Here, in the yellow oval, is seen the place of the arkıs first grounding or touchdown, no longer at anchor, but finally sitting at rest on the earth, and leaning against a 30 foot high limestone escarpment wall that caught its anchor as it approached the cliffs of Mashu. Currents flowing around the island realigned the ark, parallel to the cliffs, as it settled. Here is where the men and animals disembarked after a year and ten days in the great ship. This first landing site "the place of first descent," is 2 kilometers higher up on the mountain ( 7,400 feet above sea level ) than where the ark mold impression was discovered in 1948 ( at 6,200 feet above sea level ). This upper, and first ship impression is also approximately 538 feet in length, as is the lower ( 300 cubits of 22" minus 12 feet of overhang not impressed into the mud ), but is ever so slightly narrower than the lower impression because of the hardness of the ground which has a shallow underlay of limestone bedrock as opposed to the lower mudflow which is much softer and has no close-lying bedrock beneath.
Small photo shows the lower impression for scale comparison, and the overall shape of the Ark of Noah. The lower impression is about 2 kilometers down and away to the west-northwest, and 400 meters lower on a general incline about one half that of a childıs playground slide.
After a period of nearly 100 years, by calculation - based on the approximate 1000 Naxuan dwellings discovered in the photograph, that would have needed wood for roofing material ( scavenged from the ark ) - the great ship was jostled loose by an earthquake, during a period of rain, which softened the earth, and slid down hill to its final resting place, its second descent after the flood. A major, east-west, thousand-plus-mile-long earthquake fault lies about 600 feet north of this location, and the 30 foot scarp that the ark was leaning against, is a transverse block fault line, as is the 300 foot high upthrust white limestone cliff face, nearby to the east, demonstrating that earthquakes are somewhat common to this area.
Translator, Willian Whiston in The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus , in Antiquities of the Jews, footnotes that this place was called "Naxuan, the place of the first descent." Here he quoted Armenian historian Moses of Chronensis. This phrase "place of first descent," implies a second descent, and that is exactly what this site is telling us. The city of Mesha-Naxuan was the first "city" built by the flood survivors and their descendants. This photo shows the approximate center of the ruins of Naxuan, the first, post-flood world, capitol city.