Oak Island Comment
Oak Island Comment
In my opinion the story is not substantial enough for further study. But it is a very nice story that will entertain many more people in the future and will pay many author’s bills.
It is certain that massive diggings took place in the 20. and 19. century and even earlier salvage attempts are creditable. Since these explorations were funded by investors there must be evidence such as contracts etc..
Today not a single found item can be studied anywhere that was certainly found during the digs. This lack of hard evidence is typical for the classical history mysteries. This is suspicious. Every one digging using investor’s money will carefully guard each and every found item because it proves to be on the right track. The disappearance of all found items raises the question whether the “finds” were manipulated to convince investors to put in more funds.
It is also suspicious that nobody soeaking in favour of the treasure story has ever put up a geologic examination to prove that the water in the pit must have come through man-made connections. The assumed treasure is well below sea level. Is the ground permeable to water or not? I am sure Nova Scotia’s geologists can easily answer this question. The only statement I know comes from a critic of the treasure cache theory. According to this the top layers of the ground, near to the surface, are not permeable but deeper layers are. So the water entry can be explained with natural causes.
Decisive for my negative judgement is the fundamental assumption somebody had – more than 200 years ago – constructed with tremendous effort on an island an underground treasure hiding place well below sea level. For the following reasons this is not credible in my opinion.
That would been extremely dangerous for the builder during construction. It is much too probable that the hiding place will be subject to flooding sooner or later. If that happens even the persons who hid the cache had no possibility to reach it ever again. The flooding tunnels called a “security device” by the advocats of the treasure theory, if they exists, are rather a self destruction device. One does not build such a massive construction yard outside the territory one can control.It is not credible that someone who is capable of such an engineering masterpiece forgets to remove all hints like pieces of ropes in trees. In this case a hunter – who did not look for treasure – noticed it. Those who actually hid items assure that they removed very carefully all signs of their activity. You certainly do not want to leave waybills behind.Treasure hiding places are in no known case complex and difficult contructions. (Tombs with valuable items are a different issue.)
First, like all people treasure hiders want to avoid effort. Why hiding a treasure an a remote mountain top or in a 60 m pit? Too much effort.
Second, the hider fears nothing more than to be observed while hiding the treasure. If that happens he will most likely loose the treasure. So nobody tries to erect a massive construction yard on an island visible from an inhabited coast and works for years to create a hiding place as complex as the supposed one. And even the most skilled workers would have needed years to create such a hiding place using the technology of the 18. century or even earlier.
There is no way to avoid being noticed by the local population. A ship or fires at night can be seen from the coast. A contruction yard as this will create attention no matter how small the population was at that time.
A hidden treasure is protected by the fact that his hiding place is unknown, not by taking large efforts during hiding such as digging deep pits etc.. Therefore, you probably will not want to hire a large crew to hide something.
Have you ever tried to hide something in the ground? The maximum depth you will be prepared to depth will be 1 m, though probably you will be content with arm’s length (60 cm). The intentionally hidden items I found were all even more shallow.
Hiders will not try to hide their cache at a known place and secure it using all sorts of security device. That does not work. All egyptian tombs have been robbed. It is part of human nature to remove all obstacles, no matter what the cost, to get to the assumed treasure. No one is more obsessed than the treasure seeker who thinks he is close to his goal.
Apart from this the existence of so-called “death traps” is not proved. It is sure that traps such as shown in the Indiana Jones movies do not exist. From an engineering point of view it is very difficult to create a trap that still will be operational after thousands of years. Material deteriorates, energy sources will drain, dirt will cause mechanics to jam etc.. However, there are unverified reports of Spanish gravity traps in Mexico and the southern states of the US. These traps used a big boulder to smash intruders and were used to guard mine entries. There are also rumors concerning traps in the tombs of chinese emperors..
(C) Thorsten Straub www.metal-detecting.de 2006-2019.