A Templar Connection Revealed? (S13) | The Curse of Oak Island

-[Craig] Hello, down there. -[Fiona] Hi.
-Hi, Fiona. -Oh, wow, Fiona.
-You’ve gotten so much done. -Wow.
This must look a little different from before.
-[Alex] Yeah. -[Narrator] A new day on Oak Island brings the team fresh hope for a breakthrough discovery as Rick, Craig and members of the team investigate the cradle-shaped feature of stones on Lot 8. I can’t wait to show you h-how this is progressing and what I’m seeing in here.
It’s, uh, it’s-it’s been changing as I’ve gone along.
Oh, yeah.
So, once we removed that-that third layer of rocks, we came across a substance which was like mortar.
Like, a cement-like material. So, it makes me feel like they did this in a way that they wanted these rocks to stay in place for some reason.
And what I’ve discovered, this morning, as I’ve been digging around this, this particular area here.
As I’ve been removing the rocks– they were extremely hard to get out– but I’ve got enough of the smaller rocks out now that I think that maybe you should see if you could get that moved.
[Alex] I have gloves on.
-Want me to give it a try? -I think you guys, any of you would be welcome.
You’ll notice there’s still some of what I call -these pinner rocks holding this in place. -Mm-hmm.
I’m gonna try to just step right down so I don’t move anything, hopefully.
Oh, it’s pretty sturdy.
All right.
Oh, yeah, that’s in there. That’s true.
[Narrator] After revealing this formation beneath a 40,000-pound boulder, the team has discovered handworked blue clay and a mortar-like cement which were used to seal the stones together. -[Alex] Got it. -[Fiona] Did you get it?
-Yep. No problem. That’s no problem. -Oh, I’m amazed.
Okay. Where do you want me to throw this? Over there?
-Well, how about right here? That’s fine for now. -Okay.
[Fiona] I’m actually keeping all of these rocks, because I just want to get an idea of how many we’ve taken out in total.
It does look like there’s some dark organic underneath it there.
[Jack] Mm-hmm.
[Fiona] The mortar-like material was done very well, and we had three types of it.
We found a very, very fine one, which was down here.
And if I were to put it on my trowel, you can see how fine it is.
A very fine powder material, which is actually similar to what you’re seeing on the outskirts of this.
And we’ve taken samples to see if we can compare them.
Then we had a very blue-like clay sample, if you can kind of see some of it in here.
-[Jack] Mm-hmm. -But this blue, blue-gray clay, um, had some very similarities, according to Dr. Spooner, to what we think the puddling clay is at the Money Pit.
So, we’ve taken samples to compare against the clay that we found at the Money Pit, just in case it matches.
And then you have this third mortar material, which is what you see at this north end.
Very cement-like.
What I’m wondering is if any of those have materials that are not from here.
You know, sourced from somewhere else, then-then, it’s proof positive that it’s deliberate.
This could be a tunnel shaft entrance.
Maybe it’s just right under here.
Yeah. Well, it definitely goes deeper.
The plan is to do a bisection on-on this left side here.
-[Alex] Mm-hmm. -We’ll take it right down, look at exactly how they constructed it.
And I think, as we’re removing these rocks, I would like to get samples of the soil underneath.
Okey doke. We’ll let you get-get after it.
[Jack] Great job.
-[Alex] Thank you, Fiona. -[Fiona] Thanks, guys.
[Narrator] Meanwhile… [Mikayla] I’m ready to find something in this feature that’s gonna tell us something truly significant about it.
[Tansy] I can get behind that.
[Narrator] …Laird Niven and other members of the team are back on Lot 5, investigating the rounded stone foundation. [Mikayla] After I get this bucket filled, maybe I’ll do a little bit more closer.
I hope we find more artifacts.
[Narrator] After the scientific report on the mysterious lead artifact, the team is eager to search for additional clues. [Rick] Obviously, humans created this. But why is it here? What’s its purpose?
Who did it? When did they do it?
You see it as it sits in front of you, and all the work that’s been done by Laird and his team. But because of multigenerational activities, we still struggle with who was here first. Oh. I found something.
-Hey, Laird. -Yo.
Hey, Laird. I’ve got something here.
Cool.
It’s metal.
Oh, it’s got a little pattern to it.
-It’s tiny. -[Tansy] It’s thin -for a button, isn’t it? -It is.
But last year, there was a button found right in here that turned out to be made of recycled arsenical bronze, uh, from the medieval period, which is pretty interesting.
We found some nice stuff, right?
Beads and buttons just in this area.
-Yeah. -And that’s why we’re expanding this way, um, to see what else is there.
Right? This is the main yard.
So, there’s just a lot going on here.
High activity means they lose things, and they obviously have, which is cool.
It makes me want to just keep expanding. [chuckles] -Same. -[both laugh] I mean, that’s a great find, so I’m gonna take it back to the lab and we’ll see what it’s made of.
-Whoo! -I’ll let you know. All right.
-Keep digging. -[Tansy] All right. See you.
[Marty] Thanks for joining, because this should be a very exciting war room. Thank you, Rick, for having us again.
[Narrator] …as the team considers where their next dig will be in the Money Pit area… First, we’ll get the professor and Marzia, we’ll get them up on the screen.
[Narrator] …they are meeting once again via videoconference with archaeoastronomy expert Professor Adriano Gaspani and his interpreter Marzia Sebastiani. -Emiliano, I’ll turn it over to you. -Well, today, we are going to present, uh, an archaeoastronomical analysis of, of the churches that Charlotte Wheatley found to be aligned with Oak Island.
[Charlotte] So, we have three churches, all on the west coast of France, pointing towards the island.
-Hmm. -[Narrator] One week ago, researcher Charlotte Wheatley pointed out a reference to the city of Talmont-sur-Gironde in Southern France, on Zena Halpern’s map of Oak Island, which Zena believed was created by members of the Knights Templar in the 14th century. According to Charlotte, three medieval churches near Talmont-sur-Gironde had ties to the Templar order and sit on an east-to-west line that points directly toward Oak Island. Now, after being given the GPS coordinates of several structures across the island, including the round feature on Lot 5, Professor Gaspani has analyzed Charlotte’s research… [Narrator] …and compared it with his own study of historical stellar alignments between the churches and specific features on the island. It is true. All the axes of the three churches would intersect with Oak Island. Excellent confirmation.
[Marzia] We have an alignment with the rising of Sirius. And then on the opposite side, we have a star alignment with the Pleiades and with Hamal. Emiliano, I assume all three of these churches date to the same era, then, the 1200s?
-Yeah. -Okay.
[Emiliano] Roughly, by the end of the 1100s and the early 1200s.
Well, I’m having a hard time rejecting this one.
-[laughter] -Yeah.
[Doug] It seems like somebody was here, -let’s say from France, from the Talmont region… -Mm-hmm.
…of France, in the 1200s.
They established a base of operations.
And then, when you consider the Pitblado coin, the latest date it could be is from 1383.
So, Zena introduced us to her Oak Island map that mentioned Talmont, right?
And that was supposed to represent a Templar journey -to the island. -Mm-hmm.
Here we see a lot of these factors converging together.
All these areas that were denoted as significant on her map are proven to be significant today.
-Yeah.
So, this could well be a multigenerational endeavor, because they established their base of operations and then moved something of great value over time.
Yeah.
[Narrator] Could Doug and Steve be correct that this new research has helped to validate Zena Halpern’s map of Oak Island, as well as her belief that the Templar order and their descendants made repeated trips to Oak Island beginning nearly eight centuries ago? The 1200s, years ago, would’ve been…
we’d have laughed at it.
And that, and that’s quite meaningful because now there’s a body of evidence building that it perhaps is the point of beginning of some endeavor here on the island to do something. So, again, we want to thank you both for your time today.
It’s quite stunning information.
I-I think it’s amazing.
-Thank you. Thank you. -Grazie. [Rick] And we need to use everything we have in our “toolbox,” if you will, to prove it.