The last few minutes of last week's episode of The Curse of Oak Island saw the Fellowship preparing for the onset of Hurricane Lee and what setbacks it could bring to their quest for the long-lost treasure. I was expecting the worse in this week's episode, "Piling On." My biggest concerns were the stone feature on Lot 5 being battered by the storm and the possible flooding of the Garden Shaft. The condition of the former was not addressed and the latter was, thankfully, not affected. The triangle-shaped swamp was flooded, leading Rick Lagina, his nephew Alex, and Jack Begley to start the pumps to begin the process of draining the water.
RUNDOWN In the War Room, the Lagina brothers and members of the team engage in a video chat to speak with archaeoastronomer Prof. Adriano Gaspani who in 2022 dated Nolan's Cross to 1200 AD. When asked about the age of a feature consisting of five pyramidal stone piles, Prof. Gaspani, noting its alignment with the sun and the moon, deduced that it was constructed in 1250 AD. He was then asked to provide information regarding a stone triangle. The triangle's geometry and astronomical alignments with the summer and winter solstices suggest that someone such as a navigator could have built it. Prof. Gaspani further suggests the Knights Templar. The information provided by Prof. Gaspani led Gary Drayton and Jack Begley to metal detect the area for artifacts. While searching Lot 15, they uncover a lead artifact which archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan pointed out as similar in composition to another lead artifact which was found two years earlier on nearby Lot 13 and of Scandinavian origin, hinting at the Vikings. Since the Vikings and the Templars were contemporaries of the 13th century and, as research suggests, operated in the same waters, could there be a Norse-Templar connection? Did they know each other? As always, more questions than answers arise. I must point out that the Vikings were skilled navigators, so perhaps they had a hand in constructing the aforementioned stone triangle which Prof. Gaspani indicated must have been built by someone skilled in astronomy and geometry, i.e. a navigator. While working at a depth of around 100 feet in the Garden Shaft, representatives of Dumas Contracting, Ltd. uncover wooden planks which could be the top of a tunnel and/or another level of planking which early descriptions of the Money Pit note as occurring every 10 feet. One of the planks was brought to the surface where, upon closer inspection, it was revealed to have been cut by hand (adze-cut) as opposed to power saw, a clear indication that this was pre-eighteenth century and thus the work of the original treasure depositors rather than the later searchers. CONCLUSION It's exciting to see the progress the team is making and I am eager to see what other secrets are revealed. It's no doubt that the discoveries made on Oak Island will rewrite North American, and even world, history. Neither is it a question that whatever is buried on the island was of such great significance that the depositors went to extreme lengths to keep it hidden. Oak Island's discoveries are a hydra: answer one question and two more will take its place. The island's revealed history tells us that the English, French, and Portuguese were present on the island. Could there have been a Viking presence on the island, too? It wouldn't surprise me in the least and I think it's highly likely. Who do you think was conducting secret operations on Oak Island? What do you think could be buried in the Money Pit? Do you think there is a curse? Sound off in the comments and thank you for reading!
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