Vast underwater city discovered near 'resting place of Noah's Ark' rewrites Bible story known to millions

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

An ancient underwater city beneath Turkey's Lake Van could potentially reveal secrets that challenge the origins of Noah's Ark.
The sprawling ruins lie 85 feet below the surface near the town of Gevaş, just 150 miles from Mount Ararat, the mountain traditionally believed to be the final resting place of the biblical boat.
Geological evidence suggests that the ruins were submerged 12,000 to 14,500 years ago, when a Mount Nemrut eruption blocked the Mirat River, and caused massive flooding during the Younger Dryas, a period of extreme climate upheaval.
While mainstream scholars dismiss the theory, many independent researchers believe this disaster wiped out an advanced civilization, one so ancient that it may have inspired the earliest versions of the Great Flood story.
'As far as I'm aware, any civilizations in the last 6,000 years did not have the technological means to create the type of stonework we're seeing here,' said independent researcher Matt LaCroix, who spoke about the discovery on the Matt Beall Limitless podcast.
LaCroix and an international dive team are preparing to explore the site in September using advanced imaging tools to map the ruins, which he believes could help rewrite humanity's timeline.
The underwater complex spans more than half a mile, featuring a stone fortress flanked by circular temples with precisely carved masonry.
There is also a capstone engraved with a six-spoked 'Flower of Life' symbol, an ancient motif also found at sacred sites in Peru and Bolivia.
Discovered in 1997 by Turkish underwater filmmaker Tossen Salin while studying Lake Van's unusual micro-invertebrates, the ruins have remained largely unknown to the public.
While archaeologists confirm the structures exist, many attribute them to the Urartian period around 3,000 years ago, or even to the medieval era. But they have admitted that the site has yet to be fully studied or definitively dated.
LaCroix, however, said in a July episode of the podcast that geological data told a different story.
He explained how soil sampling and analysis of Mount Nemrut show clear evidence of a massive eruption around 12,000 years ago.
As a result, Lake Van's water level rose dramatically, over 100 feet, according to some estimates.
Because stone cannot be carbon-dated, researchers hope to find organic material, such as sediment layers or artifacts, which could confirm the age of the ruins.
But collecting such evidence underwater poses major challenges.
The site's sophisticated stonework, with tightly interlocking blocks, angular joints, and no visible binding agents, appears to rival the engineering seen in megalithic sites like Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
'You can see that the temple has been significantly damaged, said LaCroix.
'All the stones on the top have broken off except those at the edges. The site resembles Peruvian masonry, with precisely angled stones forming triangular joints, and only the front appears flat. It's beautiful and would have been perfectly carved.'
He believes the shared architectural features, symbolic motifs, and astronomical alignments across sites in Turkey, South America and Asia suggest the existence of a long-lost global civilization.
Scholars have long acknowledged that the biblical flood story likely evolved from earlier Mesopotamian texts.
Ancient cuneiform tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cultures, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis, and the Eridu Genesis, describe a massive flood sent to destroy early civilization, and a chosen man who builds a vessel to save life on Earth.
In these tales, the survivor is called Ziusudra or Utnapishtim, names predating Noah by thousands of years.
Excavation logs from Shuruppak, Iraq, believed to be the home of this early flood survivor, show a distinct flood layer above ancient Sumerian ruins.
These records, uncovered at the Penn Museum, provide physical evidence of a catastrophic event similar to those described in the ancient texts.
Even the Babylonian Map of the World, the oldest known map, marks the Ararat region near Lake Van as a place of ancient significance, possibly linked to tales of a lone survivor who emerged after a global deluge.
LaCroix argues that the biblical version is not being dismissed but rather reframed in its historical and cultural context.
He told Beall to picture a thriving civilization along Lake Van, building temples and structures on stable, elevated ground they believed would last forever.
The lake's water level was stable for millennia, until the eruption of Mount Nemrut changed everything.
'It's not that Lake Van would have had to have been 85 feet lower,' said LaCroix.
'It would have had to have been more like 100 feet lower or more, because these ruins are at 85 feet deep. So, what could account for a lake rising over 100 feet?'