The Curse of Oak Island: Are an old Templar church, a Roman road, and a musket all linked?

This week on The Curse of Oak Island, members of the team traveled to Portugal to investigate an old church and an ancient Roman road for links to Oak Island. And the guys back on the island found an old musket.

The Fellowship of the Dig have only three weeks left before winter hits and they’re forced to abandon the island for another six months, but they are trying to fit as much as they can in before the end of the season.

Last night, the guys at the Money Pit placed the fifth and final caisson can into the ground and started drilling shaft B4C. However, most of the focus for this episode was away from the Money Pit and wasn’t even on Oak Island.

Oak Island team traveled to Portugal

Four members of the team, including Rick and Alex Lagina, embarked on a fact-finding mission to Portugal, where they met up with local historians in an attempt to learn about the medieval order of Templar Knights and their possible connections to Oak Island.

During a quick history lesson, we learned that the Templar Knights were outlawed throughout most of Europe in the 14th century, but there’s a theory a band made it to Oak Island with a bunch of ancient religious artifacts taken from Solomon’s Tomb in Jerusalem, items such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.

However, a number of Templars found shelter in Portugal, and the military order even continued in that country under a different name. The team suspects that these Portuguese descendants of the Knights then used Portugal’s naval expeditions of the 15th and 16th centuries to retrieve the treasure from Oak Island.

The guys visited the ancient Church of Fontacarda, long considered a Templar stronghold, to see if they could find any clues that would connect to Oak Island. Unfortunately, there was no smoking gun found. There were no remaining archives, but there were plenty of symbols carved on the walls, which the guys decided to investigate.

Alex spotted one symbol that looked exactly like an icon found on the mysterious 90-foot stone. The guys didn’t know what the symbol meant, but it did indicate a possible link with Oak Island.

Oak Island stone roadway matches ancient Roman road

The team was also taken to an old Roman road, which was an incredible 2000 years old. The thing that was most interesting was it looked almost identical to the mysterious stone road found in the swamp.

The Portuguese archaeologist who studies this Roman road examined photos of the Oak Island cobblestone road and confirmed that both were built using similar technology.

Gary Drayton and Marty Lagina find a musket on lot 8

Meanwhile, back on Oak Island, metal detectorist Gary Drayton and Marty Lagina made a real bobby dazzler of a find. On lot 8, they came across a flintlock from a musket rifle.

Gary and Marty could barely contain their excitement as they passed the artifact to Laird Niven, who promptly placed it in the CT scanner. The scanner projected a 3D image which allowed the guys to take a closer at the inner workings and the material of the artifact.

They concluded that the musket was dated somewhere between the 1500 and 1800s and that it wasn’t British in origin. Laird suspected it might be French but conceded it could be Portuguese.

Next week, the guys will continue looking for evidence in Portugal as the remaining team members keep digging for treasure on Oak Island.

The Curse of Oak Island airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on History.