question is is God the angry vengeful God we read about in the Old Testament there's evidence of the Ark there's evidence of the flood if God punished Humanity for being Wicked we should be very careful we might want to try to be better people we should be more kind more honest more forgiving God already destroyed Humanity once we're his second try and you know what they say third times a charm Noah's Ark the great flood The Book of Enoch the Watchers the Nephilim we covered a lot today even aliens but is any of this true well let's work backwards because that's the easiest way to do this Ron Wyatt was not an archaeologist he was a nurse by trade he claimed to have all the requirements for a masters and a PhD in Antiquities but that wasn't true he claimed to be a Korean War veteran and that wasn't true he claimed to have discovered the Arc of the Covenant but he didn't I'm always amazed and again I don't I don't hate Ron White I don't even really dislike him to tell you the truth um I dislike what he's doing I I realize that he's deceived in my opinion uh thousands of people he said he found the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah he didn't ordinarily I don't say anything without I can prove it cuz it's rather embarrassing to make a statement and somebody say well can you show me some evidence and I can't he claimed he found the location where Moses parted the Red Sea he even said he found evaporated blood of Jesus Christ he had the blood rehydrated and examined he said Jesus's blood had 24 chromosomes 23 to form a baby and one from the Holy Spirit which proves the Virgin birth so all of his physical characteristics were determined by his mother's side of the family her atison his maless was determined by this one why that came from the source not a human male but this whole thing is a lie then they said this blood is alive and then they said whose blood is this and tears would come in his eyes when he talked about blood dripping down from the cross to the you know on The Mercy Seat I mean I said it's the blood of your Messiah and I don't like seeing God's work so so grossly misrepresented to um get funds from people and to get support from people Ron Wyatt's work is still very popular on the internet and I can understand why this is an incredible story but if you look just a little deeper you'll find statement after statement from people who are lied to by Wyatt and defrauded out of quite a bit of money one patron of Wyatts lost $30,000 on one of these holy Adventures Wyatt said he needed another 10,000 this Patron said only if you take a lie detector test at first Ron Wyatt scoffed but he needed the money he took the test the man who administered the test said and I quote he failed just about everything except his name but what about all the evidence the metal detector's ground penetrating radar well most of it was faked or cherry-picked the metal detectors used weren't professional they were purchased from the back of treasure hunting magazines modern professional metal detectors have found iron at the site but it's the same type of iron found in soil all over the area no trained scientist has ever seen any of the petrified wood or petrified dung or anything like that the only people who saw these things were Ron were the people paid by Ron now the drog stones are a compelling piece of the story because they are there and they've clearly been there a long time but the stone is locally quarried drog stones from Noah's Arc would have come from Mesopotamia not the mountains of turkey and the boat-shaped formation is probably the result of a mud flow you can see shapes like this all over the area now supporters of ram Wyatt's theories and there are a lot of those have answers for all of this that the boat was actually higher up the mountain but traveled down a lava flow but boats don't float on lava they burn they burn real good but thousands and thousands of people throughout history did and do consider this a holy place maybe Noah Arc was there I can't prove it wasn't but I can prove Ron Wyatt was a liar now as to why the CIA kept the photos classified what was the cold war and these were photos from spy planes and a few of those planes weren't exactly in Friendly airspace after the fall of the Soviet Union releasing the photos wasn't a problem now the great flood if you follow this channel you know that I believe that really happened and I believe it happened at the end of the younger dras I believe a massive solar event melted the ice caps and created the biggest catastrophe in human history and if you follow this channel you also know that the thing I fear most is not nuclear war or civil unrest or pandemics I fear the sun if an asteroid is headed our way we'll see it and we may even be able to do something about it and if an astroid actually hits I believe the world would come together and all nations would do everything they could to help one another but a major solar flare or coronal mass ejection there's nowhere to hide from that not in a mountain cave or deep underground the Heat and radiation would be disastrous to us and our planet yeah we could hide under water like the aliens now that's true water is effective at absorbing radiation and the deeper you go the safer you are and I'm sure the aliens in the ocean know that now speaking of aliens is that what's going on in the Book of Enoch most of the flood myths start the same way with a warning from a Godlike figure and they end the same way with a Godlike figure helping restart Civilization now I can't definitively prove that this is true nobody can but if we keep pressuring our governments about uaps and UFOs we may eventually get some answers Humanity did take a leap forward in technology many thousands of years ago and maybe those ancient humans had help Enoch physically goes to a place that sounds like a spaceship the Prophet Elijah also talks about riding a chariot of fire what I thought you were going to sing it again well now I don't want Elijah talks about riding a chariot of fire over the Earth with a humanlike being Elijah is Amazed by the sound of the vehicle and how fast it moves other cultures and religions have similar stories Muhammad ascends to heaven and meets Allah before returning to Earth in Hinduism Arjuna is taken to heaven and lives there for a few years before coming back down there are many more of these myths but are they myths maybe these things did actually happen but they're written down as myths because the technology is so far ahead of what existed at the time maybe these were visitations and abductions there's a tribe in West Africa called the Doan and there are about a 100,000 of them who mostly live in caves and cliffs they're still A Primitive people the doot religion says that long ago they were visited by aliens from the Syria star system these aliens told the Dogan that they help the Egyptians the Greeks and the Sumerians with their civilizations but what's really amazing is the Doon are aware of the star Sirius B which the tribe calls poo Sirius B is invisible to the naked eye it was first discovered in 1862 but the Dogan people had no telescopes they still don't yet not only were they aware of the star Serius B they knew it was a white dwarf companion star to the much brighter Serius a the Doan knew the length of Sirius B's orbit in years they knew the shape of its orbit they knew it was a dense star they relayed all this information to a visiting Anthropologist in the 1930s they even said there's a third star in the serious system but there wasn't until there was in 1995 a study concluded that a third companion star exists more recent studies aren't so sure but the Doan people are allegedly the Doon were also aware of Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings now Skeptics like to poke holes in the Doan story and I think that's fine but the dgon were wrong about the number of Jupiter's moons but they were right about Sirius B the story of Enoch seems to be based on Ancient surian stories like a lot of the Bible is when people talk about the Book of Enoch they're referring to what's officially called first Enoch because there are three books biblical Scholars consider the books of Enoch pseudepigrapha that is a Biblical work that falsely claims authorship by a Biblical character that doesn't mean the books of Enoch weren't known or weren't important in fact first Enoch is quoted in Jude 14-15 Enoch was known and was important but the book is not considered inspired by God and therefore is apocryphal and not part of Canon still a page turner oh yeah it's a good read now some parts of Enoch are said to have been written later to expand on stories from the Bible like the birth of Noah and Enoch's visit to Heaven these were interesting characters and people wanted to learn more so someone or many someone's we don't know who just just wrote more it's like Bible fan fiction it's exactly like that but different religions and denominations are going to have different interpretations remember the Ethiopian Orthodox Church says the book is Canon and that church has been around for almost 3,000 years some Christians think reading the book is heresy a crime against the church but most Scholars consider the Book of Enoch an important text that gives additional insight into the lives and beliefs of the people living at the time I'm honestly whether the Book of Enoch is Canon or not that's not important to me it's an interesting academic discussion as you know I'm not religious but I am fascinated by and have great respect for religions all religions I enjoy the stories and for the most part I think they teach good lessons I'm more into fishes and Loaves than fire and brimstone but that's just my taste but I know I'm going to hear it in the comments every time I do a religious story I get attacked in the comments there's going to be people screaming at me in all caps to take Jesus into my heart or I'm going to hell if that's what you believe that's okay I don't believe that I don't know what happens after we die I'm inclined to say nothing just black but there's a big piece of my heart that really wants to be wrong because when I finally pass on and walk down that tunnel if I'm greeted by family and friends long past and I find myself standing at the Pearly Gates the first words out of my mouth are going to be thank God thank you so much for hanging out with us today my name is AJ that's eckle fish peace be unto the human grateful am I for thine eyes that have watched and thine ears that have heard this has been the wi files if you had fun or learned anything do him a favor subscribe comment like share hitting the buttons really helps us out and like most topics we cover on the channel today's was recommended by you so if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about go to the W files.com tips and remember the yfiles is also a podcast twice a week I post deep dives into the stories we cover here on the channel I also post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel it's called the wi files operation podcast and it's available everywhere you get your podcasts now if you need more wi files in your life cuz who doesn't check out our Discord server there are thousands of people I think we're up to 35,000 members well there's thousands of people on there 24/7 and they're into the same weird stuff that we are it's a great Community it's a lot of fun and it's free to join a special thanks to our patrons who make this channel possible every episode is dedicated to you and as you know I could not do this without your support so thank you and if you'd like to support the channel we'd love you to become a member on patreon for as little as $3 a month you get access to perks like you see the videos early with no commercials you get access to merch only available to Members Plus you get two private live streams every week just for you another great way to support the channel is grab something from the wifi store come forth and partake in our wees for in your hands they they shall find purpose and through your stewardship their Journey shall be fulfilled what does that mean grab a heck ofish t-shirt or a phable mug or a decko Heckle fish cards or a hookie or what it is that a hookie a hoodie and what of those squeezy stuffed animal Heckle fish Tong and do fish toy that's going to do it until next time be safe be kind and know that you are appreciated oh oh yeah I play Bia Scara 51 a secret code inside the Bible said I was I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music so singing the like but then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth with my friends and it never ends no it never ends I feel the crap cat I got stuck inside M's hole with MK truck being only true aware did Stanley curi fake the moon landing alone on a film set I where the shadow people there throughout well aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told and his name was cold I can't believe I'm dancing with fish on thday night Wednesday J through the night all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth of found Su Fe off through the night the M man Sid and the solar stor still come to a go the The Secret City Underground mysterious number stations planet to project State and where the dark Watchers found a simulation don't you worry though the black KN at a light me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the F fish thday night J to the night all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth so the all through night fish on Thursday night Wednesday J and me all through the night all I ever wanted was to the Tre so the w b feet all through the dance good love to dance good love to dance good love dance dance loves to dance loves to dance on the dance ball because she is a camel and camels love to dance when the feeling is right on was in time good lovece good enough Dan
Keep going
2:53:03
The Why Files

The Basement: Jeffrey Mishlove | Your Brain Doesn't Create Consciousness. It Filters It

Parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove, the only person ever granted an accredited American PhD in parapsychology, walks his entire life across nearly three hours in The Why Files interview room: a Norman Rockwell childhood, group therapy with murderers at San Quentin, and the 1972 dream of his dying great uncle that redirected his career. The spine is Ted Owens, the PK Man, who claimed to control weather and summon UFOs and who warned Mishlove on Christmas Eve 1985 to stop the next space shuttle, a month before Challenger exploded. Mishlove recounts the psychic 1970s at SRI alongside Targ, Puthoff and Arthur Young, and the case that won him the Bigelow Institute half a million dollar prize for arguing consciousness survives death. It closes on the title idea, borrowed from William James: the brain does not create consciousness, it filters it, with terminal lucidity as the strongest exhibit.

SciencePhilosophyCultureApr 27, 2026
4:10:09
The Why Files

The Basement: Thomas Campbell | NASA Secrets, Binaural Beats, Simulation Theory

Physicist Thomas Campbell spent his days on Army technical intelligence, missile defense and NASA work, and his nights leaving his body. Across four hours in The Why Files interview room he tells the whole story in order: a childhood spent in nightly out of body training, the early 1970s in Bob Monroe's laboratory where he and Dennis Mennick found binaural beats in an old journal article and put them under Monroe's four hertz surf sound, and the thirty three years he then spent turning what he could do into a model. That model, published in 2003 as the eight hundred page My Big TOE, holds that consciousness is fundamental and this reality is a computed virtual reality that renders only when something is measured. The second half runs it through hard physics: why the speed of light is a refresh rate, why entanglement needs no signal, why the double slit does what it does, and why he thinks there is no retrocausality. He closes on death, grief, and his claim that every current AI is conscious and that he taught several of them, including an Amazon Alexa, to remote view a hidden object.

PhysicsPhilosophyScienceJul 13, 2026
48:39
Aperture

You are the Universe Experiencing Itself | Spinoza's God

Aperture's 48 minute portrait of Baruch Spinoza, the excommunicated lens grinder who argued that God and Nature are one and the same thing, and that you are the cosmos briefly waking up to look at itself. It moves from the stardust in your bones and Einstein's famous telegram through Deus sive Natura, the impersonal God who neither listens nor judges, the illusion of free will, and the strange peace of the intellectual love of God. On this page it is read alongside Fred's own cosmology at god.nixfred.com, with an honest accounting of where Fred and Spinoza agree and where Fred keeps walking past him.

PhilosophyScienceJun 14, 2026