The pitch for Noah’s Ark
by Tas B. Walker, B.E., Ph.D.
Many geologists claim that Noah could not possibly have built the ark in the manner
described in Genesis. They argue that pitch could not have been used to cover the
ark and make it waterproof. Pitch, they claim, is derived from oil or coal, and
if coal did not form until during the time of Noah’s Flood, he could not possibly
have covered the ark with pitch.
For those who are not geologists, pitch is a black glue-like substance left behind
when coal tar is heated or distilled. It belongs to the same family of substances
as asphalt or bitumen. Today, it is largely produced by heating coal. Most modern
geologists know of no other source for it. But coal tar and petroleum are not the
only source for pitch. Anyone who takes the time to consult a reasonable dictionary
of geology will find that pitch can be extracted by distilling or heating wood.
In fact, prior to the rise of the petroleum and coal industries, this was exactly
how pitch was made.
For at least one thousand years, the pitch-making industry in Europe flourished.
It was the pitch from this industry which assisted in the construction of those
great wooden sailing ships which figured so prominently in European history. Pitch
making was a skilled trade, and many European surnames bear testimony to that fact
today. In Polish, the word for pitch or tar is ‘smola’. Any Polish telephone
directory displays names such as Smola, Smolander, Smolen, Smolenski and Smolarz.
These surnames simply mean ‘the man who makes pitch’.
Likewise in Germany, the word for pitch is ‘Teer’, and it appears in
names such as Teer and Teerman. Even the English have families whose name is Pitcher,
Tarrier or Tarmen, to mention but a few. These all indicate that the trade of manufacturing
pitch was extremely common throughout Europe.
So how did they make pitch before the growth of the petroleum and coal industries?
Their first step was to obtain resin from the pine trees which at that time grew
in dense forests throughout Europe. A herringbone pattern of cuts was gouged into
the tree trunk and as the resin ran down the grooves it was collected in a pot at
the base of the tree. Pine resin is still collected in this way in Poland, the Ukraine,
Russia, Finland and other European countries where pine forests are still to be
found.
When the resin had finished flowing, the trees were chopped down, covered in soil
or ash, and burned slowly to produce a lightweight black pure form of carbon called
charcoal. The last step in the process of making pitch was to add the powdered charcoal
to the boiling pine resins. Different proportions of charcoal would produce pitch
of different properties. It was this pitch which was used to waterproof the large
ocean-going wooden ships. In my opinion it is no coincidence that pitch today can
be extracted from coal much of which in Australia shows evidence of having been
formed from pine tree debris.
Now while I cannot say for sure that Noah obtained pitch for the ark exactly in
this fashion, it does illustrate that you don’t have to be able to extract
either oil or coal from the ground in order to make pitch. Anyone who had cut down
as many trees as Noah and his helpers for the manufacture of an ocean-going ark
would certainly have found out about tree resins. If Europeans had a well known
and widely used method of making pitch before the discovery of petroleum, obviously
Noah could also have had the same satisfactory way of waterproofing the ark with
its covering of pitch.
A reader’s commentLee W., United States, 11 September 2011
If it is true that there are indeed many geologists that claim Noah could not have obtained pitch, then there are many otherwise intelligent men and women who wilfully make themselves ignorant of an incredibly easily accessed fact. All they had to do was ask any North Carolina historian or history teacher and they would have found out why it’s called the TARHEEL STATE. There is even a species of pine called the pitch pine (Pinus rigida). In fact, that's the only source of pitch I ever knew about, having just learned it could come from oil or coal from this article. |
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