From the Daily Mail‘s “US Science & Technology Editor”, last month:
High in the mountains of Turkey sits a mysterious boat-shaped formation that some researchers believe could be the remains of Noah’s Ark.
…Now, an international team examining the Durupınar Formation near Mount Ararat claims it has ‘100 percent confirmed’ that the mound is not a natural geological feature but a ‘man-made object.’
…Independent researcher Andrew Jones, the founder of Noah’s Ark Scans who has investigated the area for nearly 30 years, told the Daily Mail neither the radar surveys nor drilling conducted inside the formation detected limestone or solid bedrock.
…Lauren Witzke, director of marketing and fundraising for Noah’s Ark Scans, claimed the formation’s uppermost section is deteriorating.
Claims about the Durupınar Formation have been tabloid fodder for years, although it has long been established that the formation is natural rock (we’ll leave aside the obvious problems with taking the story of Noah’s Ark as historical). Jones and Noah’s Ark Scans were reported in The Sun back in 2021, and other reports noted the involvement of “Dr. Fethi Ahmet Yüksel of the Department of Geophysical Engineering, Applied Geophysics Department of Istanbul University”. Fox News now refers to Jones being “supported” by Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University (1).
However, the association with Witzke means that a “weird news” staple now takes on a more sinister aspect: her involvement with the far-right end of US conspiracism is notorious: when she ran for office in Delaware in 2020 her campaign was “marked by its closeness to extremists”, and her resumé includes promoting QAnon, acting as a host of Rick Wiles’ TruNews and co-producing Stew Peters’ anti-Covid vaccination film Died Suddenly. This last achievement is listed on the “Noah’s Ark Scans Team” website, where she appears alongside TruNews associate Edward Szall, who is listed as “Head of Production”.
Those bringing “Noah’s Ark Scans” to wider audiences alongside Fox News (which avoids mentioning Witzke) include Dinesh D’Souza, who sees its work as dovetailing nicely with his new book The Stones Cry Out: Biblical Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Last Days, and online MAGA commentator Benny Johnson (2), who posted a video entitled “Scientists Go INSIDE Noah’s Ark For The First Time!? Drone Robot Finds ‘Rooms’ In Ark 100% Confirmed”.
Notes
1. Jones contributed a chapter to a 2024 book entitled Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark: History, Myth and Land, which was based on the “7th International Ağrı Mountain and Noah’s Ark Symposium, hosted by Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University on October 19-21, 2023”. In 2018 a Turkish academic opined that Noah may have used a mobile phone, which was seen by some as sympomatic of an “increasingly religious, anti-intellectual turn encouraged by the government”.
2. Johnson has recently become better known to British audiences for an interview with Nigel Farage, during which Farage imagined doing a deal with Trump over Diego Garcia:
I’d have gone in and said, “Right, you know what, mate? Chagos, it’s yours. Diego Garcia, in perpetuity… In return, just please stop talking about the Falkland Islands.”
This apparent willingness to give up British sovereignty to appease Trump was mocked in particular by Kemi Badenoch. Despite the plain meaning of “Chagos, it’s yours”, Farage blustered in the Daily Telegraph about a “ridiculous lie”, claiming that he had merely said he would “guarantee the United States’ use of the Diego Garcia base, in perpetuity, to secure the Falklands”. He also cited the “the White House, the State Department, and the Department of War” as having understood this to be his position, adding that they “blasted Badenoch for trying to use this critical national security issue to score domestic political points”.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
