As most of you know, Curse of Oak Island returned for its fourth season on Tuesday, and I still can’t bring myself to care about digging holes and brokering an end to the long-simmering feuds between old geezers who fight over who knows best about which hole to dig and how deep and for what reason. But despite my misgivings about what is, at heart, a program about old men hanging out and bonding over a futile but expensive task—the fringe history version of having a golf foursome—the premiere episode struggled a bit to keep things fresh after so many years of looking in vain for some undefined treasure. To find an exciting new angle, they returned to an old one, and recapitulated the first season finale of America Unearthed, which visited the same New Ross location in search of the same artifact, the Ark of the Covenant. As regular readers will recall, according to a Facebook broadcast this fall, Scott F. Wolter of America Unearthed and J. Hutton Pulitzer, formerly of Curse of Oak Island, planned to announce their belief that they knew the burial site of the Ark of the Covenant near Oak Island. It seems Curse stole their thunder by remaking Wolter’s first excursion in search of the Ark near Oak Island. Indeed, after the episode aired, J. Hutton Pulitzer took to Facebook to announce that (a) many things on Curse of Oak Island are “changed” or “enhanced,” (b) it was the “best” and most “absolutely amazing” episode ever produced by the “brilliant” Kevin Burns, and (c) Pulitzer would no longer be making public criticisms of the show because he does not want conservatives to have to deal with any more negativity in the wake of all the anti-Trump hatred that he said has taken too much of an “emotional toll” on him and others of his political bent: In short, I do not want to detract from your entertainment. Right now, we all need to ESCAPE and BE ENTERTAINED. Now, maybe more than any time in history before - we need to be entertained and distracted. When all week you will see toxic and deplorable news targeted at our new President and trying to make him and his elected staff look like haters and racists, you NEED, better yet, you DESERVE, that one or two hours of entertaining escape every week. It sounds rather like Pulitzer and Wolter discovered that criticizing powerful TV producers and the most important network for fringe history is not a useful strategy for marketing one’s own TV show. (For his part, Wolter tweeted that he was “not watching” but nevertheless “enjoying” the show.)
So, to sum up: Lies are good as long as they help Trump supporters cope emotionally with liberals. Poor little snowflakes. Fortunately, fringe history has plenty of “entertaining” ethno-nationalism of its own! I have previously outlined how the New Ross location, a colonial-era site, came to be mistaken for a medieval castle by fringe historians looking to extend the timeline for European colonization of America, and it was thus subsumed into the burgeoning myth of Henry Sinclair, the medieval minor noble mistakenly fingered as the fictitious Prince Zichmni of the Zeno Narrative. The Zeno Narrative, which was itself a nationalist propaganda effort to vault Venice above Columbus’s native Genoa in the race to America, is widely admitted to be a Renaissance hoax, and even if it were genuine, a plain reading of the text does not report a voyage to Oak Island but rather a trip to Greenland, the location which the narrative claims was the farthest location Zichmni reached, and where he made his final home. It was fringe historians—Frederick Pohl specifically—who falsely claimed that the text’s Greenland was really Nova Scotia, removing the narrative yet another step from reality. Pohl, of course, famously argued that Native Americans worshiped Sinclair’s party of white Europeans as gods and credited them with all good things. Thomas Sinclair would argue that the Sinclair superior sperm permanently improved the Native population through an injection of masculine whiteness. The version Scott Wolter offered was identical except that it attributed the improvement to fictitious Holy Bloodline Jesus genes. Anyway, this week’s episode focuses on secret codes that supposedly tie the Knights Templar and the Sinclair family to Oak Island. This is all very strange since there is no documentary evidence that the Knights Templar escaped Europe by ship—it’s a myth invented in the nineteenth century by Eugène Beauvois, a man so monomaniacally obsessed with proving that white Europeans invented New World culture that in 1891 Popular Science sighed that the International Congress of Americanists witnessed Beauvois promulgating his claim to the assembled experts “for the seventh time”—and it wasn’t the last. Even after ransacking records for more than a century, the only scrap of evidence for this claim is a single line, under torture, delivered by one Templar knight and admitted by him to be rumor and hearsay. And it doesn’t even say that the Templars took off for America. Beyond that, I explored last week the fact that the Templar association with the Ark of the Covenant was only invented in the 1990s, as a substitute for earlier associations, famously among the Nazis, of their association with the Holy Grail. This week’s “expert” is Zena Halpern, a fringe historian who writes on diffusionist claims. She worked on “translating” gibberish from the fabricated stones from Burrows Cave (and publishing with Burrows Cave advocate and ex-Nazi leader Frank Joseph* in his publications), and she has gone by many descriptions—from historian to Hebrew expert to Knights Templar expert. In that last guise that she appears by phone (due to illness) on Curse to claim that she has documents linking the Templars to Oak Island. Sadly, we have only Halpern’s word that one of the modern papers (some of which were allegedly found in a mysterious book) bearing a secret code included “a mention dated 1178 to 1180 that the Templar voyage to the northeastern part of America took place and that the Templars had made landfall on an island of oaks When I found the map, which is dated 1347, I began to put the pieces together.” Sadly, the map “dated” 1347 is a hand-drawn doodle, which we are asked to believe is a photocopy of a hand-drawn copy of an undefined original. (Even if it were a copy of an old map, it is not “dated” 1347. The text of the map clearly states in French “the landing, one thousand three hundred forty-seven,” which is an incorrect way of giving a date in 1347 and makes no sense in context.) The 1178 map is also a doodle, and the date may have been back-formed from the Ulpius Globe of 1542, which identified Cape Breton as Cavo de Brettoni with the number 1178 beside it. (I have not confirmed that the number appears on the globe; Templar researcher Gerard Leduc reported it.) None of the evidence is medieval, and is worthless. If this sounds familiar, it’s because in his 2013 book From Akhenaten to the Founding Fathers Wolter described an identical modern “copy” of a medieval map, also in French, also showing Nova Scotia, and also linking Oak Island to the Templars. (The year on the map back then was 1179.) And who was passing that map off as a real one? Oh, right: Zena Halpern. When she worked with Wolter in 2009 and 2010, she also gave him more apparently forged documents, including the infamous “C-document” narrative, written in the fake Theban language, of Templars taking treasure to upstate New York, also a modern “copy” of a medieval text. She offered a bunch of other rocks inscribed with ancient writing, to the point that it strained even Wolter’s gullibility. Halpern refused to let anyone see the original documents, only her hand-drawn copies. So, to be clear: Zena Halpern’s conveniently suspicious discoveries helped shape the odd ideas Scott Wolter used on America Unearthed by convincing him the Templars brought the Ark to America, and Wolter then did an episode of America Unearthed on the Templars or other Europeans bringing the Ark to America (a couple in fact), after which Curse of Oak Island relitigated the same material by going back to none other than Zena Halpern. That’s too much incest for me to take. Surely someone must have noticed that her “documents” exist only in copies that Halpern herself made, under various changing stories. In the rest of the episode, a fellow named Doug Crowell claims that he solved the secret code found on various documents, and it revealed, he said, the words “gold” and “Joab.” Joab was a general of King David, so naturally he concludes that the Israelites might have been in on the conspiracy to move the Ark to Oak Island. Somehow, this leads to a discussion of the Templars again and to the fringe idea that their secrets passed to Henry Sinclair, who as a vassal of Norway had secret Viking knowledge of Nova Scotia and used it to spirit Templar treasure to America, though somehow the Norse chose not to follow. Raiders of the Lost Ark is 35 years old this year. Curse of Oak Island only proves that the remake is almost always worse than the original. * Scott Wolter and David Brody contacted me to say that it was inappropriate to note that Halpern published articles with Joseph because Halpern is Jewish and in poor health. They stated that Halpern is deeply upset by this. I am sorry that this hurt her, but the person who is responsible for that pain is Frank Joseph, who hid his past from those whose work he happily used to his advantage.
93 Comments
DaveR
11/17/2016 09:08:03 am
Does anybody even still watch this show?
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11/17/2016 11:02:35 am
I did, but generally to satisfy a compulsion to comment during the show a la Mystery Science Theater 2000 given the known nature of the hoax that is treasure on Oak Island. But they're starting to recycle the nonsense from previous seasons, not unlike Prometheus Entertainment's other gem, Ancient Aliens; and the unintentional humor aspect is wearing a bit thin. Knowing how the show will eventually end (the Laginas pat themselves on the back for a job well done, but alas regret that the Curse has beaten them... and then their corporation Oak Island Tours, Inc. opens up a resort), I can't take anymore.
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DaveR
11/17/2016 01:46:51 pm
What I detest about these types of shows is the manufactured drama. A few guys are moving something, and as the item or truck wiggles a little bit one of them yells "Watch out! Watch out!" THEN!
Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:27:29 pm
What I detest is the debunking of pseudo history by believers in the pseudo-history of the Bible
Titus pullo
11/17/2016 05:40:18 pm
U nailed it. Marty bought half the island cause he knew the real treasure was the publics guilibility.
Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:25:40 pm
Yes, devoted Roman Catholic Jason Colavito
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A Buddhist
11/17/2016 03:02:39 pm
While Catholicism is childish nonsense compared to even the most basic Pudgalavadan heresy, at least Jason does not try to prove the Roman Catholic teachings to be true, unlike many of his opponents.
Uncle Ron
11/17/2016 06:36:22 pm
A Buddhist - Your ongoing criticism of all things non-Buddhist is sounding a bit smug. Definitely not a Buddhist attitude.
Time Machine
11/17/2016 10:44:02 pm
Buddhism and Christianity are both identical in that neither religions add up to anything tangible,
Time Machine
11/17/2016 10:50:00 pm
In the interim period between 70 AD and 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) Christianity evolved into different religion disconnected from its historical origins whilst at the same time utilising the original elements.
DaveR
11/18/2016 07:52:40 am
How do you hijack a thread within three comments? See above.
Time Machine
11/18/2016 03:23:24 pm
DaveR 11/18/2016 05:29:06 pm
Titus Pullo - that is so far from the truth. These guys struggled for YEARS to get a treasure trove licence from the Province of Nova Scotia so they could start digging and that was years before the show. I was there the night Prometheus Productions pitched the show and Rick Lagina asked every single person present what they thought and this was something him and Marty thought about seriously as to the impact this would have on their digging, on the local people and on the island (with it being a private island)..... Western Shore in Nova Scotia where Oak Island is located is a very small community. The island is only open to the public one weekend a month throughout the summer months for a handful of tours and all the money made from the tours (which has nothing to do with the island partners)is ploughed back in to the visitors centre and safety and tour equipment. This is done through the Friends of Oak Island Society who are unpaid volunteers and work very hard as a group to raise awareness of the history of the island. Please do not say untrue stuff about these guys. They are honestly a decent bunch of blokes.
Joe Scales
11/19/2016 10:51:36 am
Carolyn,
KS
2/10/2017 12:51:26 am
Yes, why not dream! I have a Knights Templar in my family. It would be wonderful to know one of them came to the Americas. I am a direct descendant of Henry the 8th's sister, Queen Isabella and King Fedinand, President George Washington, President Madison, and Mrs. Lincoln. Many of the president's were Mason's and many in my family were Mason's. Just take a big breath and DREAM.
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tim
1/2/2018 09:14:37 pm
I think you're too far inland and not deep enough with the technology they had in the tools they had they couldn't go too far inland and Too Deep to bury a treasure
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Peter Geuzen
11/17/2016 09:12:29 am
It looks like the Templar card is going to be played out in subsequent episodes, so it's not over yet. Marty Lagina has put a Templar Cross in the floor of his new winery so the theme is entrenched it seems.
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Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:29:29 pm
The Founding Fathers of America rejected Christian values and principles, they were the very opposite of the Templars
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Lastrycke
12/7/2016 11:49:36 am
Only half of the. Founding fathers rejected Christianity. All of them believed in the Father Creator.
Tom
11/17/2016 09:50:06 am
Presumably every thief, treasure hunter and the CIA is now digging up what, if anything, now remains of Oak Island following a century or more of "scientific" excavations.
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JJ
11/17/2016 10:27:08 am
Your slant is that Ms. Halpern made these documents herself. How do you explain the finding of the 'hatch'?
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11/17/2016 10:41:16 am
I said that the documents do not appear to be medieval. The map could have been drawn any time after the "hatch" claim was invented. The McGinnis family, as the episode itself asserts, claims that they knew about the hatch for generations, which means that it is not impossible to fake the map by simply incorporating hearsay tales from earlier Oak Island researchers. Besides, the map is poorly and inaccurately enough drawn that the dot's connection to the "hatch" is only approximate.
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Peter Geuzen
11/17/2016 12:25:10 pm
On that note, the McGinnis ancestors who were on the show last season have quickly capitalized on the appearance with a book release this year. By coincidence, look who the first 5 star reviewer is on Amazon - yep it's Zena Halpern.
Joe Scales
11/17/2016 01:07:36 pm
As to the unintentional humor aspect, when the three sisters showed up on Curse of Oak Island last year, Marty remarked that it was like something out of Shakespeare. I'm assuming the subliminal reference was to the three witches from Macbeth...
Frank
2/7/2017 08:13:24 pm
How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history Jason?
Joe Scales
11/17/2016 11:04:31 am
Wasn't the "hatch" from another television show... Lost?
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Kathleen
11/17/2016 11:26:09 am
Sorry, but I don't know much about OI and I don't watch the show so I don't know what the "hatch" is.
DaveR
11/18/2016 02:10:02 pm
Dave Blankenship claims he has a hatch in his yard, at least that's what I've read. I assume he owns land near the pit.
Kathleen
11/18/2016 03:04:39 pm
Thanks
Only Me
11/17/2016 11:54:49 am
Though not surprising, you KNOW the well has run dry when CoOI starts recycling material from America Unearthed.
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Jii
11/17/2016 12:35:35 pm
LOL
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Joe Scales
11/17/2016 01:12:21 pm
Proven discoveries? There is no properly documented evidence, nor a scientific and/or historic rationale, that would conclusively lead to even a notion of treasure on Oak Island. It has been a hoax since its inception, which is likely when the first written reference for buried treasure appeared anywhere in print in 1849; a year known for inspiring fool's gold.
Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:44:22 pm
You overlook the fact that these things all originate from Biblical beliefs. And the source itself is spurious and culpable.
William Kimbrel
11/29/2016 10:24:34 pm
"$50 is as high as I can go for that authentic Holy Grail..."
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Jim
11/17/2016 12:30:58 pm
But Jason, don't you think it was clever of the Nights Templar to use in 1178 a longitude based on Greenwich as the prime meridian. I mean no one else used this until 1851.
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john d
2/16/2018 03:53:28 pm
Well said, Hate the Vagina brothers, aka Ringling bros. Just don't like fooling others and blatantly scamming those who don't need to lose their intelligence (as there is not much there anyways). And who makes a stone telling someone where their treasure is ? And one of those Templars must not have got his job done - "George, where is that pully we used on that tree branch to lower a ton of gold? George!!
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At Risk
11/17/2016 12:55:52 pm
I would enjoy seeing a future blog that discusses any known origination of the Native American Mi'kmag version of how--in more modern times--so much of their present culture and Tribal beliefs have come to be associated with the Glooscap configuation of Sir Henry Sinclair. It appears that this was not always so, yet still, there are strange details that could be examined.
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11/17/2016 01:42:32 pm
I addressed this in my link in the blog post. Frederick Pohl misread a Victorian book of Micmac myths, assumed they were all about Glooscap (when they weren't), and sought correlations with Sinclair because he was already a true believer.
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At Risk
11/17/2016 04:32:48 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Council_(Mi%27kmaq)
Only Me
11/17/2016 04:55:44 pm
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-america-unearthed-s01e13-hunt-for-the-holy-grail
RW Taylor
11/17/2016 09:14:51 pm
There are books that are extremely old, local, that reference Henry Sinclair as Glooscap. The book also reference an idea that he could have been Norse in origin. I first read it at my now deceased grandmother's, one of her pre-WW2 schoolbooks. It stated that he was believed to have blue eyes, a blond/red beard and light colored hair depending on the origination of the story.
RW Taylor
11/17/2016 09:15:01 pm
There are books that are extremely old, local, that reference Henry Sinclair as Glooscap. The book also reference an idea that he could have been Norse in origin. I first read it at my now deceased grandmother's, one of her pre-WW2 schoolbooks. It stated that he was believed to have blue eyes, a blond/red beard and light colored hair depending on the origination of the story. 11/18/2016 06:28:12 am
Pohl has had the idea in print since the 1940s. I've see the "extremely old" publications in which his ideas appear myself. Do you have an older source?
At Risk
11/18/2016 02:19:38 pm
Only Me, thanks for trip down memory lane (seeing my old comment about the Grail possibly being the Holy Spirit).
Doug Crowell
11/17/2016 01:06:49 pm
Hi Jason. Just read your most recent post. As I am under a non-disclosure agreement at the moment, I would simply like to address a few errors in your statements. Now, I live in Canada, so the first episode of COOI hasn't aired yet here, therefore unless editing made it seem like I was making such definitive statements, or you misunderstood me, I just want to set the record straight.
Reply
11/17/2016 01:46:13 pm
I elided some of the longer discussion. Yes, they discussed your African claims and then went on to relate them to Israelites and the Ark. As with anything on this show (and it sister show, Ancient Aliens), what we take away as the "conclusion" is more accurately a "suggestion" of a "possibility" that various editing tricks and ambiguous wording try to get the audience to accept. I'll admit to falling asleep while listing to the boring parts. It might not have been you who was presented as saying the Ark part, though that's how other summaries posted online the next morning gave it when I checked.
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11/17/2016 02:17:57 pm
Oak Island's mysteries have already been answered by Richard Joltes. It is an age old hoax:
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DaveR
11/18/2016 08:05:23 am
Thanks for the link. Some interesting information there, although it's nothing that will sway most people believing in the myth of Oak Island. 11/18/2016 11:29:20 am
The irony is that the hoax was dispelled quite neatly by John Brown of the Walton Manganese Company in his report to the Halifax Company back in 1867 (from Richard Jolte's site) that he concluded as follows:
DaveR
11/18/2016 02:26:37 pm
I think you pretty much summed it up with your last two sentences. Personally I think the guys on the show don't believe there's treasure buried at Oak Island, I think they're found their treasure in the form of a television program.
Joe Scales
11/18/2016 02:49:24 pm
Rick might have been a true believer at one time, or has become a very convincing actor. Marty on the other hand, is an engineer, an attorney and a millionaire. There's no way Marty got involved financially without reading Dunfield's geological reports ruling out flood tunnels and the like which were kept buried until 2003. He had to know it was a crock, and by buying into "Oak Island Tours, Inc.", that's rather telling on its own.
DaveR
11/18/2016 03:21:03 pm
Yup, it sounds more and more like the treasure's in the TV, and not the ground.
Bob Jase
11/17/2016 01:56:11 pm
I'm confused - was it the ancient Hebrew or the much later Templars that brought the Roman sword to Oak Island???
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Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:31:27 pm
It's obvious that sword is a fake because those associated with it haven't got a clue about the history of North America.
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Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:54:00 pm
>>no documentary evidence that the Knights Templar escaped Europe by ship—it’s a myth invented in the nineteenth century by Eugène Beauvois<<
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Time Machine
11/17/2016 02:57:48 pm
Just to clarify the situation, the pseudo-historians dismiss Eugène Beauvois because they want to believe in the Zeno Brothers and Henry Sinclair.
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Kal
11/17/2016 03:09:36 pm
This obsession over Oak Island for some of these guys is not nearly as interesting as Area 51 or some other actual 'secret place'.
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Kal
11/17/2016 03:11:27 pm
I would rather watch Finding Bigfoot again.
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Bob Jase
11/17/2016 03:39:30 pm
Did you know there is only one episode of Fb that was actually filmed? They just dub over it and use cgi to make the backgrounds and non-player characters look different in all the subsequent episodes.
Titus pullo
11/17/2016 05:50:18 pm
At least in gold rush they actually find gold. History is running out of fringe "mysteries" there isn't much left to cover is there? Sure thus will come back like this stuff always does but I'm betting we get a decade where thus crap isn't part of pop culture.....next time we see F Scott Wolter we all might be old and gray.
Time Machine
11/17/2016 03:15:14 pm
The Ark of the Covenant was deemed a military mascot similar to the way that the Mandylion was the Battle Standard of Russian troops during the First World War.
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V
11/18/2016 01:28:19 pm
Remember--the god of the Old Testament was not a particularly nice one. If you accept the possibility of "there is supernatural power in this thing," you also have to accept the possibility of him getting pissed at the Hebrews and letting the Babylonians take it.
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V
11/18/2016 01:28:25 pm
Remember--the god of the Old Testament was not a particularly nice one. If you accept the possibility of "there is supernatural power in this thing," you also have to accept the possibility of him getting pissed at the Hebrews and letting the Babylonians take it.
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V
11/18/2016 01:28:39 pm
Remember--the god of the Old Testament was not a particularly nice one. If you accept the possibility of "there is supernatural power in this thing," you also have to accept the possibility of him getting pissed at the Hebrews and letting the Babylonians take it.
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Tom
11/17/2016 03:37:19 pm
What is going on ?
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Kathleen
11/18/2016 09:13:05 am
Thanks, Tom.
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John
11/17/2016 06:48:31 pm
This show is a total bullshit as many others. What help explain for us why people like G.W. Bush, Clinton, Trump becomes President of US.
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Rich Moats
11/17/2016 07:26:02 pm
For all of you Jason followers and Jason yourself....when all of you spend as much time doing research as you do bashing those who are,
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Only Me
11/17/2016 07:51:10 pm
Rich, when you spend as much time learning about REAL history as you do defending the likes of Scott and Zena, then I'll listen to what you have to say.
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Lee
3/26/2018 09:01:42 pm
Zena is fruit loops... 11/17/2016 07:58:20 pm
I'll just note that it's Oak Island conspiracy theorist J. Hutton Pulitzer who brought Trump into it, as a reason to avoid offering criticism.
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Jim
11/17/2016 08:09:57 pm
Perhaps they, or you, yourself could do a little research into the history of longitude. You might find that their use of longitude in 1178 is absolutely ridiculous. For Pete's sake the use of the compass never came into use until the early 14th century. Longitude wasn't properly solved until the 19th century, with the English and many European countries offering huge prizes to solve the longitude problem. The English prize alone would be equivalent to one and a half million dollars in today's values.
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Jim
11/17/2016 08:40:55 pm
Pardon me,, when I said " Longitude wasn't properly solved until the 19th century," I meant the 18th century.
Centurion
11/21/2016 09:04:08 pm
I though the show only mentioned latitudes and not longitude. Latitudes are a function of the height of a celestial body above the horizon while longitude is a function of the sun at zenith at noon compared to a home port clock. For example, the sun is at zenith in London at 12:00 noon. A ship at sea wold see the sun at its local noon and know that it was 15 degrees west of London. 15 degrees being 1/24 th of a circle. Refinements between would be calculated with time equations.
Jim
11/21/2016 10:28:43 pm
The show, yes, but the supposed 1178 map itself had numerous longitudes marked on it that never were used until after 1667 when the french started using Paris as their Prime meridian.
DaveR
11/18/2016 08:12:42 am
Rich Moats,
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John
11/18/2016 07:21:19 pm
The emergence of Reason constitutes the greatest enigma in the history of human civilization, and there has been no one so far who could convincingly explain the theses and antitheses of this mystery. There is also a need for a more analytical and serious study of the megalithic monuments around the planet. All this false history as we know it, the false calendars that we have followed throughout the centuries and the Christian Bible - a copy of the "invention" of the old Jewish testament - the "being" at any price - plus the new testament written by Sao Paulo and Later adapted and modified over time by the Popes - was a work begun by the Renaissance writers. You can check the veracity of these irrefutable arguments through the works of Nietzsche - "On the Truth and the Lie of the extra-moral sense", Will of Power" among other books of the author. When the own NIetzsche speaks of "superman" in the course of His work what he really want say for the human race more precisely is: Transcend yourself.
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John
11/19/2016 09:18:00 am
My comment was totally a bullshit. I messed up with the answer for this topic by mistake. I was foolish. I'm sorry Jason.
Juan
11/19/2016 07:13:49 am
It may well be that the only thing to come out of "Curse" is increased sales of Crown Royal, Blankenship's drink of choice to pickle his liver.
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11/20/2016 03:59:10 am
I have been on online sweepstakes advertising for 13 years and associated with online sweepstakes for about 16 years. I made a comment at the end of last year's show about this. I said that TV networks don't care if they find any on that island as long as they win the hour's time spot. They win a bigger prize, advertising dollars. Could there be treasure there? Sure, but that's not the point. I think the brothers are in the entertainment business more than treasure hunting. They come across as real nice guys and I am sure they are. But to see the major money of invested this year is not all theirs. I am sure it's the networks money also.
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bill
11/20/2016 01:39:26 pm
Doug'd methodology was illogical. If you're working on the assumption that your cipher is a simple substitution cipher you CANNOT just try random combinations and pick and choose various small words from the whole text, that is incredibly fallacious reasoning. When you solve a cipher, there's no question, you have devised a pattern, a translation table, a set of mathematical operations that delivers the message in its entirety. That is, unless someone screwed up in the encryption or original plaintext spelling.
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At Risk
11/20/2016 11:21:36 pm
Pretty interesting, bill: "When you solve a cipher, there's no question, you have devised a pattern, a translation table, a set of mathematical operations that delivers the message in its entirety."
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Joe Scales
11/20/2016 11:29:12 pm
Richard Joltes' research leaves little room to believe the alleged 90 foot stone ever existed. Allegedly found in the early 1800's only to disappear a century later, it is remarkable no one ever photographed it, traced it or even reduced the symbols to written form. That is until someone writing a book sensationalizing the treasure hunt came out around 1949 purportedly showing what the symbols carved in the stone looked like. Based on at least two layers of hearsay, of course. But one of those sources was a reverend, so it had to be true, right?
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Craig
11/21/2016 12:15:36 am
Bill, Interesting. Forgetting the show for now and just about the Templars: There might be a couple of questions that have not been ask. One, Did the Templars have their own language? Maybe a mixture of writing with both French and Portuguese? I never read or heard if they did or didn't. However would it make more sense that they had their own written language if they were going to present written cipher and encryption? Also wasn't their a possible Templar writing on other stones in Mass. and Minn.? Have they been compared?
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William Kimbrel
11/29/2016 10:46:05 pm
Which Templars? The Knights themselves were largely illiterate. Their scribes, obviously, knew and comprehended the elite languages. Still, this begs a question: how would illiterate folks command enough language mastery to reconfigure languages as ciphers? Furthermore, why would they do it? One might respond that the Templars in question were - as the shows espoused - of the much later variety, and enjoyed the increase in literacy provided post-Renaissance. Problematically, there is absolutely NO evidence that any such persons were Templars.
Piasillo
11/21/2016 09:07:29 pm
I'll tell you what really bothers me about the show. It's the narrators reading of the copy. Every single sentence seems to end in a question? Could this be the real stone? Did the brothers actually find the treasure or could this actually be another clue? And what about the mysterious map? Oh Jesus! I just get so tired of hearing that same repetitious patter. I mean… Repetitious patter?
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Commodore
11/22/2016 03:38:45 am
Many of the commentators here sound like all the political pondits that predicted Clinton would beat Trump in a landslide. I think everyone will be shocked and humbled by what is discovered on oak island.
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Dave UK
11/30/2016 07:45:09 pm
The point everyone has missed is that the Curse stated 7 must die before the treasure will be found.... With Fred Nolan passing you have your 7.
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Juan Ruiz
1/3/2018 10:53:00 am
"With Fred Nolan passing you have your 7."
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2/1/2017 02:22:15 am
Getting way back to the very basics. The original shaft with logs every 10 feet. Then a "code" stone. Then flooding of the shaft first written about prior to 1849. Discovery in the bay/swamp of a box drain covered with eel grass and coconut fiber originally used as dunnage in ships of the time to protect breakable objects. These items, found in the tropics were transported North and used as a means to keep the trap working.
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Zach
7/10/2018 12:40:29 am
Actually you're wrong on nearly every single I e of your points. The only thing you've mentioned that has actually been "proven" is the presence of coconut grass, though it certainly wasn't in any "box-drain". Which proves absolutely nothing as the island was always known to be a stopover for passing ships, which only goes to show that they occasionally threw away their garbage on the island.
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Stace
11/28/2018 12:56:59 am
You skeptics are such buzz kills.
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Vanessa Adams
10/13/2020 11:09:51 am
After Zena Halpern passed away and the Oak Island team inherited many of her papers and "research," we never heard about her theories again. I suspect they knew they were useless all along, but made for good filler to tie into digging out the hatch. Thankfully, later seasons have a lot fewer "wild theorist of the week" visitors. They may have ran out of people to bring on, or the Lagina brothers said enough is enough. Randall Sullivan's book on Oak Island also skewered Halpern and "Treasure Force Commander" J. Hutton Pulitzer, among others. So maybe that influenced the show's later direction as well.
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