This week on The Curse of Oak Island, the team uncovered an ancient human artifact dated 1492 to 1662 in the Money Pit area.
Found hundreds of feet under the ground, this shoe heel artifact is indisputable evidence that humans were working underground in the Money Pit area up to 500 years ago.
There’s so much happening on Oak Island at the moment that it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep track and to make sense of what’s happening.
An admission that even the Fellowship of the Dig has started to acknowledge. At one point in the episode, Marty Lagina lamented, “there’s too many dates flying around.”
However, here are the main talking points that happened on this week’s episode.
The team is increasingly concerned with the stone pathway recently discovered in the swamp, particularly when it comes to figuring out what direction it is going.
The guys got very excited when they thought the road/pathway was leading them to the Money Pit; however, they’ve now realized that it appears to veer off to the Northwest, in the opposite direction.
The question is: does the road change direction, or is this a separate road, and where’s it going? Perhaps, the guys have uncovered a secret road network buried under the swamp. But what on Earth is its purpose?
Ancient artifact uncovered from the Money Pit area
Overwhelmingly, the most interesting find this week came about on the wash table, where the team has been taking turns to slowly sift through the spoils of last season’s massive borehole drilling project in the Money Pit area.
At the end of last season, the guys unearthed wood that was dated from 1706, meaning it was from a tunnel that pre-dated any of the known searchers. Therefore, the guys know that anything found in the spoils from this dig is likely to be old, super old.
So you can understand Alex Lagina’s excitement when he found an old piece of leather that the guys concluded was from the heel of a shoe.
As ever, the guys don’t like to make assumptions, so they sent it off to be analyzed and dated, and boy, were they in for a shock. Craig Tester calmly told them the results of the dating: between 1492 and 1662.
Ignoring the ramifications of the 1492 date for a second, 1662 is 133 years before the Money Pit was first located, which suggests this shoe has to have belonged to someone who was depositing treasure. How else did it get underground?
Of course, anyone who has the most basic knowledge of the history of America will be stunned to see that 1492 date. “Christopher Columbus could have worn this shoe,” joked Marty.
Oak Island shoe could have belonged to a sea captain
Earlier in the episode, Charles Barkhouse and Doug Crowell had taken the leather artifact to leather expert Joe Landry, who told them the shoe leather was of rather high quality.
Landry also said that the boot would probably have been of high quality. It was unlikely to have been a workman’s boot and could have belonged to an officer or a sea captain. Maybe Christopher Columbus isn’t so far fetched after all.
Either way, the team and the always skeptical Marty, and even the ever suspicious Laird Niven, were excited by this find.
Marty explained why he was so excited by this boot. He pointed out that it wasn’t found in the swamp or at Sandy Cove, but in the Money Pit area, which means it could be directly linked to the buried treasure.
Let’s hope he’s right.
The Curse of Oak Island airs at 9/8c on History.