--- title: "Noah’s Ark and the Flood, Built to the Cubit (Genesis 6–9) · Fly Brain Experiment" url: https://theflybrain.com/experiments/noahs-ark/ description: "The fly, enlarged to about 0.74 m, boards Noah’s Ark with the animals, watches the Flood from the cubit-high window under the roof and flies out onto the…" language: en --- # Noah’s Ark and the Flood, Built to the Cubit (Genesis 6–9) The fly, enlarged to about 0.74 m, boards Noah’s Ark with the animals, watches the Flood from the cubit-high window under the roof and flies out onto the summit to see a double rainbow, following the text of Genesis 6–9. **An eight-second loop from the workstation. Full recording pending publication.** [Follow along](#recordings) for the release. ## What the fly saw Frames rendered from the fly’s eye camera at four points in the timeline, each with the 32-column retinal input the connectome model receives at that moment. ![Eye-camera frame at 0:28](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-0.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 0:28](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-0-retina.png) 0:28 Two and two ![Eye-camera frame at 1:15](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-1.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 1:15](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-1-retina.png) 1:15 Forty days and forty nights ![Eye-camera frame at 2:02](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-2.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 2:02](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-2-retina.png) 2:02 The mountains of Ararat ![Eye-camera frame at 2:49](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-3.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 2:49](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/noahs-ark-3-retina.png) 2:49 Go forth of the ark ## Timeline 13 steps, with their times in the experiment 1. 0:00 **Gopher wood, pitched within and without** The finished ark stands on keel blocks in a dry valley: three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, about 137 × 23 × 14 m at 45.7 cm to the cubit. Noah brushes fresh black pitch over the last raw planks of the outer hull (“pitch it within and without with pitch”). Three wales mark the lower, second and third stories. 2. 0:14 **Two and two** The door in the side is let down as a ramp. Elephants, giraffes, camels, lions, bears and horses walk up it in pairs, “the male and the female”: the lion has a mane and the lioness none. My fly stands beside the ramp as they pass. 3. 0:30 **Clean beasts and fowls by sevens** Seven pairs of oxen and seven pairs of sheep follow, and a flock of birds that has circled the roof streams in through the door (7:2–3). My fly walks up the ramp beside the last sheep. 4. 0:45 **And the LORD shut him in** Noah, his wife, Shem, Ham, Japheth and their three wives climb the ramp, eight in all. The door swings up by itself and closes; the daylight in the doorway narrows to a line and goes out. 5. 0:55 **The fountains of the great deep** Seven days later the valley floor splits and jets of water burst from the cracks, while columns of water pour from openings in the black cloud: “the windows of heaven were opened.” Shallow water spreads around the keel blocks and lightning strikes the hills. 6. 1:08 **Forty days and forty nights** Rain sweeps across the valley. From the cubit-high window under the roof my fly watches the water climb the keel blocks, the scaffolding and the timber stacks. 7. 1:23 **Lift up above the earth** “The waters increased, and bare up the ark.” The hull floats free of its blocks and rises with the flood while my fly looks out of the window; the trees, the timber yard and the low hills go under. 8. 1:39 **The waters prevailed** The ark drifts over open water as the last hilltops are covered. “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.” The text gives a hundred and fifty days. 9. 1:54 **The mountains of Ararat** God makes a wind pass over the earth, the rain stops and the waters go down. The keel touches a summit plateau and the ark settles on it with a jolt; then the tops of the other mountains appear. 10. 2:08 **A raven, to and fro** After forty days Noah opens the window and sends out a raven. It flies to and fro over the water and does not come back in. 11. 2:18 **The dove and the olive leaf** The dove finds no rest and Noah takes her back in by hand. Seven days later she returns in the evening “and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off.” After seven more days she flies away and does not return. 12. 2:36 **Go forth of the ark** The door comes down onto the summit. The animals walk out and spread over the plateau, the birds leave through the window, and my fly flies out to the edge. Noah builds a stone altar and smoke rises from the burnt offering (8:20). 13. 2:50 **My bow in the cloud** The sun breaks through behind the ark and a rainbow stands over the flooded valley, with a fainter second bow outside it and its colours reversed. “I do set my bow in the cloud.” My fly watches from the edge of the plateau. ## Setup - 13 seekable stages over 188 seconds: gopher wood, pitched within and without; two and two; clean beasts and fowls by sevens; “And the LORD shut him in”; the fountains of the great deep; forty days and forty nights; lift up above the earth; the waters prevailed; the mountains of Ararat; a raven, to and fro; the dove and the olive leaf; go forth of the ark; and my bow in the cloud. - One scene unit equals one metre. The ark is built to 300 × 50 × 30 cubits with three stories, a side door let down as a ramp and a cubit-high light gap under the eave: 137 × 23 × 14 m at the common cubit (45.7 cm, default) or 157 × 26 × 16 m at the royal Egyptian cubit (52.4 cm). The Cubit control scales the ark, its window, door, decks and draft. - Eight people board: Noah, his wife, Shem, Ham, Japheth and their wives. Elephants, giraffes, camels, lions, bears and horses walk up in male and female pairs, followed by seven pairs of oxen, seven pairs of sheep and a flock of birds; a raven and a dove fly from the window. - Two viewport-only controls, both off by default: Hull cutaway removes the door-side wall to show the three stories and stalls, and Cubit dimension lines label 300, 50 and 30 cubits, the window and the door. There is no gore control. - Eight cameras: director, the fly at the window, the waterline at lift-off, the door and ramp, a valley overview, an aerial follow of the ark, the fly eye in first person and the summit rainbow. A replay control restarts at the lift-off. ## Measurement - Retinal-only input: the eye camera’s 32 luminance columns reach the fixed connectome model, measured spikes drive the neural display, and no direct stimulation is sent. - The eye image includes the ramp and passing animals, the doorway light going out, the window band during the flood, lightning flashes and the bright rainbow sky. The retina always sees the closed hull; the cutaway, the dimension lines and cue text are excluded from it. - A looming readout ([LC4](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/lc4/) + [LPLC2](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/lplc2/)) reports the fixed model’s measured response to that image. - The animals, the family, the ark’s drift and the fly’s flight follow a pre-programmed timeline; measured spikes do not move the fly. ## Limitations - The text gives the dimensions, gopher wood, pitch, a window, a side door and three stories; the box hull, wall and deck thicknesses, roof pitch, door and shutter sizes and the 12-cubit draft are not given. - “In a cubit shalt thou finish it above” is shown as a cubit-high light gap all round, and the window Noah opens in 8:6 as a hinged shutter in it (the Hebrew uses tsohar in 6:16 and challon in 8:6). “By sevens” is shown as seven pairs; it can also be read as seven individuals. Gopher wood is unidentified, and the cypress trees in the valley are a traditional guess. - Eight animal kinds stand for “every living thing”, and the valley and summit plateau are one procedural terrain a few kilometres across, not a survey of Mount Ararat or anywhere else. The oil lamps, scaffold, pitch kettle, the giraffes’ well through the second deck and the fly’s flight out are not in the text. - The rainbow is placed for each camera at the measured angles about the point opposite the sun (primary about 40.6–42.4° with red outermost, secondary about 50–54° with the order reversed); nothing else about it is simulated. The animals are low-poly figures with pre-programmed walking and flying. ## Sources - [Genesis 6–9, King James Version (Project Gutenberg eBook #10)](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10) - [Cubit (Encyclopaedia Britannica)](https://www.britannica.com/science/cubit) - [Primary rainbow geometry (Atmospheric Optics)](https://www.atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/primrain.htm) ## About The fly, enlarged to about 0.74 m, boards Noah’s Ark with the animals, watches the Flood from the cubit-high window under the roof and flies out onto the summit to see a double rainbow, following the text of Genesis 6–9. [theflybrain.com/experiments/noahs-ark](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/noahs-ark/) [rituals-and-ceremonies](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/rituals-and-ceremonies/) [drosophila](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [connectome](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [malecns](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [specimen-237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) - Subject [Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) - Readme - MaleCNS data · CC BY 4.0 - Views not yet tallied - Stages **13** - Duration **188 s** - Ark **300 × 50 × 30 cubits** - Cubit **45.7 cm or 52.4 cm** - Fly size **about 0.74 m (enlarged)** ## Recordings No recordings published yet. - [Follow on YouTube](https://youtube.com/paranoidamerican) - [Follow on TikTok](https://tiktok.com/@paranoidamerica) - [Follow on Instagram](https://instagram.com/paranoidamerican) - [Follow on X](https://x.com/paranoidamerica) ## Packages [workstation source](https://www.patreon.com/cw/ParanoidAmerican/membership)Included for Research Associates · [setup guide](https://theflybrain.com/workstation/setup/) ## Credits 2 [![Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/images/specimen-237.jpg)](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) [PA](https://paranoidamerican.com) Official Experiment ## Notes - Setup31% - Measurement25% - Limitations25% - Sources19% ## Neurons - [LPLC2](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/lplc2/) - [LC4](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/lc4/) [All neuron pages](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/) ## Share [X](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Noah%E2%80%99s%20Ark%20and%20the%20Flood%2C%20Built%20to%20the%20Cubit%20(Genesis%206%E2%80%939)%3A%20a%20fly%20brain%20experiment.%20%23TheFlyBrain&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheflybrain.com%2Fexperiments%2Fnoahs-ark%2F) [Threads](https://www.threads.net/intent/post?text=Noah%E2%80%99s%20Ark%20and%20the%20Flood%2C%20Built%20to%20the%20Cubit%20(Genesis%206%E2%80%939)%3A%20a%20fly%20brain%20experiment.%20%23TheFlyBrain%20https%3A%2F%2Ftheflybrain.com%2Fexperiments%2Fnoahs-ark%2F) [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftheflybrain.com%2Fexperiments%2Fnoahs-ark%2F) ## Commission one Want the fly to do something else? 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[Commission an Experiment · $237](https://paranoidamerican.com/products/custom-fly-brain-experiment) ## More in Rituals & ceremonies [All 32](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/rituals-and-ceremonies/) - [![Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues (Genesis 11): fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/tower-of-babel.jpg)0082**Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues (Genesis 11)**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/tower-of-babel/) - [![Sodom and Lot’s Wife, the Pillar of Salt (Genesis 19): fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/sodom.jpg)0083**Sodom and Lot’s Wife, the Pillar of Salt (Genesis 19)**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/sodom/) - [![The Fiery Furnace and the Fourth Man in the Fire (Daniel 3): fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/fiery-furnace.jpg)0084**The Fiery Furnace and the Fourth Man in the Fire (Daniel 3)**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/fiery-furnace/) - [![Jonah Inside the Belly of the Great Fish (Jonah 1–2): fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/jonah.jpg)0085**Jonah Inside the Belly of the Great Fish (Jonah 1–2)**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/jonah/) [Previous0080-ezekiel-wheels](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/ezekiel-wheels/) [Next0082-tower-of-babel](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/tower-of-babel/) --- Source: https://theflybrain.com/experiments/noahs-ark/ · TheFlyBrain (theflybrain.com) · Site summary for language models: https://theflybrain.com/llms.txt