The Curse of Oak Island: The team is shocked to date Nolan’s cross back to 1200 AD

The Curse of Oak Island team has learned that Nolan’s cross dates all the way back to the 13th century as evidence mounts that the Templar knights hid buried treasure on Oak Island.

On this week’s episode, Rick Lagina, accompanied by Alex Lagina, Peter Fornetti, and Doug Crowell, went on a jaunt to Italy to examine a couple of underground cave systems linked to the medieval order of the Templar knights.

The guys hoped to find connections to Oak Island by examining the multiple carvings on the walls of the caves.

However, the team came across their most startling revelation when they visited archaeoastronomer Adriano Gaspani. Archaeoastronomy is a scientific discipline that examines how ancient stone monuments were built to align with stars or other celestial objects. Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza are just two particularly famous examples of this.

The discipline can actually be used to date a stone monument. Over the centuries, the position of stars moves in the night sky so that a star will rise and set in a different position over time. This can be used to date a monument to a particular era.

With that in mind, Adriano set to work and managed to identify six stars that aligned perfectly with Oak Island’s Nolan’s cross. Nolan’s cross, which lies near the swamp on Oak Island, consists of six large boulders placed in the shape of a cross that covers 100s of feet.

The paved area and Nolan’s cross both date to the 13th century

Adriano then blew the minds of Rick and the others when he calmly dated Nolan’s cross to 1200 AD. The implications of this were not lost on Doug, who pointed out that the paved area of the swamp had been carbon-dated to 1200 AD.

This means that two major features from the swamp area are dated to the 13th century, and this also ties in with Zena Halpern’s theory that Templar knights made multiple journeys to Oak Island for two centuries, beginning with their first trip in 1179 AD.

Earlier this season, expert theorist Brian Pharoah told the guys that he had used sacred geometric numbers to conclude that Nolan’s cross was pointing in the direction of the Money Pit and the garden shaft, which all leads to the stone monument taking on ever greater significance in the island’s mystery.

Also, in Italy, the guys toured two underground cave complexes in Camerano and Osimo, both dating back over 2,000 years. The warren of caverns became Templar strongholds and then areas of refuge as the knights hid from persecution from the 14th century onward.

Oak Island team found more Templar symbols linked to the island

The Oak Island team came across symbols carved onto the walls that they had seen in other Templar structures in Portugal and in Nova Scotia. Alex and Peter found a circular symbol with a dot in the center that resembled the carving found on the HO stone on Oak Island in the 1920s.

The guys also found a goose claw carving, a symbol they previously encountered on a rock in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, that is said to be the mark of the stonemasons of the Templars.

Meanwhile, back on the island, it was a particularly quiet episode last night. The Dumas mining company is slowly getting to the bottom of the garden shaft. They intend to go beyond the originally agreed depth of 82 feet to about 95 feet to investigate the possibility of a tunnel leading into the blob area.

Also, in the swamp area, Billy Gerhardt and some of the guys cleared the muck and water off of the suspected ramp. This stone feature is thought to connect the stone roadway with the paved area, which the guys appeared to confirm.

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