Finding Noah's Ark

Alice C. Linsley


Despite claims that Noah’s ark has been found in Turkey, Noah’s boat has never been found. In fact, every claim of publicity seekers concerning the boat shaped forms on Greater Mount Ararat have been shown to be false. Noah's ark just isn't there.

The ark has never been found because people have been looking in the wrong place. Instead of searching the mountains of Turkey, they should be looking to the mountains of East Central Africa. This is the homeland of Noah, a Nilo-Saharan ruler who lived in the region of Lake Chad at a time when the Sahara was wet and the Nile was much wider.

As can be seen from the image above, Noah's homeland, called Borno, is almost exactly in the center of Africa, and Har-Meni is the likely mountain upon which the ark came to rest. Har-Meni means Mount Meni and Harmeni is close to the word Armenia. Ar-menia could mean ""mountain of Meni." In 1874, Godfrey Higgins, in his monograph Anacalypsis: An Inquiry into the Origins of Languages, Nations and Religions, noted that "Armenia" could mean "mount of Meru… that is, Ar or Er-Meni-ia, the country of mount Meru or Meni."

According to David M. Westley, Director of the African Studies Library at Boston University, "From the center of the Chad Basin to Mount Meni is about 230 miles."  Mount Meru, Africa’s fifth highest mountain, is located in northern Tanzania. It stands at 15,000 feet and is 42 miles west-southwest of Mount Kilimanjaro, near the Kenyan border. It is an extinct volcanic crater. The land at the base is rich volcanic soil. As one ascends the mountain, there are forests with fig and Acacia trees. Mahogany, olive, and date palm trees grow on the drier crater walls. There are so many species of animals living in the Arusa region that the Kenyan tourist agencies refer to Mount Meru as "Noah’s ark."

Noah likely lived during the Holocene Wet Period which is also called the "Gurian Wet Period" and the "Aqualithic." The latter term was coined by British archaeologist John Sutton (Journal of Africa History 1974; Antiquity 1977). There was an abundance of water in central Africa due to monsoons off the Indian Ocean, and to the African rifts that created great watersheds or troughs. Rifting, combined with prolonged rains. caused this entire region to flood.

Lake Chad is located at the boundary of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, an area of heavy rifting as shown in the map below.

Prehistoric boats and cows 
shown on Saharan rocks 

In the time of Africa's Wet Period Lake Chad extended many hundreds of miles beyond its present basin, and it is possible that there may have been water up to Mt. Meni in East Africa. I believe that is where Noah's ark landed, but no one knows for sure.

In the Bhagvad Gita, Lord Krishna says, "Among the mountains, I am Meru", that is the spinal cord of the world. The Vishnu Purana (from about 200 B.C.) details how there are seven continents ringed by seven oceans: "The central continent has Meru at its core, bounded by three mountain ranges to the north and three to the south. One of these ranges is the Himalayan barrier, interposed between Meru and ‘Bharatha’, the Indian subcontinent. Meru itself stands eighty-four thousand leagues high, with four faces of crystal, ruby, gold and lapis lazuli. Ganga falls from the heavens on Meru’s summit, circles the mountain and then divides into four mighty rivers which flow to the four quarters of the earth." According to Buddhist tradition, the island of Sri Lanka broke off from Meru. Many Hindu temples, including Angkor Wat in Cambodia, have been built as symbolic representations of Mount Meru.

The word meni appears only once in the Bible, in Isaiah 65:11, where it is paralleled with the word gad, meaning good fortune. I suspect that there is a connection between meni and the ancient practice of worship on mountain tops because where the word "gad" appears there is often a contextual reference to sacrifice or praise offered on mountains. We recall that Noah offered burnt sacrifice on the mountain in thanksgiving for his deliverance (Gen. 8:20) and that God established a covenant with Noah and his descendants.


Related reading: Noah's Flood: Where and When?; How Big Was Noah's Flood; Africa in the Days of Noah; Cemetery Predates Noah; Newly Discovered Pyramid Predates Noah; Was the Earth Repopulated After Noah's Flood?