Mount Ararat that the biblical passage implies that the ark rested upon a "mountain in the district which the Hebrews knew as Ararat, or Armenia", wrote in an 1878 article for the Royal Geographical Society that the biblical writer must have had Mt. Ararat in mind because it is so "very much higher, more conspicuous, and more majestic than any other summit in Armenia." During his visit to Armenia in 2001 Pope John Paul II declared in his homily in Yerevan's St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral: "We are close to Mount Ararat, where tradition says that the Ark of Noah came to
Caucasus Mountains over 4,500 m height with 300 m prominence. Mount Ararat (5,137 m) in Turkey is just south of the lesser Caucasus. The climate of the Caucasus varies both vertically (according to elevation) and horizontally (by latitude and location). Temperature generally decreases as elevation rises. Average annual temperature in Sukhumi, Abkhazia at sea level is while on the slopes of Mt.Kazbek at an elevation of , average annual temperature falls to. The northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range are 3 °C (5.4 °F) colder than the southern slopes. The highlands of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and