The Curse of Oak Island: Evidence of Ancient Rome and Templar knights resurface in the treasure hunt

The Curse of Oak Island team uncovered another artifact that could date back to ancient Rome. They learned more about possible voyages made to the Americas by the Templar knights hundreds of years before Columbus.

A lot was happening on last night’s episode with the guys involved in different activities all over Oak Island. Still, perhaps, the most interesting thing to occur was the unearthing of an artifact on Lot 5.

Ever since the Lagina brothers purchased Lot 5 on the island’s west side, they’ve been finding numerous items. So far, the team has discovered a mysterious stone structure along with a collection of tools up to four centuries old, and they’ve even located a coin from ancient Rome.

Once again, the dream team of Gary Drayton and Jack Begley were on metal detector duty. And they were jumping for joy when they found a circular coin-shaped artifact.

This object was made of lead, featuring two holes in the middle and ornate scalloping around the sides. Gary instantly picked up that it was likely a trade token, which has been used for thousands of years in a similar fashion to coins.

The guys whisked the token off to archeo-metallurgist Emma Culligan, who had the item examined in an XRF (X-ray fluorescence) scanner and an XRD (X-ray diffraction analysis) scanner. These machines could tell Emma the composition and the geographic location of the artifact.

The ancient artifact could be from Iran or Italy

The artifact was overwhelmingly made of lead with a little bit of copper and iron, which led Emma to suggest the metal initially came from either a mine in Iran or Sardinia, off Italy’s coast. She appeared to lean towards the latter of those two locations.

Emma also stated that the lead was very pure, meaning the token could be pretty old. She pointed out that the ancient Romans had mines on Sardinia.

This could all tie into the work of Italian researcher Emiliano Sacchetti, who landed in the War Room on last night’s episode to chat with the guys about Ralph de Sudeley.

Sudeley was a 12th-century Templar Knight, who Emiliano reckons looted several key treasures from Jerusalem and transported them to North America.

Did the Templar Knights reach America 100s of years before Columbus?

Emiliano has been tasked with carrying on the work of Zena Halpern, looking into the relationship between the medieval Christian military order, the Templar Knights, and Oak Island.

He’s been examining the Cremona document, found in a medieval church in northern Italy. This document claims to detail Sudeley’s exploits in transporting the treasures from the Middle East to Seborga, Italy, and then on to an “island of oak” in the Americas.

This all allegedly happened hundreds of years before Columbus.

The Italian researcher admitted he has a lot more work to do; excitingly, he’s to be admitted into the Vatican archives. He will get back to the Fellowship with more info as soon as possible. However, it was an intriguing second link to Italy from last night’s show.

Dumas finds a massive barrel hoop in the garden shaft

Also, in this episode, the Dumas mining company recovered a barrel hoop from a massive barrel found at approximately 70 feet in the garden shaft.

It led the guys to wonder what on earth such a huge barrel was doing buried so far down.

The Dumas crew is approaching their final depth of about 82 feet, and the team is becoming more expectant that something important will be found soon. Everyone’s fingers are well and truly crossed.

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