You’re assuming that any of this is true. Read some of the articles I linked. The theory that the pit was actually a naturally occurring sinkhole is very plausible.
I was hoping for less sensationalism. I’ve read about this since I was a kid and I’ve been watching the show but it’s really turning into Pawn Stars.
They took the fibers they found to a lab and had it confirmed as coconut fibers.
Wanna know what’s even easier? Getting a bunch of actors together in vaguely period dress and having them vaguely re-enact something (without any actual dialogue or actions, just sort of yelling, “Hey!” and waving a related implement of some kind) while talking sonorously about whatever they’re supposed to have done or said.
There is almost no hard evidence or even contemporary reports for most of the supposed findings at Oak Island. No photos, no physical evidence, and most accounts are second-hand and from years to decades after the events. Yet all of it is taken as a chain of indisputable evidence, or has been until recent writers finally stopped playing stupid.
Maybe it happened like this:
LAB: Yes, those are coconut fibers all right. Where’d you get it?
THEY: Over on Oak Island. Wow! Real coconut, huh?
LAB: Sure thing. Maybe a pirate put them there.
THEY: That proves it. There’s gold down below, I can feel it!
NEWS ARTICLE: Coconut Mats Found on Oak Island, lab says so
Proof: None
Source: Some local dude who made up a story over 4 beers
Maybe the coconuts were brought over by swallows.
Coconuts are heavy. Wouldn’t that make them laden?
I’ve ALWAYS wanted to go there for a few days, see the excavations, talk to the locals…
From Cecil’s column to the books I’ve read on this, if it WAS a hoax, it was a truly elaborate one. The layers of wood, flood tunnels, the red dye test, etc., weren’t done on a Sunday afternoon. It seems likely pirates or smugglers could’ve used this as an honor bank, but what honor is there among thieves? Maybe the pirates wanted to delay anyone after them with a hoax.
Even so, I think that if any treasure were ever there, it’s washed away due to the bumbling ideas of excavation over the last few decades.
I don’t think the alleged flood tunnels have ever been proven. The have been postulated based on seawater entering the shafts, and dye moving from the shafts to the sea, but that does not preclude a natural process.
Asian or European? 
I remember a few years hearing that they seem to have found a series of tunnels under the island, and even drilled down and sent a camera down. Is that just BS as well?
The “elaborateness” of the hoax may be in the mind of those who connect unrelated and unreliable facts to concoct a story. It would not be unusual for wood to be found in a sinkhole. It would not be unusual for seawater to invade gravel strata on an island. The red dye test only confirms what any geologist could tell you, that there are connected passages underground. Ever heard of caves?
It’s not unheard of for fanciful tales to be constructed just for the fun of it. It’s not impossible for a site to be seeded with “treasure” to prevent the gullible from abandoning a hopeless project. What we have is a collection of tall tales, with little validation of any, a lot of fantasy and an overflow of wishful thinking.
It’s a Paul Bunyan story.
There’s a series of tunnels not far from me. I made a video about it. Does that mean pirates dug it or buried treasure there? No, it just means I live in karst country.
I think it was African or European.
Like the Oak Island story, I find that hard to swallow.
If the pit was built by pirates (or whoever) with tunnels designed to flood it if someone tried to dig it up, how were they planning on digging it up later?
mrAru and I figured that some ship landed there [possibly one that occasionally operated as a privateer or pirate] to resupply and do some repairs, and they decided to mess with people and set up a bogus treasure site with the original pit and pulley under the treasure oak, and everything else just sort of happened due to natural cracks in the rock, swamps and such. Grab some of the old coconut matting they used for caulking, some old timber baulks, toss in a necklace, make a couple stone tablets and go around arranging rocks you decorated up with carvings. Not a problem.
Hell, mrAru pointed out we could have had serious fun at any time visiting the island and discreetly popping the covers on some of the pits and turfing in something that would sink in the muck in the shafts - he was thinking of some of his repro viking bone carvings or my scythian gold sequin work. 
Well, as pointed out above, there appears to be no reference to the story/pit/events before the mid-1800s, lending even more of an air to it being some old storyteller’s fable to begin with. Hoaxes and outright scams were common among the published pamphlets and dime novels of the era; Oak Island looks to be of a piece with the Beale Cipher and “The Gold Bug” and such rough humor.
Yeah, I think even Cecil was WAY too credulous on this one. The Critical Enquiry site that Accidental Martyr points out does a good job at poking holes in every single detail of the story. (especially here and here)
In short, it has all the hallmarks of a nineteenth century scam to swindle treasure seeking investors (something that used to be common all over the Atlantic coast). I’d bet that all of the “interesting” details (gold links, etc) are pure fantasy. The story also assumes that the pirates had astonishingly gifted civil engineering skills just to build the damn thing in the first place. It’s nonsense! The only thing I’d believe is that there may have been a tree at that spot.
To be fair, there were no truly skeptical investigations until quite recently, and the basics of the story were all taken as having factual basis. Each iteration of the telling just reshuffled the claims and tried to make sense of them. I forget the turning point but someone of clear mind and investigative bent finally listed all the points and ran them to ground, showing that only a few trivial ones were (1) documented contemporaneously and (2) appeared to have any basis in hard fact.
Sir Christopher Wren… Buccaneer!
[QUOTE=Doctor Jones]
This demonstrates one of the greatest dangers in archeology, not to life and limb, although that sometimes does occur, no I’m speaking about folklore.
[/QUOTE]
OK?