Researchers say a boat-shaped mound near Mount Ararat is a man-made object, and a 1587 map puts Noah’s Ark in virtually the same place.

An international team examining Turkey’s Durupınar Formation says radar, carbon tests, and soil samples show the mound is not a simple lump of natural rock. At the same time, a centuries-old world map has drawn fresh attention for placing Noah’s Ark on the mountains of Ararat at a matching spot and length.

The claims come from Noah’s Ark Scans, which is studying the formation just 18 miles south of Mount Ararat, Turkey’s tallest peak. The group says it has “100 percent confirmed” the feature is a “man-made object.” Independent scientists have long argued the shape is geological. The team’s fuller lab results are still pending.

The Daily Mail reported that a 1587 map by Italian cartographer Urbano Monte depicts the Ark resting on the mountains of Ararat in modern-day Turkey, the same region under study today.

Monte’s giant map puts the Ark on Ararat

Monte was a Milan nobleman who produced a vast planisphere of 60 hand-drawn sheets. Fully assembled, the circular map stretches nearly 10 feet across and takes a north polar view of the world.

Historians believe a 1585 Japanese delegation visit to Milan helped inspire the project. The original manuscript sits at Stanford University’s David Rumsey Map Center, which has digitally restored it and posted it online. The sheets are packed with continents, ships, sea monsters, mythical creatures, and detailed notes.

Among those illustrations is Noah’s Ark on the mountains of Ararat. That detail has fueled online interest because the Bible recounts a 150-day flood after which the Ark came to rest on those mountains. For readers who still take the biblical account as history worth checking, unlike progressive politicians who have treated core Christian teaching as optional, the location match is hard to ignore.

Independent researcher Jimmy Corsetti pointed to the overlap in plain terms. “The same location as the Durupınar site, virtually the exact same length. Coincidence?” he wrote online.

The New York Post noted the same cartographic claim: Monte’s planisphere shows the Ark at a site and length matching Durupinar.

Radar and samples challenge the “solid rock” line

Durupınar emerged into view less than a century ago. For years, skeptics have offered one main answer for its boat shape: ordinary geology.

Noah’s Ark Scans put that explanation to a direct test. On a recent Wednesday the group said, “For decades, skeptics have had one simple answer for the boat-shaped Durupınar Formation: it is just a solid lump of natural rock.”

“The mission was direct: put the “solid rock” explanation to the test. Is the formation a single homogeneous mass of natural stone? Does it contain internal structures?”

Founder Andrew Jones said preliminary radar data do not show “a simple homogeneous solid-rock signature.” The team also asked a basic structural question: where does the true bedrock lie beneath the mound, and how does that bedrock continue across the surrounding valley?

Radar work described three layers under the surface, with chambers, corridors, organized patterns, and tunnels. One scan captured a series of right angles about 20 feet down. Jones has described voids that line up below ground and are “not just random,” language that tracks with the three-deck layout many readers know from Genesis.

Samples recovered from nearly 60 feet down added another layer to the claim. Jones said the team has “so far recovered layers of rich organic material that we believe could be the decayed top-tier remains of the Ark.”

Carbon gap inside the formation raises wood questions

Lead archaeologist Dr. Cenker Atila focused on the chemistry. “The amount of carbon coming from the interior of the ship is 40 percent higher than what was found outside,” he said. “This raises the idea that there may be organic material or remains of wood.”

Supporting soil work described higher organic content and elevated potassium inside the ship-shaped outline than in matching soil a few yards away on the same hillside, patterns the team ties to decaying wood. Lauren Witzke, who handles marketing and fundraising for Noah’s Ark Scans, put the group’s bottom line on X: “Scientists confirm the formation is 100 percent not geological. They say, and I quote, that it is a “man-made object.””

No timber has been recovered and independently authenticated. The team expects to publish a fuller analysis in the coming weeks while samples undergo laboratory testing. Until those results land, the “man-made object” wording remains the researchers’ claim, not a settled court or agency finding.

Old cartography meets unfinished lab work

Monte never saw ground-penetrating radar. He drew in 1587. The Durupınar mound was not even visible on the surface in his lifetime. Yet his Ark sits in the same Ararat country, at a length Corsetti and others call a near match to the modern formation.

That is why the map’s return to public view matters. It does not “prove” the vessel. It does show that a serious Renaissance cartographer fixed the landing place where a boat-shaped feature now sits under active scan. Faithful readers have long held that Scripture describes real places and real events. Map evidence and field data deserve the same open hearing as any other historical claim, not a shrug from institutions that treat the Flood as folklore.

Many outside scientists still call Durupınar a natural geological feature. Noah’s Ark Scans answers with radar layers, right angles, carbon contrast, and organic samples. Both sides cannot be fully right. The lab work now under way is the proper next step.

When centuries-old maps and modern instruments keep pointing at the same Turkish hillside, the honest response is more testing, not less curiosity.