In 2008, Kurdish native Ahmet Ertugrul, also known as Parasut, made his way to a site on Mount Ararat where he uncovered what may be the greatest archaeological discovery of all time. On November 9, 2014, Charlotte, NC native Philip Ernest Williams visited what appeared to be a multi-level ancient wooden structure buried under many tons of volcanic rock and ice above 4000 meters on the south side of Mount Ararat.
The considerable interest in this discovery is due to the fact that the Bible (Gen 8:4) mentions Noah’s Ark as coming to rest on the mountains of Ararat. There have been many ancient and modern reports that the Ark still rests on 17,000 foot Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in the Ancient Near East. Notwithstanding these ancient and modern reports, it was not until June 2008 when the Turkish mountain guide Ahmet Ertugrul, better known as Parasut (pronounced ‘parachute’), uncovered the remains of a large ancient wooden structure buried beneath many feet of ice and volcanic rock buried above 4000m on the south side of this mountain. The permanently frozen snowcap of this mountain certainly could have preserved wood from so long ago. The discovery was announced to the world in April 2010 by Hong Kong-based media company Noah’s Ark Ministries International (NAMI).
In 2015, the Mount Ararat Discovery Foundation (MADF) was established as a 501(c)3 public non-profit corporation devoted to sponsor the independent scientific investigations, multi-regional archaeological surveys, scholarly studies, and protection of sites and antiquities associated with Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey. MADF operates in partnership with Turkish archaeologists and authorities licensed to investigate.