fromdownunder

I am wondering if anyone is aware of any study on the actual construction of Noah’s Ark.

While I am aware that much work has been done on the difficulties of looking after the animals for many months (and how they got to the ark), I am not aware of any study on the actual feasibility of constructing the damn thing in the first place.

This question is based on accepting the size of the ark as set out in Genesis.

How much timber would have been required? Where did it come from? How was the timber transported to the ark site?
How much pitch? Where did it come from? How was it processed?
Did they use some form of nails, or simply joints?
How many man-hours were required to construct it? Where was all this labour found?
How were the upper levels built without the whole thing collapsing under its own weight? (It had to be built on land, so the supports must have been huge as well).

Would it even have been humanly possible to actually construct the Ark, as described?

I would appreciate it if the animal problems can be left out of this thread. And “godhelped” or “goddidit”

A link would be acceptable as a response to my initial question.

Norm

Cute Little Baby

They have, and its been shown to be an absurdity of the highest degree.
Creationist "John Woodmorappe" (real name is Jan Peczkis, though don't say it too loud or he could attempt to sue you. Really.) wrote a book about it, but its been shown to be ridiculous, irrational and an abomination to scientific research. A review of it can be found here.
Dunno.
Probably a forrest of some sort.
Dunno.
Don't know how much pitch would have been needed (aside from the rather general description of: "a whole shitload of pitch!"), but the pitch itself would come from a mixture of tree sap and ash, which I believe is what a certain variety of pitch is made out of.
They'd most likely need nails, as jointed parts would be immensely more difficult and time consuming to construct (You don't necassarily have to take my word for it - ask anyone from a qualified carpenter to a couple of kids trying to build a tree house)
I think the Bible says it was something like a hundred years.
Don't know, but the more important question is 'how was this labor funded', since Noah would have to be his time's equivelent of a millionare to get the Ark built.
I suppose the creationists would say he used some time of primitive scaffolding, which of course would require an even more extraordinary amount of labor, time and resources to build. Given the assumption of the Biblical descriptions of the Ark building being accurate, for all practical intents and purposes; no, it would not even be humanly possible to build the Biblical ark. The wood on one half would rot away long before the other half was built, nobody could live long enough to oversee it being built (despite the exagerations of Noah's age described in the Bible), a common nobody like Noah could never afford to succesfully fund such an architectural achievement, and the Ark would have leaked horribly and sunk a few weeks after being afloat.
Ok.
"But thats anti-supernatural, closed-minded skeptical god-hating atheist bias!", the creationists will cry. You're still fully right in asking for such, though.

Later.