I have read Cecil’s account of the 200 years of digging at Oak Island, NS. It seems that millions of dolars have been spent, digging holes, and looking for the treasure.
As Cecil notes, virtually nothing of significance has ever been found there-even the famous stone slab (with the mysterious markings) has vanished. The accounts of the excavations also sound fabulous-a treasure room under 100 feet of earth? Special tunnels designed to flood the room, if certain rocks were moved?
Would anybody in the 1700’s have the enginerring talent to construct something this sophisticated? And, given the complexity, how would the people who buried the treasure ever get it out?
The attmpt that was made in the 1960’s sounds interesting-a treasure chest? Unfortunately, these people never found anything either.
So was the whole thing a hoax? Was there ever any evidence that anything was ever buried there?
link to column
Wiki
Update on Oak Island
Basically, the current “owners” have until Dec. 31, 2010 to find anything before the Canadian government declares a moratorium on treasure hunting on Oak Island.
Nothing has ever been found and present research indicates the money pit was formed by natural geological factors.
Man made works certainly existed that were found. Nobody knows the purpose of what was found. Many have invested over the years in the hopes it meant they would retrieve treasure. There is no reason there couldn’t be buried treasure as people do bury valuables to hide them.
As I mentioned, almost none of the people who dug at oak Island kept any good records. Now that the place is pockmarked with pits, it is unlikely that anything is left to be found.
The one thing that intriqued me was the report of tunnels connected the pit with the beach-red die was thrown into the mouth of one of these tunnels, and the die showed up in the pit water. This is pretty sophisticated.
Anyway, it makes for a good story…although how carribean-based pirates would have sailed to Nova Scotia is another mystery.
Skeptical Inquirer(in 2000) had a rather good analysis of the issues and I don’t think I would say “man made works certainly existed.”
Man-made works were certainly found, but it is impossible to discern whether they were from the original “treasure trove” or remnants of previous digs, etc… I have a friend that lives directly across from the island and has a fantastic view of the site. He reports that the whole island has been ravaged and scattered with debris in the over 200 years of searching.
This is the main point. So many people have been there nothing could ever be made from the stuff found.
It could’ve been been very short term, a matter of weeks. Of course it seems like a lot of effort for nothing, but then in the old days, people had nothing but time on their hands, so why not do something.
Makes you wonder if anyone now is cooking up a mystery like this or the Voynich Manuscript to bug future generations
I think the article puts a tad too much emphasis on the “Masonic” thing.
My opinion is more simple: I agree it’s likely a sinkhole, and once people began looking for treasure, it attracted hoaxers who salted the pit with mysterious looking mumbo-jumbo (whether based on “Masonic” stuff or not). Later explorers found remnants left by earlier explorers.
Mark Twain satyrized this process in the last bit of Hucklberry Finn (where the boys have poor Jim carving mysterious markings in his cell).
Think of it logically: there is simply no reason to hide treasure a hundred feet down a pit. The whole point of burying treasure (those reasonably rare times it happened) was, generally, to temporarily hide it so you could return later and get it back.
Boats, I’d assume.
They don’t call you the Captain for nothing!
If you want to read a fictional account clearly based on Oak Island, have a look at Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Riptide – a wonderfully and typically over-the-top jaunt from that pait which supposes that a pirate captain enlisted the aid of an architect in constructing just such a puzzle trap as Oak Island was supposed to be, filled with Indianam Jones-esque booby traps and the like, with a Dark and Mysterious Secret and a real treasure.
It’s as close as you’re likely to get to anything like the Oak Island legend. As it is, I distrust evenreports that early seekers found bits of gold chain and the like.
I can’t prove there isn’t an alien spacecraft buried down there either.
Seems I read something about it being a Masons’ hoax.
The Oak Island webiste is pretty interesting. As i say, had somebody found a few dubloons or pieces-of-eight, the tale would have been a lot more believable.
But-almost 200 years and nothing?
Although, I was interested in the fact that cocoanut fiber was found at the entrance to the “drain” tunnels-how would that have gotten there?
That part wouldn’t be a mystery at all. Pirates of the 1600s and 1700s roamed throughout the world’s oceans as the fancy took them; some like Dampier sailed around the world. The famous Captain Kidd (initially a privateer) raided in the Caribbean, off New England, and in the Indian Ocean. And Kidd buried some treasure temporarily on Gardiner’s Island in New York.
First of all, the article says it was “fibrous material” that was identified as coconut husks; it could have been something else. Second, coconut fiber was used as dunnage to protect cargo; if it was actually coconut fiber it could have reached the area in regular shipping.
Not really. A waterlogged pit can indeed carry silt or dyes from the beach, if it’s fine enough. Water tends to carry stuff.
Sorry. I meant to say “why”.
Would caribbean-based pirates be all that interested in stealing salted cod?
Dubloons and pieces of eight would be much more lucrative.
Well, it’s a good way to get scrod…
Bah! Pish-posh and Balderdash. It is absurd to think that humans sailed all the way up there and built this. The obvious explanation is an undiscovered ancient high tech civilization that was in contact with space aliens.