The Money Pit of Oak Island, NS

[Professor S]

Have you Canadians heard of this? I just saw it on TV and looked it up. This damn thing facinates me. I need to know who built it and whats at the bottom!!!

What appears to be a complex flooding trap has thwarted efforts to reach the bottom of the Money Pit ever since. Some think the pit was purposely flooded with seawater, via a series of artificial swamps and tunnels, to hide its contents.

Through the murk, drill borings and shafts dug by the island's series of owners have detected what seem to be cement vaulting, wooden chests, and scraps of parchment paper. Radiocarbon dating of these artifacts is consistent: whoever constructed the shaft likely did so sometime in the 16th Century.

http://www.livescience.com/history/0...ak_island.html

[KillerGremlin]

In chest number one we have......the remains of Shakespeare's penis.

In chest number two...a note pitying the fool who wasted said time and money to find Shakespeare's penis.

I'm just kidding though, treasure hunts are awesome. There was some show on the discovery channel where these guys cruise around on expensive ships with expensive equipment salvaging wreckage on the bottom of the ocean. This island money pit seems far more intriguing.

Treasure is history, and history is important to humanity. The more we know of our past the better...so yeah. I'm all for finding treasure.

[Seth]

I think it's either some pirate's elaborate scheme or a cover-up involving the knights templar.

...lol no not really. Anyway, yeah I've known about this a long time since I'm Canadian and things like this kinda grab our attention. For a while I wanted to go there....so many people have spent millions on trying to excavate. Probably will remain a mystery forever, uness the seawater somehow hasn't damaged whatever lies down there. Maybe it's got something to do with Atlantis. Lost civilizations, lost knowledge. 16th century though...who knows. The ark of the covenant....I've been thinking of moving to NS. Property's cheap, there's surf, a warm growing valley, and tons of art chicks at university. ...thinkin bout it.

[KillerGremlin]

Originally Posted by Seth

there's surf, a warm growing valley, and tons of art chicks at university. ...thinkin bout it.

you'd get sick of the art chicks after a while methinks

[manasecret]

Sounds like a natural sinkhole that managed to sink in a lot of circumstantial and anecdotal b.s. to me!

[Professor S]

Not really. The design of the pit is actually qute ingenious and elaborate. It's definitely deliberate.

[manasecret]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Not really. The design of the pit is actually qute ingenious and elaborate. It's definitely deliberate.

It looks like they've gotten to you, too!

But seriously, I heard about this ages ago and I was all into it and it was nice to get a reminder about it. But I'm going to stick with the criticism on this one (pulled from Wiki):

Criticism of treasure theories


General

Critics argue that there is no treasure and that the apparent pit is a natural phenomenon, likely a sinkhole and natural caverns. It is argued that the story of the money is largely unverified and the gap of sixty years between the supposed discovery and the first known reports is very long. There is no surviving evidence that the nine platforms existed. Indeed, it is noteworthy that no debris, lost tools or other items mentioned in the early accounts have been found. ^[2]
Joe Nickell^[2] also identifies parallels between the accounts of Oak Island and the allegory of the "Secret Vault" in Freemasonry (similar to the Chase Vault), and identifies many prominent excavators as Freemasons, leading to the suggestion that the accounts explicitly include Masonic imagery.

Sinkhole

Suggestions that the pit is a natural phenomenon, specifically a sinkhole or debris in a fault, date to at least 1911.^{[21][22][23][24]} There are numerous sinkholes on the mainland near the island, together with underground caves (to which the apparent booby traps are attributed).
The appearance of a man-made pit has been attributed partly to the texture of sinkholes: "this filling would be softer than the surrounding ground, and give the impression that it had been dug up before",^[24] and the appearance of "platforms" of rotten logs has been attributed to trees or "blowdowns" falling or washing into the depression.^[25] An undetermined pit similar to the description of the early Money Pit had been discovered in the area. In 1949, workmen digging a well on the shore of Mahone Bay, at a point where the earth was soft, found a pit of the following description: "At about two feet down a layer of fieldstone was struck. Then logs of spruce and oak were unearthed at irregular intervals, and some of the wood was charred. The immediate suspicion was that another Money Pit had been found."^[26]

Romanticized elements

Many elements contained in the Oak Island story, such as the discovery of tantalizing but inconclusive objects and a message in indecipherable code, are common in fictional works on treasure and piracy (such as the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Gold-Bug"). This has led many to conclude that the early account of the Money Pit is a romanticized combination of several works of nineteenth century fiction conflated with a local story about a search for buried treasure.
Similarly, the burial of the supposed jewels of Marie Antoinette requires, logically, an assumption that they would someday soon after their concealment be retrieved. The apparent complexity of the Island's 'treasure' structure seems too frivolous an attempt to conceal what the queen's maid could have easily used for her own gain once in North America. There is little historical context to link the French Revolution directly to Nova Scotia, save for the ongoing conflicts in North America between the British and French both at the time and prior.

And as for the (apparently only) actual scientific study done:

Upon the invitation of Boston-area businessman David Mugar, a two-week survey was conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1995. This is the only known scientific study that has been conducted on the site. After running dye tests in the bore hole, they concluded that the flooding was caused by a natural interaction between the island's freshwater lens and tidal pressures in the underlying geology, refuting the idea of artificially constructed flood tunnels. The Woods Hole scientists who viewed the videos taken in 1971 concluded that nothing conclusive could be determined from the murky images.

But this is from Wikipedia, so maybe the conspiracy reaches the editors of Oak Island as well!