MYSTERY OF THE MONEY PIT

Posted on Sep 7, 2008 in Lost Treasure

THE DISCOVERY

One spring day in 1795 Daniel McGinnis, then a teenager, was wandering around Oak Island, Nova Scotia when he came across a curious circular depression in the ground.

Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches had been cut in a way which looked like it had been used as a pulley. Having heard tales of pirates hiding their treasure in the area McGinnis hurried home to tell his friends. Over the next several days McGinnis and two other boys worked furiously on the hole. What they found astonished them.

Click Image to Enlarge

Two feet below the surface they came across a layer of flagstones covering the pit. At ten feet they found a platform of oak logs wedged into the shaft’s walls. Ripping it out they excavated another ten feet. There they found another platform, then another one ten feet lower. Frustrated by the barriers, the boys eventually returned to their farm chores.

Eight years later, in 1803, the three boys returned to Oak Island to continue the hunt. They were adults now and had the financial backing of a syndicate of Nova Scotia businessmen who called themselves The Onslow Company.

The excavation picked up where it had left off eight years before and more oak platforms were discovered – every ten feet. Besides the boards, at 40 feet a layer of charcoal was found, at 50 feet a layer of putty, and at 60 feet a layer of coconut fiber.

At 90 feet one of the most puzzling clues was found – a stone tablet inscribed with mysterious writing:

It turned out to be a simple substitution cipher where each symbol inscribed on the stone corresponded to a letter in the alphabet. When decoded the cipher read:

“FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED”

As nightfall descended the digging had to be stopped due to poor visibility – the treasure would have to wait one more day.

The group returned to Oak Island the next day eager to recover treasure only to find the shaft completely flooded with seawater. No matter how hard they tried, all attempts to pump out the water failed.

Booby Trap!
Many believe that the flooding was part of an elaborate booby trap built to protect the Money Pit’s secret. Later excavations discovered an intricate rock-lined tunnel system that directed seawater from the ocean into the shaft. The water had been held back by a barrier that was tripped during the excavation.

Unwilling to give up on the treasure, the group dug a separate shaft next to the original in order to allow the flood water to drain out.

But the plan turned out to be a disaster – the walls of the new shaft collapsed leaving the original shaft flooded once again. The diggers were lucky to escape with their lives.

The pit was abandoned for 45 years.

OBSESSION

Over the next 200 years the Money Pit’s secrets obsessed scores of people – an endless procession of individuals and corporations descended upon the island to take up the hunt.

The lure of the unknown attracted all types of adventurers – some of the more noteworthy were: soon to be US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, explorer Richard Byrd, and actor Errol Flynn who wanted to search Oak Island in 1940, but was discouraged when he found the search rights already belonged to a company owned by fellow actor John Wayne.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and friends
working the Money Pit in 1910.

Despite the millions of dollars invested, and the increasingly sophisticated tools at searchers disposal, the contents of the Oak Island Money Pit have remained out of reach.

One indian legend has it that the search will end only after all the island’s oaks are dead, and seven treasure hunters have lost their lives in the search. By 1990, six diggers had died and only three oaks remained on the island.

RECENT DISCOVERIES

Around 1967, Daniel C. Blankenship and David Tobias formed The Triton Alliance, Ltd. and purchased most of the island. In 1971, Triton workers excavated a 235-foot shaft supported by a steel caisson. According to Blankenship and Tobias, cameras lowered down the shaft into a cave below recorded the presence of some chests, human remains, wooden cribbing and tools; however, the images were unclear, and none of these claims have been officially confirmed. Work was eventually halted due to lack of funds and the collapse of the partnership.

Exploration was stalled in the 90s due to legal battles between the Triton partners, but recently Dan Blankenship and his new partners, the Michigan Group have worked things out and further exploration of the Money Pit will continue this year (2008).

WHAT TREASURE LIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MONEY PIT?

The pit has yielded few clues to what it may hold. Three links of chain, iron scissors of Spanish manufacture, a carved-bone boson’s whistle, and a scrap of parchment are among the few artifacts to be raised.

Coconut fiber has also been found, although the nearest coconut trees are 1,500 miles away – coconut fiber was used to pack cargo on seventeenth and eighteenth-century ships.

One of the most tantalizing discoveries was a heart-shaped stone similar to those found among pirate treasure-troves in Haiti.

There are many theories as to what the Money Pit may hold but my three favorites are:

THEORY #1 – THE TREASURE OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

The tale of the Knights Templar’s Lost Treasure is well known among treasure hunting buffs. In the early hours of October 13th, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered all the Knights Templar arrested on trumped up charge of heresy – and their fabled treasure confiscated in the name of the crown. But when the King’s men arrived at the Templar’s Paris Headquarters the treasure had vanished as had almost the entire Templar naval fleet.

The Templars were now wanted men in most of Europe, so, the theory goes that desiring to establish a new Templar government outside the reach of French persecution, the Templars sailed westward towards Nova Scotia where they established a colony.

The presence of the Knights Templar in Novia Scotia a century before Columbus discovered America may sound far-fetched, but it is supported by a Zeno narrative and map that depicts the landmass of Nova Scotia (New Scotland) with the figure of a crowned knight drawn upon it (one of the Templar’s Symbols).

At some point, the theory goes, the Templars decided to abandon their colony and head back to Europe, but with the order weakened and fearing their treasure might fall into the wrong hands, they decided to hide it. They constructed the money pit to protect their treasure until such a time they could return for it.

Which they obviously never did.

To this day none of the Templar treasure has been found. Their treasure is rumored to contain artifacts of spiritual significance retrieved by the order during the Crusades, including the genealogies of David and Jesus and documents that trace these bloodlines into the royal bloodlines of Merovingian France.

THEORY #2 – CAPTAIN KIDD’S TREASURE

Legends abound about the numerous secret caches of treasure buried by Kidd throughout his illustrious career as a Pirate. One legend told of a dying sailor in the New England Colonies who confessed to being a part of Kidd’s notorious crew.

The old sailor stated that Captain Kidd had buried a hoard of treasure to be found on an island “east of Boston”, but he never named an exact location for the hidden booty. Could it have been Oak Island?

Skeptics claim that Kidd spent little time near Nova Scotia, suggesting that he could not have devoted enough time to constructing the money pit.

THEORY #3 – INCA OR MAYA TREASURE

During the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans in the mid 1500s much of the wealth of the Incas and Mayas disappeared. There are two persistent legends about where much of this treasure went – if you want to know more check out these two articles:

Montezuma’s Gold

Inca Gold: The Treasure of the Llanganatis

Some researchers believe it’s possible that a group of Incas or Mayas, possibly with the help of sympathetic Europeans, stole away with the wealth and buried it on Oak Island out of the reach of the conquerors.

RESOURCES

For more information about the Money Pit visit http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/ – this is the most comprehensive site I’ve found on the subject and a great place to start your research.

http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/mystery-of-the-money-pit/#more-1315

INCA GOLD: THE TREASURE OF THE LLANGANATIS

Posted on Sep 9, 2008 in Lost Treasure

 

in the remote mountains of central Ecuador, the largest undiscovered treasure in Latin America waits to be found. This ancient horde of Inca gold comes complete with a vengeful curse, multiple treasure maps and a trail of dead adventurers. With an estimated value of over two billion dollars, this stash of Inca Gold tops my list of lost treasures.

THE BACKSTORY – CONQUEST OF THE INCAN EMPIRE

In 1532 the Spanish Conquistador, Francisco Pizarro led 183 cold and hungry soldiers up the spine of the Andes and began his conquest of the Inca Empire. The empire was in a state of turmoil caused by a civil war between two brothers, Atahualpa and Huascar. Victory had recently gone to Atahualpa, the brother who controlled the northern half of the empire. Lucky for Pizarro, the long civil war had weakened the Inca’s army allowing the Spaniards to easily captured the newly appointed Emperor at his capitol city of Cajamarca.

With Atahualpa as their hostage, the Spaniards began sacking the city, stripping sacred religious objects from the temples of the sun and moon.

Atahualpa, seeing that the Spaniards’ valued gold and silver so highly, made Pizarro an offer he couldn’t refuse. In exchange for his freedom, The Emperor promised to fill his massive prison cell with gold – as high as Pizarro could reach his hand – and the two adjoining rooms with silver.

Pizarro agreed to the bargain and for the next three months the treasure streamed in as promised, borne on the backs of Inca peasants – hundreds of beautiful, handcrafted gold artifacts from the far corners of the
Inca empire – all of which Pizarro melted down into ingots for transport back to Spain.

The ransom continued to pour in – but by now the Incan people were growing restless. The imprisoned Atahualpa still had a great deal of influence over his warriors – so to head off a possible uprising Pizarro broke his bargain and had the Inca emperor executed. Atahualpa was garroted on August 29, 1533, then burned at the stake.

Atahualpa burned at the stake

This was a classic case of killing the golden goose. What Pizarro didn’t know was that at the very moment of Atahualpa’s murder, a caravan of 60,000 men was on its way to Cajamarca. The caravan, led by the the Inca general Rumiñahui, was carrying 750 tons of worked gold with which to pay the balance of Atahualpa’s Ransom.

When Rumiñahui learned that Atahualpa had been murdered, the furious general, diverted the treasure caravan into a mountainous region of Ecuador called the Llanganates, then, somewhere in this unforgiving wilderness, he stashed the vast horde of treasure to keep it safe from the marauding Spaniards.

Ruminahui continued fighting against the Spanish, and though he was eventually captured and tortured, he never revealed the location of the treasure.

Over the next forty years the Inca Empire was decimated, its people enslaved – and the Treasure of Llanganates was all but forgotten.

WHERE’S THE TREASURE?

Well, if I knew that I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this, would I? No one (alive) knows the exact location of the treasure, but I can give you a general Idea to get you started.

According to legend, the treasure lies somewhere in the the Llanganates Mountain Range. Today this area is encompassed by the Llangantes National Park. This huge reserve (219707 hectares) is located smack-dab in the center of Ecuador and boasts some of the most treacherous terrain and extreme weather conditions in the country.

Click to Enlarge

Situated at an altitude between 1,200 and 4,512 meters, with temperatures ranging between 5 to 24 degrees centigrade; It rains, sleets, or snows so frequently that thick cloud banks shroud the volcanic peaks of the Langanates throughout most of the year.

On the ground, dense fog obscures the rocky cliffs and the land is saturated in mud – not a place for the feint of heart! If you want to launch your own expedition then go between December and January when the weather is the most hospitable.

TRAIL OF CLUES

Many generations of adventurers have sought Atahualpa’s gold, but the mountains of the Llanganates have refused to surrender their secret. Here is a short timeline of clues that may lead you to the treasure:

Several decades after the death of Atahualpa, an impoverished Spanish adventurer named Valverde marries an Inca princess from the area. She is said to have led him to the treasure, because Valverde becomes unaccountably wealthy and returns to Spain, supposedly having removed only a small amount from the hoard.

When he lay dying Valverde writes an itinerary which has come to be know as Valverde’s Derrotero – Valverde’s Path. The document describes various Llanganates landmarks which will lead one to the treasure. On his death, Valverde bequeaths the document to King Charles V of Spain.

King Charles sends Valverde’s Derrotero to provincial authorities in Latacunga, a town near the Llanganates mountains. These officials then undertake an expedition and apparently stumble onto something extremely promising. But their leader, a Franciscan monk named Father Longo, mysteriously vanishes one night. The hunt is abandoned for the next hundred years.

In the late 1700s, a miner named Don Atanasio Guzmán, who worked the old Inca mines in the Llanganates, manages to draft a detailed treasure map. But before he can claim his prize he too disappears in the mountains. The treasure is forgotten until….

Guzman's Treasure Map (click to enlarge)

1860 when a British botanist named Richard Spruce, while doing research in the archives at Latacunga, stumbles upon Valverde’s Derrotero, and the map drawn by Guzman. Spruce publishes this information in the Journal of Royal Geographical Society in 1860. This article, entitled Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes, rekindles the treasure fever. The accumulated weight of Guzmán’s map, Spruce’s notes, and a translation of Valverde’s Derrotero into English sets off a small stampede of English-speaking explorers.

In 1886, working with Spruce, a pair of treasure hunters from Nova Scotia reportedly solve the riddle of Valverde’s Derrotero and find the treasure. Their names are Captain Barth Blake and Lieutenant George Edwin Chapman.

Blake makes maps of the region and sends letters to a friends. In one of the letters Blake writes…

It is impossible for me to describe the wealth that now lays in that cave marked on my map, but I could not remove it alone, nor could thousands of men….There are thousands of gold and silver pieces of Inca and pre-Inca handicraft, the most beautiful goldsmith works you are not able to imagine, life-size human figures made out of beaten gold and silver, birds, animals, cornstalks, gold and silver flowers. Pots full of the most incredible jewelry. Golden vases full of emeralds.

So, why didn’t Blake and Chapman claim the treasure? Because Chapman didn’t survive the journey out of the mountains and Blake fell overboard on a trip to North America to sell the gold they’d taken from the cave.

THE CURSE OF ATAHUALPA’S GOLD

You’ve already read about some of the victims of the treasure’s curse; Father Longo, Guzman, Chapman and Blake. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg:

• In the mid-1930s a Scotsman named Erskine Loch mounted two disastrous treasure hunts in the Llanganates. During the first expedition, porters deserted Loch and violent rains dogged him for 37 out of 39 days.On his second trip, Loch’s party ran out of food and fell to hallucinations. “The country ahead,” Loch wrote in his book, Fever, Famine, and Gold, “had spur after spur of precipitous rock faces descending into raging torrents below. Everything we stood upon, everything we clutched gave way under us.” Soon after the book’s publication, Loch shot himself.
• Yet others kept coming – and dying. In the 1920s, an American known in local accounts as “Colonel Brooks” established a bank in Ecuador and then got the treasure bug. On his first trip into the mountains his porters mutinied.Later Brooks decided to take his wife to the Llanganati for a “romantic getaway”, but they were promptly greeted by torrential rains. She died of pneumonia, and he ended up in a madhouse in New York – muttering wildly, one imagines, about gold and silver and emeralds.
• Bob Holt was an American geologist from Arizona who had worked with various oil and gold-mining companies in Ecuador during the 1960s. On his first treasure expedition into the Langanati Holt slipped and fell on a sharp broken tree trunk. It stabbed him directly through the heart.
• http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/inca-gold/#more-38

THE AMBER ROOM

Posted on Sep 12, 2008 in Lost Treasure 

Certainly, one of the most unique lost treasures of all time consists not of gold, silver or precious stones, but of amber – fossilized tree resin – over six tons of it.

Dubbed The Eighth Wonder of the World by those who saw it, the Amber Room was one of the most beautiful and luxurious rooms ever built. The cavernous hall consisted of giant wall panels inlaid with over 100,000 pieces of pure, carved amber.

Arranged in three tiers, the amber panels were inlaid with precious jewels and acted as a backdrop for priceless gold-leaf mirrors, four magnificent Florentine mosaics and the most valuable collection of amber art pieces ever assembled. Today, the Amber Room would be valued at more than $250 million.

The Amber Room was created between 1701 and 1709 in Prussia and remained there until 1716 when it was gifted to Tsar Peter the Great of the Russian Empire. Enamored by its opulence, Catherine the Great later had the room installed in her palace near St. Petersburg where it remained until 1941.

THE SPOILS OF WAR

When Adolf Hitler turned his Nazi war machine toward Russia, the keepers of the Amber Room grew nervous. Shortly after the beginning of the German invasion, the curators responsible for removing the art treasures of Leningrad tried to disassemble the Amber Room so it could be removed to safety. However, over the years the amber had dried out and become brittle. When they tried to remove it, the fragile amber started to crumble.

So, with the invasion forces rapidly approaching they attempted to camouflage the priceless treasure by covering it over with wallpaper. These attempts failed – the Nazis discovered the Amber Room and it was disassembled by German soldiers under the supervision of two experts then crated up and shipped to Konigsberg, Germany for storage and display in the town’s Castle.

THE LAST DAYS OF KONIGSBERG

By 1945 things had gone to hell for Germany. Hitler’s Third Reich was crumbling as the Red Army swept through Germany. In Konigsberg the last vestiges of Germany’s once might Bundusfer tried desperately to defend the city, but it was a useless gesture.

Konigsberg Castle after the Russian invasion

After weeks of merciless shelling, Konigsberg surrendered to the Soviets on April 9, 1945.

When Soviet forces occupied the town the Amber Room was nowhere to be found. Königsberg Castle had burned shortly after the cities surrender, and all traces of the priceless treasure were lost in the fire.

Wartime confusion prohibited a proper investigation from being done so the fate of the Amber Room remains a mystery to this day — and the search for it has become one of the greatest treasure hunts of all time!

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMBER ROOM?

Some historians believe the Soviets unwittingly destroyed their own treasure during the attack on the Konigsberg castle – a charge which the soviets vehemently deny – but there are many others who believe the priceless treasure was spirited away before the Soviet’s invasion.

The Wilhelm Gustloff
On the night of January 30, 1945, while evacuating German soldiers and refugees trapped by the Red Army in East Prussia, the Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by three torpedoes from a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea. She sank in under 45 minutes, taking 9,400 people with her – probably the largest loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history.
Adventure author extraordinaire, Clive Cussler, uses this incident to give historical context to his 2005 novel Polar Shift.

Eyewitnesses at the time claimed to have seen hundreds of crates, believed to contain pieces of the Amber Room, at a local railway station. One theory is that the train transported the Amber Room to the port of Gdingen where it was loaded aboard the ill fated Wilhelm Gustloff, a passenger ship which left Poland on January 30th, 1945 and was sunk by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea.

Another possible destination for the treasure train was the Ore Mountains, where the Amber Room may have been buried in a salt mine.

Another theory is that the Amber Room was hidden in a now-lost, subterranean bunker somewhere in the city of Konigsberg. Conspiracy theorists put great credence in this theory since, during the 1960s, access to a suspected Amber Room hiding place in Konigsberg was suddenly withheld and the ruins above it were blown up by the German Army, sealing any access to the underground area forever.

Interestingly, In 1991, during a visit to Germany, Russian president Boris Yeltsin demanded the return of the Amber Room. Apparently, he is one of the many who believe the treasure still lies hidden somewhere within German borders.

Yet another intriguing theory suggests that the Red Army got to Konigsberg in time to save the Amber Room from the fire. The Russians snuck the Amber Room back to mother Russia where it remains to this day in some giant, underground, secret repository (ala Raiders of the Lost Ark) deep beneath the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Since its disappearance in 1945 many expeditions have searched for the Amber Room; Government agencies, treasure hunters and historians have followed hundreds of leads and rumors – all with very little result.

In 1998, two separate teams (one in Germany, the other in Lithuania) announced that they had located the Amber Room, the first in a silver mine, the second buried in a lagoon; neither produced the treasure.

The case for the Amber Room’s survival got a boost recently when an Italian stone mosaic, that was part of a set of four which had decorated the Amber Room, was discovered in West Germany in the possession of the family of a German soldier who had allegedly helped pack up the Amber Room.

Despite the ongoing controversy surrounding the Amber Room, there’s no denying that the disappearance of this priceless work of art is one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/the-amber-room/#more-1259

THE LOST TOMB OF GENGHIS KHAN

Posted on Sep 14, 2008 in Lost Treasure

 

Between the years of 1217 and 1227 Genghis Khan’s bloody conquests created the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever known, and for a time, the great Khan was the richest, most powerful man on earth.

His treasury contained the pillaged wealth of China, India and Russia combined; jeweled Chinese weapons, gold coins from Samark and priceless religious artifacts from Russian Orthodox churches…

So… Where did all this treasure go?

BACKSTORY

Genghis Khan was perhaps the greatest and most ruthless conqueror the world has ever know. More than three million people may have died during the bloody creation of his empire.

During his twenty year reign Khan subdued the Russian princes; his army conquered Persia, Asia Minor, Korea, South-East India, Indonesia, and China.

At the age of 65, during a campaign against the Chinese, the great Khan suffered a fatal fall from his horse, and in August of 1227 the mourning Mongol army abandoned the conflict to take their leader home.

After many months of pomp and ceremony, the body of the fallen ruler was loaded onto a giant oxcart and began its long journey towards the Khan’s final resting place. Surrounding the cart was a funeral procession 2,500 strong accompanied by a mounted bodyguard of 400 soldiers.

Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire

WHERE IS KHAN’S TOMB?

Many years before his death, the fearsome Mongol conqueror, after the custom of his people, chose his own grave site. Legends state that Khan chose the shelter of a lone tree near the base of Mount Burkhan Khaldun in Mongolia’s wild Khingan mountain range.  So, somewhere deep in the mountains, Khan’s men dug an elaborate Tomb and Genghis Khan was laid to rest in an ornate coffin.

Into the grave with him went the royal treasury – a massive hoard of gems and precious metals — the spoils of war collected by Khan from all the lands he’d conquered in his twenty year reign. Some say the treasure included the crowns of each of the seventy-eight rulers Khan had subjugated, including those of Russia, Persia, and India.

THE COVER-UP

Legend has it, that Genghis Khan’s soldiers killed every person encountered by the funeral procession on its journey into the mountains. And after Khan’s body was intured, the soldiers turned their attention to the slaves who dug the tomb, slaughtering all 2,500 of them. When the soldiers returned to Karakorum, Genghis Khan’s capital, they in turn were killed by other soldiers so they couldn’t reveal the location of Khan’s tomb.

To make the Tomb even harder to find, local legends say that a river was diverted over Khan’s grave, completely submerging it. Other tales state that his grave was stampeded over by horses to erase signs of digging, then trees were planted on top of it. The forest men of the Uriangut clan were appointed to nurture the saplings covering the grave, and eventually the burial site was swallowed in an impenetrable forest.

Whatever the truth may be, it seems as if Genghis Khan’s plan to protect his final resting place was effective. Despite the efforts of many well financed archaeologists and treasure hunters, to this day not one scrap of treasure has been recovered.

If someone does someday succeed in locating the tomb of the great conqueror the discovery could make unearthing King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt seem minor by comparison.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

At Genghis Khan’s death, his empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Aral Sea, leaving an incalculable number of possible locations for his tomb. There are many theories as to where Genghis Khan’s final resting place might be – some theories put the tomb within Mongolia’s rugged mountains, others say he could have been buried in China, where he died during his final campaign.

One of the oldest references to Khan’s burial location is the 15th century account of a French Jesuit which states that Genghis Khan may have selected as his final resting place, the confluence of the Kherlen and Bruchi rivers near the Burkhan Khaldun mountain.

This is the area in which Khan was born, and according to the French priest, after a major military victory, Khan reportedly said that this place would be forever his favorite.

Burkhan Khaldun
The highest peak of the Khentii Range in north-central Mongolia is 9,173-foot Asralt Khairkhan, also known as the Burkhan Khaldun of the Kerait people.

The Kherlen river is still known today – but attempts to locate the “Bruchi” river, have drawn a blank – the river is unknown to modern day cartographers. Unfortunately this makes it impossible to pinpoint the exact location for the tomb specified in the ancient texts.

Amateur archeologist, Maury Kravitz, who’s been obsessed with Khan’s tomb for forty years, did discover a toponym “Baruun Bruch” (“West Bruch”) in the area roughly 100 km east of Burkhan Khaldun (48° N 110° E). In 2004 he conducted excavations there to no avail.

So, for now, the location of Khan’s tomb and the vast treasure it may contain, remains one of archaeology’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/lost-tomb-of-genghis-khan/#more-330