So now that it's been a few years...

[GT40FIED]

I guess that makes sense...if you blatantly ignore facts.

Mesopotamia is actually much farther reaching than Iraq. It also includes parts of Syria and Turkey. It's a huge piece of land almost as big as the former Ottoman empire which Iraq was originally part of until the end of WWI when a bunch of white guys got together and decided to draw lines on a map disregarding cultural and religious differences between any given regions.

Shinar is just a generic reference to the same region as Mesopotamia. It's simply the name given to a large plain where people settled after "the flood" (if you buy that sort of thing). The bible does say that the tower of Babel was built there...but not where. And it rarely appears by that name in the bible at all.

Furthermore, what does this have to do with anything at all? Most of the things mentioned in that email (I assume that's the format in which crap like that circulates) are just parts of parables. Their bedtime stories you tell your kids...not elaborate mythologies you mantain when you're 15 or 20 or 30. It mentions the tower of Babel and the ark...neither of which to my knowledge have been proven to exist. I know for sure the ark hasn't popped up on the grid. You'd think people would know better to keep track of objects that are foundations of a major religion. Much like the holy grail, the spear of Longinus, and the shroud of Turin, it's all just conjecture and "maybes" or "what ifs". I'm not saying they're not real because they haven't been found. I'm saying they haven't been found because they're most likely not real.