Perhaps the earliest version of the Noah’s Ark story/myth/history doesn’t describe a ship at all – but rather an underground shelter, as protection from a heavy winter?

(Ancient Zoroastrianism text) Avesta:

And Yima did as Ahura Mazda wished; he crushed the earth with a stamp of his heel, he kneaded it with his hands, as the potter does when kneading the potter’s clay.

And Yima made a Vara [enclosure], long as a riding-ground on every side of the square. There he brought the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires. He made a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men; a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, for oxen and sheep.

…All those seeds he brought, two of every kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara.

Science has come along way. In the early 60s Brinsley Le Poer Trench’s wrote The Sky People, a book that suggested (among other things) that Noah’s Ark was a spaceship – “that instead of Noah being an ancient Israelite, he was a great leader on Mars and the Ark was a giant spaceship intended to carry a surviving remnant to Earth”. And he tied it in with information well-known to Ark researchers who do not have a religious agenda:

Everyone is familiar with the story, taken from the Book of Genesis. But are you aware that the story – a great, world-destroying flood from which God spared only a handful of righteous mortals and two of every kind of beast – is also an integral part of other religious traditions, such as the Sumerian, the Babylonian, and the ancient Hindus?

These days we know that Mars is a barren place, and if any aliens lived there it was a very long time ago. Still, if you find the idea intriguing, Trench’s book has been re-released, with a lot of additional material from modern UFO researchers.

Legacy of the Sky People is available at the Conspiracy Journal Bookshop for $17.95