Oak Island 'Money Pit' - New theory!

The new theory relates to the large stone that was first found in 1803 by the Onslow Company approximately 90 feet down the Money Pit which was covered in strange symbols.



James Leitchi, a professor of languages at Dalhousie University initially decoded the symbols and came up with a translation that said "forty feet below two million pounds are buried". However, Keith Ranville of has come up with a new theory regarding the meaning of the symbols.

“I believe these symbols have been incorrectly assumed to stand for something else. In the First Nations tradition that I’m a part of, we believe symbols should simply be looked at in and of themselves, rather than thinking of them as codes that have to be cracked,” Mr. Ranville explained. “In the pictograms of Cree Salavics, for example, the images are meant to be descriptive, not abstract.” Using this approach, Mr. Ranville examined the Oak Island symbols and found what may be a set of instructions about a tunnel system involving both Oak Island and nearby Birch Island.

What further supports his theory as to the original incorrect interpretation of the symbols is that the stone, found at 90 feet, states that the two million pounds lies 40 feet below which would indicate that the treasure would be found at around the 130 foot mark. However, the excavation reached as deep as 157 feet at which point the second flood tunnel (leading in from the south shore) made further excavation impossible.

Mr. Ranville used pictures of the stone to decipher its series of shapes, lines and dots to reveal a new translation that reads more like a map. "I've brought some new stuff to the table," he says, adding that the stone's etchings could be used to figure out the mystery of Oak Island. By his translation, much of the digging in the Money Pit area has been a waste of time and money. "I believe the pit wasn't meant to go beyond 100 feet," he says. "I believe it wasn't meant to go beyond these symbols."

Ranville's new translation indicates that it is not so much a 'message' but a set of instructions that lead to the actual burial site of Oak Island treasure.

If one were to take Mr. Ranville's code and follow it, it would lead you off Oak Island, the site of all the treasure hunting for the past 211 years, under the water of the bay and onto the neighbouring Birch Island via man-made shafts. "The instructions at the bottom of the pit tell you about where and how to locate these shafts and I believe they're in Mahone Bay," he says. Mr. Ranville believes the two islands are connected by these shafts. He said that aerial shots of Birch Island prove the island has been touched by human hands. These aerial shots of the 16-acre Birch Island do show a large triangle which takes up a good portion of the island landscape. "What I want to do is investigate this island where I think these symbols lead to," he says. Mr. Ranville has contacted the owner, Christopher Ondaatje, to inquire about doing some soil testing and exploring on the island. In addition to being the home of the famous treasure, Mr. Ranville believes Birch Island may also be an ancient burial site for those who were involved in the original treasure-hiding scheme. "This is a significant Nova Scotia heritage discovery and that is Canada's national treasure brought here for our guardianship long before Canada was established," he says. "We should respect the civilization that is responsible for the makings of these structures. "They were a very unique culture and may hold the secret to many ancient structures. Although he doesn't know who actually buried the treasure, Mr. Ranville believes Oak Island and Birch Island need to be protected from further change to unlock their true history. At the time of this interview, Mr. Ranville had yet to hear from Mr. Ondaatje regarding the island. He says he will continue to research the island and its tales of mystery and treasure.

There have been a large number of theories as to what might be buried in the money pit and indeed who dug it, perhaps with this new approach we might actually 'get to the bottom' of the money pit!

Sources:
Link 1..
Link 2..
Link 3..

I can't imagine pirates being accomplished engineers, but who knows. Anyone have any more info on the camera that was lowered into the pit and filmed wooden chests along with human remains?

Thanks for posting this, Atlantis. I've always been fascinated by the "Money Pit," and glad to know that people are still working on new theories and trying to solve the mystery.

I had a hard time believing that someone would go through so much trouble, and devise such elaborate traps and barriers, just to hide "two million pounds." Not that it isn't a fair amount of coin, but I have the feeling whatever is down there (or on Birch Island) is more significant than a bit of money. Hopefully we may find out in the near future.

I was heavy into this whole money pit thing but as I dug further into it I learned that a lot of it was made up, many of the things that were claimed to have been found or things that have happened never happened.. Some of the people in the story never even existed if I remember correctly ..

I'd love there to be something to it but I honestly just dropped the ball on it when some of the story ended up being bunk.

But this could make an interesting minecraft re-creation project!

reply to post by VariableConstant


I couldn't agree more.

There are a great many theories as to 'what' is buried there and these are some of my favourites:

Still others have speculated that the Oak Island pit was dug to hold treasure much more exotic than gold or silver. In his 1953 book, The Oak Island Enigma: A History and Inquiry Into the Origin of the Money Pit, Penn Leary believed that English philosopher Francis Bacon used the pit to hide documents proving him to be the author of William Shakespeare's plays. This theory was elaborated on by author and researcher Mark Finnan The theory was also used in the Norwegian book Organisten (The Organ Player) by Erlend Loe and Petter Amundsen. It has also been asserted that the pit may have been dug by exiled Knights Templar and that it is the last resting place of the Holy Grail or even the holy Ark of the Covenant.

Link..

I must admit that I just don't see it being the work of pirates, although on one of the blogs I referenced, Keith Ranville still seems to support that theory. For me though, to go to such extreme lengths to hide something makes me think that the 'said' item(s) must be big, albeit not necessarily in size but certainly in its perseived value to the person(s) who buried it.

Great to see minds are still pondering over this after so long ...

It is very intricate ...
Extremely well done .. and strange that no one would take credit for it ..

Also ... If it were buried treasure as such ... it seems, as yet, no one has bothered coming back to reclaim their hidden treasure, within a human lifetime ... Of which it likely took many years to build the whole thing in the first place ...
Assuming it can even be gotten to, with so many collapsed shafts ?

I suggest, if there is anything hidden there .. it was with the purpose of it being hidden for longer than one human lifetime (not unlike sphinx / pyramids, and so on, tho thats perhaps where similarities end) ...

Assuming its intented to be kept from our eyes for longer than a human lifetime (if not forever), then that in my opinion very much narrows down the list of what the secrets could potentially be ...
I would not speculate any more on what these secrets could be .... but doubt it would be any type of jewel or golden treasure ...


Unless the illuminati built it to use as storage for their 'reserve funds' .. or secrets / scriptures

hopefully some one can get to the bottom of "the money pit". who knows, maybe it was the knights templar after all.

Everything about this pit fascinates me and I've always thought that the original decoding of those symbols was a bit too convenient to be true so your info certainly strikes a chord.

Just spent two hours on the net including the Smithsonian and can find many examples of Cree symbols and petroglyphs and not one matches what is being translated from Cree by this interpretor . Being mostly Ojibway i have an interest and have a book on Ojibway symbols and petroglyphs and there are no matches there either . Most native symbolism and petroglyphs involve the natural world , the enviroment and shamanism along with some history but i've never heard of or seen any that involves sinking shafts and building tunnels . I call bs on this one . I know many Cree and in fact , in southern , northwestern Ontario , across the north shore of Lake Superior to the Manitoba border including northern Minnesota and Wisconsin a new language is evolving right now called OjiCree complete with an amalgamation of Cree and Ojibway symbols which i have first hand knowledge of . Below are some examples and although there are triangles and such the translation offered by the treasure hunter isn't even close .

198.62.75.1...

As well there is no history or account of Cree people ever on Canadas east coast with the most far eastern Cree living in central Quebec and i highly doubt that anyone traveled hundreds of years ago , hundreds of miles to find a band or tribe of Cree in central Quebec to contract them to chip non-sense that can't be translated from the Cree language on to a rock to be hauled hundreds of miles back to be buried in the ground .

en.wikipedia.org...

As an aside , anyone who is interested in how languages were created or evolved in the past may research modern Ojicree as it's a language that is being created and evolving right now by combining two languages , Ojibway and Cree who were mortal enemies for centuries but are coming together right now . Ojicree is considered to be a new NAN dialect in the last 30 years .

Originally posted by Soldier of God
I can't imagine pirates being accomplished engineers

Have you not seen the Goonies?

One of the theories that I have heard was about it being a Templar treasure, the Templars were pretty savvy
However all in all, I believe the treasure was recovered long before by the original group/order that buried it, but those are just my thoughts. Hard to believe though, with all the modern technology, no one has been able to actually recover the treasure if it's still there. Also, adding to the problems I read that too many people damaged the area and created too many holes further complicating the recovery lol

Originally posted by AtlantisX99
reply to post by VariableConstant

 

I couldn't agree more.

There are a great many theories as to 'what' is buried there and these are some of my favourites:

Still others have speculated that the Oak Island pit was dug to hold treasure much more exotic than gold or silver. In his 1953 book, The Oak Island Enigma: A History and Inquiry Into the Origin of the Money Pit, Penn Leary believed that English philosopher Francis Bacon used the pit to hide documents proving him to be the author of William Shakespeare's plays. This theory was elaborated on by author and researcher Mark Finnan The theory was also used in the Norwegian book Organisten (The Organ Player) by Erlend Loe and Petter Amundsen. It has also been asserted that the pit may have been dug by exiled Knights Templar and that it is the last resting place of the Holy Grail or even the holy Ark of the Covenant.

Link..

I must admit that I just don't see it being the work of pirates, although on one of the blogs I referenced, Keith Ranville still seems to support that theory. For me though, to go to such extreme lengths to hide something makes me think that the 'said' item(s) must be big, albeit not necessarily in size but certainly in its perseived value to the person(s) who buried it.

i don't under stand why people think pirates could not do this, its not that hard to build this trap system its all about placement and planing. pirates needed to be quite clever just to stay alive, its like people think because thay were brutal criminals it means thay must have been stupid like todays crims but that is far from thuth

i like the knights templar idea because if it is the ark of the coveant then gods going to be real pissed because somebody driled through it

anyway what ever is down there has been compromised by the water because of ill thought out attempts at retreving it so only gold silver will still be intact. shame though there was a piece of paper down there with the same symbols on but now it will just be mush

I bet its called the money pit for a reason ie watch people waste there time and money on this load of crap. Its a hole in the ground people it is a finite area, if we havent found anything in it there is nothing in it.

Originally posted by 4Starlight2Decay0
I bet its called the money pit for a reason ie watch people waste there time and money on this load of crap. Its a hole in the ground people it is a finite area, if we havent found anything in it there is nothing in it.

yep thats why its called the money pit many rich people invested alot into this hole i think there probly is something in there but nothing of a value greater than what it would cost to get it out now the traps have been triggered

if thay really wanted it modern mining eqipment could get to it no problem its just not worth the cost

edit- but if the tunnel to birch island is real then its much stranger than i'd care to comment on and not pirates at all. who knows

I have studied this from when I was a kid and also been fascinated,but now that I'm a big boy that understands the real world,and talks to professional treasure hunters with an ease that others cannot,I realize why this is not solved.The whole idea of treasure hunting is not to give out information.This means you can stay competitive in your field.My buddy told a friend roundabouts where to dive(trying to be a nice guy)the next thing the guy does is follow him in a boat and dive right where he was,so squid cut him a little and pulled off his mask!Serves the carpetbagger right.Why do you think the foreign man bought Birch Isle.in the first place?Fact is if the universities were to accept the treasure hunting community as equals(if not superior)then nothing would be lost or melted down.Arrgh!!..

I can't believe nobody's done this solution.

Picture a large, thin but strong metal sewer pipe, but large enough around to ensure you'd capture everything.

At the bottom of this pipe is a circular row of teeth that form the cutting edge of the "drill"

The "teeth" are designed to be able to "close in" to form a bottom to the pipe, when desired.

You drill down with this sewer pipe and the drill teeth at the end (the rotating mechanism is high and dry out of the pit), adding pipe sections as needed.

When you get to the desired depth, you close the teeth (somewhat below the alleged location of the mystery).

Then, you pull it all back out, removing pipe sections and straining them as you go.

Eventually, you'll get to go through everything for the depth that you dug.

Problem solved, mystery solved.

Only question is, will you really find something worth the expense of doing the above steps?

i love Oak Island... its my own little piece of the mysterious world that i have read up and researched on and truley got my interested in the ancient world/ ancient mysteries


infact... this thread was one of the reasons i joined ATS finally... never got round to posting on it though!

So from my understand there are pipes... or at least metal formations down quite low in the pit.. also relativley high levels of radiation??

maybe thats why people arnt willing to make much effort with it anymore... just too dangerous.. i would post links but im at work sorry

I feel like nobody here actually read the OP..

The theory is that there is no treasure, and there never was supposed to be. It was just a very simple tunnel system they used to cross a large body of water without having to sail. Very interesting indeed.

The best bet would be to start on Birch Island and work backwards, since Oak Island has been trampled on for years upon years.

Thinking about this logically, there would have to have been a good amount of people involved in this project, doing the manual labor, etc...So there were some people who must have known about it, yet we have no accounts of anyone being told anything by family members. Maybe that isn't so strange, but the men must have kept it a secret.

Also, no one came back for it, out of all the men who helped to bury whatever is there. We know it must be something important given the elaborate design and amount of work that must have went into building the shaft alone, not to mention the flood tunnels and platforms, etc.

Could pirates have been trustworthy enough to not have come back and attempted to excavate the treasure for themselves, possibly with a handful of buddies? Maybe they knew that it was impossible.

But if it were impossible to ever dig whatever is down there up again, then it's obvious whoever buried it wanted it hidden forever. So why go through all of this trouble? Why not just dump it in the ocean somewhere and save the time and labor? No one would ever find it in a deep part of the ocean.

So that must mean that someone was planning on coming back for it eventually, or that they wanted someone to find it eventually. My favorite theory is the one about the Templars, although their escape from France and other European countries happened in the 14th century I believe, and the people who apparently found the Oak Island site said it was still fresh in the 18th century. So the timeline definitely does not match.

I am not sure who was responsible for the achievement, but I am relatively certain that it was not pirates. It would have taken multiple engineers, and lots of manual laborers to pull off something of this magnitude. Who would have had the resources and need to do something like this in the 18th century? Pirates does seem like the most logical explanation, but upon further examination, so many things would have to have been right for them to have pulled it off. It remains a great mystery.

Also, as an afterthought, if it were simply treasure, why wouldn't the pirates have divided it equally among themselves instead of burying it? Couldn't they have found a better spot to bury it, on a more out of the way island somewhere? I suppose the Atlantic was highly trafficked by pirates, even in the 1700's, but I didn't think they ventured so far to the North. Can anyone shed some light on this?

I have also heard about this theory of decrypting the stone that was found, which states that it reads more like directions. I would have thought this idea would have been pursued much further by now, because I read it some time ago, and it is disheartening to see that nothing seems to be moving forward.

The same goes for the money pit. I think the History Channel, or a book I read, can't remember, said that anyone would have a hard time simply finding the pit now, since so many holes have been bored over the years.

Originally posted by Gazrok
I can't believe nobody's done this solution.

Picture a large, thin but strong metal sewer pipe, but large enough around to ensure you'd capture everything.

At the bottom of this pipe is a circular row of teeth that form the cutting edge of the "drill"

The "teeth" are designed to be able to "close in" to form a bottom to the pipe, when desired.

You drill down with this sewer pipe and the drill teeth at the end (the rotating mechanism is high and dry out of the pit), adding pipe sections as needed.

When you get to the desired depth, you close the teeth (somewhat below the alleged location of the mystery).

Then, you pull it all back out, removing pipe sections and straining them as you go.

Eventually, you'll get to go through everything for the depth that you dug.

Problem solved, mystery solved.

Only question is, will you really find something worth the expense of doing the above steps?

edit on 10-6-2011 by Gazrok because: (no reason given)

That was done.

They reports say them found a link of gold chain and a few other things.