My last discussion of Oak Island was at Season 2. I’ve continued to follow the series although I was no longer wrote this blog. I’ve begun to write the blog again, mainly for people who are just interested in the various things that I find interesting. Lately, I’ve noticed a fair number of hits on my Oak Island Season 2 post, so I thought I would do an update. With a bit of cynicism, I could direct you to my Season 2 post, and say well there it still is, and write no more. From some perspectives a statement like that wouldn’t be that far off, from other views nothing could be further from the truth.
This is Oak Island; in case you didn’t know.
Oak Island is cursed alright, cursed by the wake of previous treasure hunters who were brutal in their efforts. Also, there is the claim that some of their predecessors found some part of the treasure, and there seems to be some evidence to support that notion. In any case, those predecessors, having no sense of environmental sanctity, have littered the place with their rubbish as well as displaced the earth rambunctiously. At this point, I’m not even sure that the island is in its original location. In any case, the Lagina’s effort, plotting through the searcher minefield, is as complicated as the forensics of a power plant meltdown, and it seems as expensive as well.
Previous destruction in the search for the Money Pit.
When you sum up seven years of effort, can you say they have gotten any closer to the truth? I don’t mean the truth that a lot of other people have spent their fortunes and lives trying to uncover the mystery of Oak Island, but rather I mean the truth about whether something ever was there, and hopefully, it was and is and enough of it remains to compensate them for their effort, and still leave the brothers enough money and energy to turn toward other treasures, like the “Curse of Civil War Gold” treasure which they are already in partnership on.
What has happened since my review during Season 2? Well, obviously, the treasure has not been found. By that I mean that the big whopping treasure has not been found. Certainly, a bunch of items of significance have been found. Notably, are: the jewelry items, the lead cross, and the various iron implements. I guess we should also include various logs, and wooden and other structures, and bones, and parchment. The log structure was proven to be “pre-searcher,” and many of the smaller items are, to the best that professional judgment can determine, also pre-searcher. That says a lot, but alone still is not enough.
Why?
Well, I think we all can accept the idea that it is possible, even probable that people who had nothing to do with the treasure came to the island, spent days there, and maybe set up long term camps on it as well. Fishermen may have repaired their boats on it. Indeed, maybe fishermen, not surreptitious pirates or gold hoarders, were responsible for the ship slipway.
Now maybe you see why I say much of the evidence that is from a pre-searcher presence on the island, is not necessarily indicative of treasure smugglers being on the island. We’ve pretty well been shown evidence that British soldiers were on the island, and they didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the treasure burial. It’s likely they were posted there for some military purpose, perhaps to guard the ship repair dock, which might have been built by the British navy, not fishermen. Of course, one would hope there would be an official record of any military encampment that had been there.
Is there anything among the pre-searcher items that we can point to and say it implies something beyond normal human 18th century, or before, activity?
Well, I think there are some things that we can’t disregard so easily. Certain pre-searcher mining tools come to mind. A bunch of fishermen, sailors, or even soldiers would not be mining on the island, so these things cannot be explained by the incidental use of the island theory. There seem to be no traces of a mine on the island, nor does there seem to be any surface features that would give anyone the idea that it would be really profitable to mine there. However, there is this rumor that someone tunneled in and hide some gold. Kind of matches up doesn’t it?
Of course, we have all the bits and pieces of stuff that came up from deep down under. I suppose a driller, or someone else could have tossed them into the dregs hoping to hoax us all. But there are a few things against that theory, the biggest of which is, where does the hoaxer find human bones dating back to the late Seventh Century, and the Middle East?And then we also have Dan Blankenship’s film from down under. We’ve seen that film many times, and most of those times I said huh? I couldn’t make out anything they said they saw there, but finally on Digging Deeper, it was played and the film clearly showed some of the items.
Next, we have the box drains. Laird and Terry, archeologist and geologist respectively, say these are clearly human structures; structures that would not be part of normal human activity on the island. Lastly, I point to the marsh, which biologically and geologically appears to be about 300 years old. This implies human construction, but a natural formation cannot be totally eliminated either. However, all summed I think we have enough evidence to say something odd happened here in pre-searcher times.
The swamp with the a sketch of a seismic anomaly found under it. Drilling has failed to identify the something. However the swamp is judged to be only about 300 years old, leaving open the idea that it is manmade, but it might still be natural as well.
Okay, I have left out the lead cross. I so much want to believe in the lead cross, but I have to be suspicious. First it is nearly identical to the one carved in the dungeon at Domme, France. At first, this bothered me, because it seemed there were no other examples of Templar’s making this type of cross image. But today I’ve done a bit of research and it appears that there are other examples of these cross images in association with Templars. I wish about a dozen more would turn up and that might be possible. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of small city museums scattered all over Western Europe. I don’t know how well the inventory of artifacts is photographed, cataloged, shared and accessible to others, but it might be possible that there are more of these somewhere.
Cross made from a lead mine in Southern France that has been closed for centuries, and a brother item made of lead from the same mine. Is it possible for someone to fake this?
The brothers of the cross items, things made from lead coming out of the same mine, are supportive of the cross being historical, but they are not conclusive, in my opinion. In the end, while I am publicly a sceptic, in my gut, I think the cross will eventually prove to be real.
A cross etched into the wall of the Domme dungeon. It turns out that there are other such crosses in other locations associated with the Templars. The more there are, then the more likely the Oak Island cross is real, to my way of thinking anyway.[NOTE: In doing a bit more research, it appears that there are other examples of this style of cross which are associated with the Templars. Links: Here and Also ]
In summation, it seems there is sufficient evidence to support the idea that something odd happened on Oak Island. So what was that unusual activity, and who might have done it?
Now we come to every crackpot theory under the sun, and one way to get some air time on the show is to come up with a new theory. For starters we have Portuguese fishermen, sailors, or explorers; we have Spanish ships being blown off course while following the Gulf Stream, or having been taken by pirates and dragged to Oak Island; we have Templars, or Scotch Masons, coming Oak Island to bury precious religious artifacts, and we have French royalists come to bury national treasures, or gold bullion to finance the American revolution.
For various reasons, I narrow these down to the following three:
Spanish gold probably taken by privateers (1600s-1700s),
French treasury items (late 1700s)
And lastly, Something from a Templar connection, (1300s-?).
Based on history, one would lean toward Spanish gold taken by privateers. But then one would have to question all of the elaborate flood tunnels, and the effort of burying it 100 feet below the surface. Where else in the world have pirates done this? Well, maybe these pirates were a bunch of unemployed engineers looking for ways to spend their time. In any case, I have to back off of that pirates because there seems to be no compelling reasons for all the complications.
Next, would be a late eighteenth century relocation of the French national treasury, I suppose to protect it from the fomenting revolution. This pushes up very close to the first searcher effort, and one must wonder why the French wouldn’t just relocate their treasures to somewhere in Quebec, or even New Orleans. Also, there are too many weird things that date further back in time. So, this theory doesn’t work for me either.
Oddly, so very oddly, that leaves the Templar connection. I still can’t believe I’m saying that. But from a big picture perspective, you have to think that Leif Ericson discovered the New World about 1000 AD. The First Crusade was only eighty years later. The French were one of the major forces of the crusades and the French Normans were descended from the Vikings. So, from Viking warrior to Norman crusader took only 80 years, and surely the legends of the Vikings were known to the Normans. The Templars were formed in France in 1118, or about 120 years after Ericson discovered the Americas. The Templars recruited knights from all over Western Europe, many of these countries and kingdoms had been heavily influenced by the Vikings, hence there was plenty of opportunity for the legends and history of Ericson to be learned by the Templars.
So my pet theory is that the Templars planned to establish themselves in the Western Hemisphere, but their scheme was interrupted when on Friday the 13th, 1307 many of them were hunted down, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Some are believed to have escaped to Portugal, Scotland, and maybe Switzerland. I believe that the fractionalization of their organization destroyed their chance to establish a colony in the Americas.
No one knows, but maybe the Laginas will find out.
Addendum: The night before I posted this item, I lay in bed and thought that I must include something about sea level elevations at Oak Island between 1200, the start of the Little Ice Age, and 1850, the end of the same period. I fell asleep and of course forgot to do it the next day. Then in tonight’s episode we heard from Geoscientist Dr. Spooner, and he mentioned varying sea levels at the time Oak Island activity took place. My thought was that the team should establish the shoreline contours around the island at important points in time. This would help them determine how far out they need to push their coffer dam to encompass the island shoreline at the projected time of the box drain construction. As of tonight, it is suspected that the marsh came into being around 1200 AD, which puts it square into a Templar time frame. Their coffer dam may not yet be far enough out to capture all of the human activity through the history of Oak Island.