Rick Lagina: Did Someone Reach Oak Island Before Columbus? This Artifact Says YES!

History books might be wrong because a new discovery on Oak Island just challenged the 1492 timeline and proved someone reached these shores centuries before Columbus. According to EPG guides, it is February 16th, 2026, and the world of archaeology is buzzing.
For over a decade, as chronicled by Wikipedia, Rick and Marty Lagginina have battled the supposed curse of Oak Island while hunting for a legendary treasure vault off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Critics called it a fool’s errand and claimed the island was nothing more than a natural sinkhole or a colonial era work site. Season 13 has just delivered the evidence that changes everything.
In recent seasons, the team expanded their focus from the waterlogged money pit to a mysterious area known as Lot 5.
What they pulled from the ground in season 11 wasn’t just gold or silver, but physical and scientific proof that Europeans, or perhaps even Romans, were walking on this island long before the Santa Maria ever set sail.
This isn’t a theory anymore because the data is in and the timeline of North American history is about to break.
Consider the object that stopped the excavation cold.
During a dig on lot 5 in season 11, metal detecting expert Gary Drayton unearthed a Roman coin in soil that appeared undisturbed since the 1700s.
This wasn’t a British penny from the 1700s or a Spanish raayal from the pirate era. Preliminary analysis suggests this coin is Roman and potentially dates back 2,000 years.
Finding a Roman coin in North America defies the established narrative completely.
Gary Drayton’s excitement was palpable, but the implications are far more serious than just an interesting find.
If this coin was dropped by an ancient sailor, it means the Atlantic Ocean was crossed a millennium before we thought possible.
The soil around it appeared undisturbed since the 1700s, which rules out a modern drop. The lab results told an even more compelling story. The team recovered organic material like wood and charcoal from a buried structure on lot 5. They sent these samples to the lab expecting dates from the 1700s or maybe the 1600s.
While the structure dated to the 1730s, specific artifacts found nearby returned dates from the 1300s and 1400s.
To put that in perspective, the early 1300s is more than a hundred years before Christopher Columbus was even born.
The coin grabbed headlines, but the lab results told a complex story. The team recovered organic material from lot 5 with some wood dating to the 15th century and artifacts like a Venetian bead potentially linking to the 14th century.
Dr. Spooner and the team were stunned because you cannot fake carbon 14 data.
This structure wasn’t built by British soldiers or pirate crews, but by people who were here when North America was supposedly a blank spot on the map. For Rick Lagginina, this moment was personal. As documented on IMDb, we have watched him for 13 years as he poured his time, money, and soul into this mystery. He has been ridiculed by skeptics and dismissed by mainstream historians.
When the dates were read aloud in the war room, the emotion on his face was visible.
This wasn’t just about finding treasure anymore, but about being right. He has always believed that Oak Island held a story of immense historical importance that transcended mere gold. This evidence vindicates his lifelong obsession.
He looked around the table and realized that the odd theories about Templars and ancient mariners weren’t so strange after all. The tears in his eyes spoke volumes.
This discovery validates a dream that began when he was just a boy reading Reader Digest, a story often highlighted by history. If you are finding this breakdown interesting, hit subscribe and the notification bell since we cover breaking stories like this every week.
Now we return to the mystery. The surprises didn’t stop at lot 5. Two weeks ago in the episode titled The Shining as listed on Rotten Tomatoes, the team intensified their work on lot 8. They focused on a massive boulder that has sat seemingly at random on the property for generations.
Underneath, they found something that made their blood run cold.
The ground wasn’t natural because it showed signs of a shaft, which was potentially an air vent or a secondary entrance to the underground works.
This supports the theory that the money pit wasn’t a standalone hole, but part of a massive and industrialcale complex.
If lot 8 connects to the main flood tunnels, it means the original builders occupied the entire island rather than just one small area. The engineering required to build multiple connected shafts implies a workforce of hundreds.
operating with a level of secrecy that is almost terrifying to consider. This brings us back to the Knights Templar.
Bratannica confirms the 1300’s date aligns perfectly with the fall of the Templar order in Europe. In 1307, the French king ordered their arrest and the Templar fleet vanished from the port of La Rochelle. History never recorded where they went.
The report came back with a date range in the 1700s. While ancient Roman coins and a 14th century lead cross have been found nearby, this structure dates to the era of the original money pit. We have the Roman coin, which some theorists believe the Templars may have kept as relics. The puzzle pieces are snapping together. It suggests that Oak Island wasn’t a pirate bank, but a Templar vault designed to hide their most sacred treasures from the reach of the French crown and the Pope.
The Lagginas are no longer just treasure hunters since they are investigating a medieval cold case. Of course, not everyone is convinced. Mainstream archaeology is slow to change and admitting that Europeans were here in the 1300s requires rewriting every textbook in the Western world.
Skeptics argue that the Roman coin could have been dropped by a collector in the 1900s. Instead, the report came back with a date range in the 1700s with some evidence suggesting activity as early as the 1500s.
These are valid scientific challenges.
However, the depth at which these items were found makes the recent drop theory hard to accept.
Gary Drayton unearthed a coin just below the surface that simply shouldn’t be there. The coin was found in the soil, which rules out the possibility that it was dropped recently.
The Lagginina team knows they need more than one coin and one log. They need a pattern. That is why the upcoming excavations in the swamp are so important. They need to find the ship that brought these people here. Speaking of the swamp, the next major phase of season 13 centers right there. The episode airing later this month, Swamped, promises to reveal what lies beneath that triangular swamp. For years, the team has suspected the swamp is artificial and man-made to hide a gallion.
Recent seismic data shows a ship-shaped anomaly buried in the muck. If they can pull a piece of timber from that anomaly and date it to the 1300s or earlier, the debate is over.
The swamp has always been the wildest card in the deck because it is wet, dangerous, and hard to dig. If a Templar ship was scuttled there to hide their tracks, it would explain everything. The Roman coin might just be the loose change left in the captain’s pocket.
Where does this leave us in February 2026?
As emphasized by the cursive of Island, we are standing on the edge of a historical revolution. The evidence is no longer anecdotal, but physical. The Lagginas have moved beyond simple treasure hunting into the area of worldchanging history.
During a recent dig on lot 5, metal detectorrist Katya Drayton unearthed a coin that simply shouldn’t be there.
Preliminary analysis confirms this coin is Roman, bearing the image of Emperor Claudius II and dating back nearly 1,800 years.
While the coin grabbed headlines, the data told a compelling story. The team has previously recovered organic material like coconut fiber dated to the 1300s with Roman coins found on Lot 5.
The evidence suggests human activity on Oak Island could align with the Templar era.
The drill bits are turning. The swamp is being drained. And the answers are finally within reach.
The curse might not be about death anymore, but about the death of the history we thought we knew. This discovery forces us to rethink the entire narrative of the new world. If Romans or Templars established a foothold here centuries before Columbus, then 1492 was not a discovery but a rediscovery.
It suggests a global connectedness in the ancient world that we have underestimated for generations.
For the viewers, this means that the history you learned in school is incomplete. It validates the idea that history is fluid and constantly updated by new data. The Oak Island mystery is proving that with enough persistence and funding, even the deepest secrets can be unearthed. We are likely seeing the prelude to a major academic shift where the history of North America begins not with Columbus, but with mysterious visitors who left their mark in the soil of Nova Scotia. The truth about Oak Island is finally surfacing, and it is far stranger than any pirate legend.
Whether this leads to a vault of gold or just more questions, we are watching history change in real time.
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