Money pit or sinkhole? Retired geologist digs up Oak Island's history

CBC ^

[BenLurkin]

The bedrock under the east side of Oak Island, where the money pit is located, is made up of Windsor Group limestone and gypsum.

"Given the right conditions, such as temperature, pressure, poor fluid composition, quite often these minerals, especially gypsum, they're prone to dissolution," Aitken said.

What you're left with is essentially a cavity in the bedrock, or a kind of cave. At the money pit, Aitken said the geological evidence suggests the roof of the cave collapsed.

He said there are also other sinkholes nearby, which further shows the so-called tunnels and pits are not engineered, as the show suggests.

"These are not man made. They are naturally formed features, they take sometimes thousands to even millions of years to form," he said.

But Aitken said while mystery hunters have been looking for buried treasure, they've missed the real riches.

"To me personally, the treasure on Oak Island has already been found in the form of archeological artifacts that have been discovered," Aitken said

[zaxtres]

One other thing is I rarely watch the show live. I record it and when I do watch it, I fast forward through stuff they have repeated umpteen thousand times. The repeat after a commercial is not unique to this shows, it occurs in all variety of shows, especially the prime time shows found on channels like ABC, CBS and NBC and others. Just record and fast forward.

[x]

Seven or eight television seasons is way too long to be searching for treasure.

At this point, the only way they can redeem themselves is if they find Hitler down there.

[Pelham]

“I remember reading about the Oak Island “treasure” sixty four years ago.”

I was thinking that myself. What I remember is reading about Oak Island in Reader’s Digest back in the mid 1960s. Two Colonial era boys finding a tree with a rope tied to one of the limbs, and beneath it the depression in the ground. Then the wooden platform 10 feet below the surface, etc.

[Wuli]

“prime time shows found on channels like ABC, CBS and NBC”

LOL, which I NEVER watch - not a one.

But yes, you are right, if I want to see any of the Oak Island shows, I should just record them, so I can watch them whenever, and fast forward through the repeats and the junk. American Pickers is about the only History Channel show i really enjoy.

[mfish13]

I have been watching since day 1, and really enjoy the history of the area that they are uncovering.

But, I have an interesting story on this show, at least for me. I was driving back to Dallas from Chicafgo, and spemt the night in Tulsa. This was the Tuesday night that the results came in showing that Trump beat Hillary. I went to a restaurant next to my hotel, and the early results were coming in. Hillary in a slight lead. I did not want to know the results and needed the sleep, so I went to my hotel and found back to back re-runs of the Oak Island Saga. No election returns. Went down for breakfast the next AM without knowing the results, and on the headlines of USA TODAY was “Trump Wins.” I smiled the whole next 4 hours driving home. Still do.

[kosciusko51]

The funniest outcome: at the end of the Big Dig they find a bronze placard left by Francis Bacon detailing a bet he had with Shakespeare about who could play the best practical joke of all time. Bacon, with his treasure pit, won.

If that was the outcome, it would still be an amazing find!

[Joe 6-pack]

"Did it ever occur to these morons that a bunch of 18th. century sea faring criminals weren't going to have the tools and technology to dig all the way down to China on what amounts to a floating swamp?"

You obviously haven't been watching the show. It was the work of the Templars ;-)

[DNME]

The sheer magnitude of work that went into burying and/or protecting whatever may be down there suggests something of enormous value. If I had an enormous treasure that I needed to hide, then return for it later, you can rest assured I’d invest in some major earthworks, too.

Was the treasure buried then retrieved years ago? Possibly. But it’s still fun to consider the possibilities, and the amazing history of the island is added to with each passing week. Pirates is one possibility but I doubt they played much of a role on Oak Island. I’m guessing the Knights Templar.

Actually, I think there’s much more to be found on the island but the Money Pit is a waste of time. That old French map, showing items on the west side of the island, may hold the key.

[Hot Tabasco]

They’re already working on a sequel to the show. It’s going to be called “The Search for Davey Jones’ Locker”....

[Reily]

I’ve seen the TV shows & read about the claims regarding the Templars. So far to me all I see is circumstantial evidence & wishful thinking. Send links if you got more.

As far as Easter Island goes, Thor Heyerdahl’s work is highly speculative. The original inhabitants were Polynesian. They even brought the Pacific (Polynesian) Rat along. (It hitched a ride as rats do!) Origins of the rat are SE Asia as are the Polynesians. There may have been some South American influence, again highly speculative. If you know of more evidence please let me know.

Easy to fake things with a TV show.

If wet ground aerial (or satellite borne) ground penetrating radar won’t give you much.

I don’t know what the Skinwalker show is or what WWII show you are referring to.

I know LIDAR well.

[elteemike]

I didn’t read all the comments so apologies if already mentioned, but the subject of Port Royal and it’s history would make another excellent series...

Can only imagine what it must have been like to walk those streets way back then...

Thanks for the post and jogging my memory...

[jmacusa]

I watched the first season and maybe it’s me but I never found out how it was the two brothers made such a big pile of dough so they could blow just about as much of it trying to find a bigger pile of dough buried in a swamp.

[Joe 6-pack]

When I was a little kid, I couldn't get enough to read, and I was a big consumer of Forteana, Ripley's BION kind of stuff. For my 7th Birthday, they got me this big thick book of "strange stories and amazing facts." There were a couple pages about Oak Island, so I've been familiar with the story my whole life, certainly not obsessed with it like the Laginas. I think one of the brothers did very, very well in the private energy sector in the drilling industry, and on top of his own money, was able to bring enough investors on board to buy into the Oak Island endeavor.

As an adult, I probably would have considered investing in their project, except for the fact that book my parents bought for me many long decades ago also also had several pages in it about PT Barnum...

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

As to the treasure has been long ago found there is some basis of truth here with the former slave who became very rich by the time he died and one of the biggest land owners in the area.

Yes, the team was granted permission to excavate the foundation of Samuel Ball's house and discovered a leading away from it.

They tried putting a plumbing camera down into the tunnel to see where it lead, but a rock in the tunnel prevented them from going more than about 30 feet or so.

I'm of the opinion that Ball, a former slave who took up cabbage farming when he arrived at OI, found the treasure and secreted it away using the tunnel inside his house.

[zaxtres]

History Channel has almost turned into American Pickers 24/7 365 days a year. That turned me off of that show. If I watch the prime time shows on those three, I catch them later on Amazon Prime video or Netflix. While I disagree with some of Netflix’s choices, I will continue to subscribe because it does have shows that I do enjoy. Amazon Prime has become weird of late, especially the UFO documentaries that keep showing up.

[zaxtres]

I stated it wasn't Lidar. The Lost Gold of WWII and the other, with the younger of the Brothers from Oak Island is funding the expedition, is called the Lost Gold of the Civil War. The WWII one is about how the Japanese in the final days buried treasure in the Philippine's mountains. Which does have a verified history to some recovery of it around the time of Markos. The Civil War lost gold is about how during/after the capture of the President of the Confederate (name escapes me but never knew he was captured in women's clothing) something like 9 wagons were taken north to a Michigan town where the individual later bought gold mines in Arizona to "launder" the gold. Also they built train tracks and buried an locomotive engine, supposedly. The show got into the tunnels underneath the towns that led to the banks. As to the Templars and circumstantial evidence, there is more than circumstantial evidence through historical documents and ship logs detailing the voyages to Nova Scotia. Famous French nobleman heavily associated with the Templars as was illustrated when one of the brothers visted a made to house Templars prison. There is too much "circumstantial" evidence about the Templars to come to North America before Columbus did. Templars are just one aspect of the overall picture. Again, before the Colonists landed there is a history in North America that seems to be ignored by a vast majority of American and Canadians. And yes I know what LIDAR is and that is not the technology I was talking about. LIDAR has been used in Illinois to connect the Aztec/Inca and others Architecture together. LIDAR has been used in the search of the missing colonists of Roanoke. LIDAR has been on the forefront of new temples covered by the jungles of South America. It has been used in Egypt to find new pyramids that lie beneath the sand. These are all verified finds,, not circumstantial and not speculative. However, there is a satellite technology that is able to go beneath the depth of LIDAR and is used in mining and other industries to find metals and minerals deep beneath the surface. And that technology is what was recently used on the WWII treasure hunt show to show metals of some type around 300 feet below the surface (LIDAR can't reach that deep). The WWII recovery history involves the use of maps and an ancient Japanese tradition of using symbols. The first find occurred around the 70's. The problem is that the Japanese General who buried the treasure using prisoners of war booby trapped the mountains. The Skinwalker ranch is about strange paranormal and extraterrestrial going ons at the ranch. Like large wolves, cattle mutilations, people having injuries with no apparent cause etc. I knew about this ranch long before the show was on. The area used to be the land of one of the Native American Tribes and encompasses around 512 acres. The US government did investigations there but could not come to a conclusion as to what the cause was. The tribes around there say it is the result of a Skinwalker who can shape shift. The show doesn't go much into the past history of the ranch but it does have a very interesting past that isn't related to treasure. Although I still think it is hard to watch sometimes and does follow the same format (all of these shows do, including American Pickers) of repeating after the commmercial. I am not sure because I haven't watched it in a while to the narrator. I think it is the same but not quite 100% sure at this moment because I am going off the top of my head here recalling all of this info. One more thing about Oak Island, they call the history of looking for the treasure searcher history. This history has related to the American Revolution and included several Presidents who have looked for the treasure. And if you are up for it look for a book (it will be a reprint since it is out of circulation) called The Secret in which a gentleman hid boxes around the country. He had a drawings made up and each was accompanied by a riddle/poem. The box contains a key in which you send to the foundation (the guy who did this is dead now) and they send you back a gem. The first box that was found was by a bunch of teenagers at the time. They received a large green emerald. Their story was documented and they did interviews back in the 70's. So far that I know that is the only box ever found. I think maybe one more was but not sure on that. The pictures are also cryptic. But you would say that was "circumstantial" as well. Continue to be a naysayer and the day the real story comes out, I do expect an apology. Maybe you will be a naysayer about that as well or dead from old age by then, seeing how the searcher history goes back to around 1795 and continues to this day. Too much evidence to be circumstantial and too much undiscovered history to be found.

[zaxtres]

Matt Chisholm had rare and aggressive form of stage IV Lung cancer. He died in his childhood home.

The curse is about a person dying in the act of the search, like digging a tunnel.

Some of the six that died were because of poisonous gas which also lends to the leaving documents in mercury to preserve them theory. High levels of mercury have been corroborated on the island. The levels of mercury should not exist in that area. They corroborated this when they excavated the blue clay pit in the eye of the swamp.

[zaxtres]

They own a construction business in Detroit. In addition to the proceeds of the show. This season’s finale was a wake up call when they said it was going to take tens of millions to do what they want and if Canaduh will let them.

[zaxtres]

So I guess in your eyes X marks the spot dig and it is found?

Considering the search has been going on since the year 1795 - dubbed the time of searcher history, 8 seasons is just a pittance in the history of this legend.

[zaxtres]

You point to the polynesians but it has been established trade routes existed to the northern part of north america long before the vikings. This is evidenced by the mound builders. The Serpent Mound in Ohio gets all the accolades but there are mounds further west in the northern states. Also the Serpent Mound is not unique as there is another in Scotland. Like I said I watch these shows for there historical value not their entertainment purpose although I am entertained from it. That is North American history you won’t find taught in any high school. Some would say the druids from Ireland/England came over in regards to the stone structures found in the North East. This isn’t even including the Land Bridge Theory. Then there is how those stone structures that just happen to align with the solstices rather than be for the use of storage of food. Then you have the monolith that could have been used for human sacrifice, but not sure if that was its actual use. It is shaped like a mortuaries table. So it could have been used for the purpose of blood capture in some fashion. Too much real evidence rather than “circumstantial” evidence pointing to the movement of man due to trade and exploration throughout the ancient world to be glossed over because someone is a naysayer to actual history. Heck, most thought (and some still do) the world was flat and the Earth was the center of the universe. Bah! Get real!