Expeditions to Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey have been mounted since the nineteenth century and have continued at intervals ever since, producing photographs of ice formations, accounts of sightings, timber samples and periodic announcements. None has been accepted. Where wood has been recovered and dated, the dates have come out in recent centuries rather than in antiquity.
The other recurring candidate is the Durupinar formation, a boat-shaped feature in the hills of Agri province, promoted since it was noticed from the air in the late 1950s. Geologists who have examined it describe it as a natural formation produced by mudflow around a resistant core, and the dimensions that attracted attention are a coincidence of shape rather than a hull.
Two general difficulties stand behind every specific failure. Wood does not survive four and a half thousand years exposed on a mountain, so the search is looking for something the environment does not preserve. And the identification of the landing place is itself uncertain: Genesis says the mountains of Ararat, which is a region and not a peak, the identification with the modern Mount Ararat is later, and the Quran names a different mountain entirely.
The atlas holds the vessel as narrative, records identification claims as claims made and not accepted, and points to the older accounts the story stands alongside.