About this map
Each stop is one search for Noah’s ark, or one old report of its remains, placed where it happened. Step through them with the arrows, the years along the bottom, the arrow keys, or Play. The card under the map gives the claim, who made it and what came of it; “Read the record” gives the full wording and every source.
The four labels
- Scripture
- The words of Genesis 8:4 in the King James Version.
- Record
- What a source says. Quotations are word for word, and every card names its sources.
- Reconstruction
- The map is ours. A dashed ring means the source gives only a side of the mountain, a height or a region, so it shows roughly where, not a spot. A dotted line joins the places a story names; it is not a route. A gold dashed mark is a report still to come.
- Our reading
- A sentence of interpretation that someone could dispute, set apart from the record.
How Christians read the flood
Christians read the flood itself in more than one way, and the search means something different under each reading. Answers in Genesis holds that the flood was global; Ken Ham wrote in 2025 that “we do not need to find Noah’s ark to be convinced that the global flood really occurred.” Reasons to Believe holds that the flood “wiped out all humanity and associated animals, save those on Noah’s ark, without covering the globe.” BioLogos reads it as “an actual historical event retold in the rhetoric and theology of ancient Israel.” The Catholic bishops’ note on Genesis 8:4 is on the first stop.
Some of the firmest answers to the claims on this map have come from Christians. Answers in Genesis, which holds that the flood was global, said on 6 October 2026: “we don’t believe Noah’s Ark has been found at the Durupinar site.” The Institute for Creation Research wrote in 2020: “We don’t yet have Noah’s Ark, and it looks unlikely to turn up.” Neither ministry rests its faith on a find. This map reports what each searcher claimed and what came of it, and leaves the open questions open.
Every stop
| When | Where | The claim | What came of it |
|---|
More on Noah’s ark
Sources and licences
Quotations from news reports, ministries and scholars are short and credited. Turkish reports are given in our own words, not quoted.
Map and type
- Coastlines, lakes, rivers and borders: Natural Earth 1:10m vectors, public domain.
- Relief of the region and of the wider Ararat area: GMTED2010 mean elevation at 7.5 arc-seconds, from the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The USGS lists its access constraints as “No restrictions, All GMTED2010 data products are publicly available.” Credit: U.S. Geological Survey.
- Relief around Mount Ararat and Durupınar: produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union – EU-DEM layers, served as AWS Terrain Tiles (terrarium, zoom 12), whose makers give that attribution statement. We re-projected the heights, shaded them lit from the north-west and drew them 2.4 times as high. The European Union does not endorse this map.
- Place coordinates: Wikidata, CC0.
- Type: Tiempos Headline, FK Roman Text and GT America Condensed, as on christianpure.com.
The sources for those lines: