CRITICAL CLUE to Money Pit Mystery | The Curse of Oak Island (Season 10)

Okay, hey, are we about ready? Just in time.
Yeah.
Rick Lagina, fellow Oak Island landowner,
Tom Nolan, and other members of the team
prepared to conduct another excavation
in search of vital clues on Lot 13, just
northeast of the swamp. Let’s see what we
can find here. Okay, time to get bolder.
Yep.
Now we’re rolling.
How deep are you, Bill? Four feet?
Hey, Rick.
That’s a bit of clay there.
This stuff?
Yeah.
Pretty definitive that that shouldn’t
normally be there at all. That could be
blue clay right there. Where have you
seen that color before? Money pit, while
excavating a mysterious boulder
formation known as the quadrilateral.
Rick Lagina and members of the team have
just found a potentially critical clue,
exactly the kind of clay that we found
around the Money Pit.
In 1804, when searchers began the first
major excavation of the original Money
Pit,
at a depth of 40 feet, they found a layer
of blue clay that acted as a sealant to
keep water out of the shaft.
Curiously, when the team investigated a
circular feature of boulders known as
the Eye of the Swamp in 2018, they
discovered the same substance.
You’ve never seen it this shallow?
No, definitely not.
Is it possible that the team has now
found evidence that the quadrilateral
was created by the same people who
manipulated the swamp and constructed
The Money Pit?
Hey, Terry. Hi, Rick. How you doing, Mike?
Hey, Terry. Well, I’m going to sound a lot
better once you tell us things we don’t
know.
Come on, don’t only make educated
guesses.
Oh, you’ll know this.
It seems a little bit similar to what
we’re seeing in the Money Pit.
Blue clay is part of the historical
narrative of the find of the Money Pit.
Would you use that to your advantage if
you wanted to keep water out of some
sort of underground structure?
Absolutely, 100%.
Could Rick Lagina’s notion that the
presence of blue clay indicates that a
structure is possibly buried below be
correct?
If so, what kind of structure could it be,
and might it contain something of great
value?
It’s a mystery. I can’t wait to dig the rest of it, but I
think we’re done for the day.
Yep.
The following morning, Rick Lagina and
members of the team returned to Lot 13
to have geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner
examine the mysterious quadrilateral
feature.
He found a layer of clay below the stones.
Okay, so if you can go down there and
give us a better understanding of what
happened here…
Right off the bat, what I’m seeing is a
layer here of
very clay-rich sediment. Like, you can
feel how deep it is.
That’s probably pretty thick,
which is odd, and if it were
geologic, i.e. racially deposited, it’s not.
It’s not. I just don’t think so. It’s the
wrong environments on hill slopes. It’s a
little bit improbable
that it would have collected here
naturally.
Yeah, like…
There’s also the different kinds of
clays we’re seeing here, the different
colors that may speak to burning or heat.
You see this?
That’s Brentwood.
This burnt wood is in clay, and that just
the two things don’t go together, and so
I can tell you definitively that is a
disturbed play,
and out of place.
Something with a fair bit of purpose
took place here.
It’s a complex story,
and thus there has to be a “why” to it.
You stack boulders because it’s much
harder to get boulders out of a hole than
it is to get them in the hole.
That’s right.
So basically, this becomes possibly a
safe. Yeah, you seal the top to prevent
water from getting down below, and
boulders are actually the key to the
safe, right?
I think the quadrilateral is
a human construct. There is no way that
you would, for fun and games, put huge
boulders in a huge hole, and so yes,
there’s every bit of possibility that
this may have something to do with
furthering our understanding of what
happened here long ago.
Is there going to be treasure at the
bottom of this location?
This is worth investigating right along
in here.
What’s up?
Little rock? No, no.
Oh.
Piece of metal.
I think it’s a really large iron staple,
and an oldie but a look of it. Look at
that one little spot that’s deteriorated.
You can see the striations in the metal.
Yeah, it’s got that wood grain effect.
What would they use that for?
Definitely looks like it’s a thin end that it was
to be driven into wood. Yeah. And you
think this is hand-forged?
That’s what it looks like to me. A hand-
forged iron staple or fastener dating as
far back as the 6th century BC. Large
metal staples are commonly used to this
day in the assembly of both stone and
wooden structures.
Could this hand-forged metal fastener be
more evidence that kind of structure is
waiting to be revealed at the so-called
quadrilateral? If so, given the fact that
the team has already found blue clay,
what kind of structure could it be?
Anything that predates the original
discovery of the Money Pit provides an
opportunity that may be original work,
but you put this so-called staple in
line with the laborious effort it took
to create the great quadrilateral, it
certainly is quite puzzling. What, if any,
is the relevance to the overall mystery
that is yet to be determined?
We made an interesting find. I can’t wait
to get it back to the lab, but for right
now, let’s just keep digging.
Yep, keep going.
Carmen, as usual, we’re very grateful that
you were able to make some time in your
busy schedule to come down in front of
us. We have a really unique artifact at
the Oak Island Interpretive Center. Rick
and Marty Lagina, along with Craig Tester,
an archaeologist, Emma Culligan, meet
with blacksmithing expert Carmen Lake to
have him examine the large metal staple
unearthed one day ago.
Word comes from the Great Quadrilateral.
It’s a unique geometric figure,
and we have no understanding of what
that feature represented. The first one
we found on the island. First time we’ve
seen anything like that, so I don’t know
what that means. Okay, let’s have a look
at the item and
see what you found.
It’s a staple, and this was found at what
level and where? More feet down? We know
it was perhaps buried there somehow. This
staple is not an anchor staple, so if you
drove that into a timber and you had a
force onto it coming straight out, it
would pull out easily.
These staples are only used to change
directions of ropes or pulley blocks or
blocking tackles or that sort of thing.
This has been used in a tree or a big
post or something, right? If it was
supposed to have driven in that way. So
when it was into the wood, the flat side
would cut the fibers of the wood when it
went in. It wouldn’t take much for us to
pop that out straight out.
Yeah, that’s right. So that’s why I
appreciate it. It would take a hell of a lot of…
That’s right, and so that tells you that it
changes direction. Yeah, when you said it
made complete sense to me.
Yeah, could that have been used with
helping pull boulders into place? Boulders would
seem to be half the size of this staple.
Oh yes, yeah, that would be perfect for that.
How old is this? It’s very old. I do know
that these were made from, you know,
medieval times.
Medieval times. Could Carmen Lake be
correct that this heavy staple was used
as part of a rope and pulley system,
centuries ago, in order to create the
massive quadrilateral feature? Emma, do
you have the metallurgy?
I do.
Prior to their meeting, Emma scanned the
artifact under an x-ray fluorescent
spectrometer. The device bombards metal
objects with gamma rays in order to
determine their elemental composition
and also their possible age.
It is 98% iron. It’s got a bit of a
silicon, aluminum, manganese, calcium,
sulfur, phosphorus, which is all
indicative of the furnace type or the
technology that was used. I do agree with
Carmen saying that it is older.
Whatever happened in the Great
Quadrilateral could have been deposited
in fact, maybe more likely, because I
don’t know why searchers would have done
that.
If that’s the case, then I want to see
what’s under it. We just don’t know the
why of the structure itself. Yeah, and we
need to figure out what that means. Yeah,
if I don’t, yeah. In the meantime, that
would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Carmen.
Thank you.
[Music]