The Oak Island Mystery (14 page)

Religious Refugees

T
he
original and challenging hypothesis outlined in this chapter came from the authors' good friend George Young, a very knowledgeable and experienced Nova Scotian surveyor, whose own excellent book on Oak Island is strongly recommended reading.
[1]
In addition to his valuable engineering and surveying background,
George knew the world's seas and ocean currents from long, adventurous years of first-hand experience as a naval officer.

Born in Eastcote, Middlesex, England, in 1924, he added a couple of years to his age and joined the Royal Navy in 1940. Starting in a Naval Infantry Battalion, he transferred to destroyers, and was on loan to the Royal Canadian Navy for part of his active service career. He served aboard the
Montgomery
and
Georgetown
, then went to the frigate
Hargood
for the Normandy operations. After the war, he served as an officer in the Canadian Mercantile Marine on the West Indies and South American routes. During the Korean emergency, he again served as an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy.

In essence, George based his ideas on his own special knowledge and experience of the sea and of the local Nova Scotian geology. He is also supported by Professor Barry Fell's erudite translation of the mysterious stone found at, or near, the ninety-foot level by the Onslow team in 1803 and 1804.

In the previous chapter, we considered the possibility that Celts or Vikings had created the Oak Island system, in the former case, perhaps, as a repository for Romano-Celtic gold from the Ogafau mine, and in the latter case as a subterranean mausoleum for their leader. George Young's challenging theory directs our thoughts much farther to the south and east.

Basing his arguments on the strong likelihood that by the year 400 B.C.E. the early Amerindians were involved in trans-Atlantic trading with Carthaginians from the Mediterranean coasts, George uses his maritime expertise to plot their probable routes. His navigational arguments are sound and convincing. Passing the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), one route followed by the Phoenician
[2]
and Carthaginian traders took them north along the Iberian coastline, around the Bay of Biscay and westwards along the English Channel to within sight of Cornwall. Keeping Ireland on their starboard side, they would head for the land they knew as Ogygia (Iceland). A westerly course would then take them past the southern tip of Greenland and Cape Race in Newfoundland. A turn to the southwest would bring them to Nova Scotia, and down the American Atlantic coast as far as Florida.

Their second feasible route would have taken them southwest of the Pillars of Hercules to the Canaries, where westerly-flowing currents would ease their journey to Cuba and thence to Florida and so on up the American coast.

George Young with Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe.

If they had begun their homeward journey from the vicinity of Cape Hatteras (North Carolina), George argues, they would have been able to make good use of the currents sweeping east again towards the Iberian Peninsula and the Pillars of Hercules — after which they would have been back in what were tantamount to home waters.

Another vital factor which lends considerable force to George's arguments is the change in the effective tidal levels which has taken place over the centuries. His studies have revealed that in the area around Mahone Bay and Oak Island, the water in Carthaginian times was thirty-five feet lower than it is now as a result of the coastal land masses settling down onto the Earth's crust at a rate of approximately eleven inches per century.

George hypothesizes that a group of Mediterranean traders established a small permanent colony in Nova Scotia, in the neighbourhood of Martins Point, Western Shore, and Gold River with a campsite at Beech Hill.

He surmises that they were a mixture of Phoenician and Greek stock, who would have written and spoken a version of Ptolemaic, a language indebted to both Greek and Arabic sources.

These pioneers would have noticed many of the natural limestone shafts and caverns in the area, ideal for adaptation as homes, storage areas, and workshops. Tunnels could have been dug connecting cavern with cavern and ventilator shaft with ventilator shaft. One very large, deep shaft in particular (today's Money Pit?) could have been dug to ventilate a gigantic cavern, far below the island.

George envisages the trading that would have gone on between the Mediterranean colonists and the Amerindians: the indigenous hunters exchanging furs and fresh meat for Mediterranean artifacts, timber, and agricultural produce.

The last trader to visit the colony brings news of the savage and bitter war now raging back home in the Mediterranean between Rome and Carthage: the First Punic War fought from 264–41 B.C.E. Hundreds of their fine ocean-going ships have gone to the bottom, taking thousands of adventurous merchants and brave seamen with them. Their vital link with the Mediterranean severed, the colonists become increasingly dependent upon their Amerindian in-laws, and are slowly but surely subsumed, adjusting to nomadic life and abandoning their Oak Island base to dereliction and decay.

Old World causes frequently initiate New World consequences. It is now the fifth century C.E. The Roman Empire itself has finally gone the same way as the Carthaginian Empire which it had destroyed in 146 B.C.E. In Egypt, there was a religious conflict in the early church between the Greeks and the Copts. The latter were the descendants of the original ancient Egyptians, and their language, too, was directly derived from the original ancient Egyptian language. The theological causes of the quarrel are too complex to be dealt with in detail at this point, but, essentially, the Copts opposed the Council of Chalcedon in 450 C.E. while the Greeks supported it. Professional mainstream theologians termed the Coptic beliefs
monophysite
, and the real problem between them and the Greeks arose over their different understandings of the divine nature of Christ. Chalcedonians believed in the “two-natures” theory of Jesus — that He was both God and Man. Coptic monophysites preferred to think of Him as having only one inseparable divine nature.

At this point, the Vandals poured in from the east, flooding over the wreckage of the Western Roman Empire and driving a wave of pitiful refugees was a party of singularly determined and courageous Coptic Christians.

George Young pointing out the mysterious ancient campsite.

Some residual knowledge of the ancient Carthaginian trans-Atlantic sea-routes must still have lingered among the fifth-century Mediterranean traders. They would have made optimum use of it in this emergency. The dangers of the open sea were infinitely preferable to certain death at the hands of the merciless Vandal conquerors.

According to George Young's intriguing theory, supported by professor Barry Fell's translation of the inscription taken from the porphyry slab found in the Money Pit, a boatload of Copts reached Nova Scotia and established themselves there under the leadership of an
arif
, or “sub-priest.” When this revered Coptic leader died, those whom he had led safely ahead of the Vandals, across the Atlantic, and through the perilous pioneering days of establishing their settlement, would have wanted to show their respect and gratitude. No labour would have been too great to ensure that his precious remains rested in peace. These were men who had seen the pyramids and knew something of the intricate protective devices they contained to thwart grave-robbers. Would they have done less for their arif than the Pharaohs' architects and artificers had done for their ancient god-kings?

But how is George's bold, avant-garde theory to be reconciled with various other Oak Island findings such as Nolan's enigmatic markers, the puzzling core samples, the chests (or coffins?) which the drillers were so confident they had encountered at around ninety to 100 feet in 1849 (and which Blair's team may have re-encountered between 150 and 170 feet nearly fifty years later)? And what about the apparent difficulties posed by Triton's radiocarbon dating tests?

It is possible to construct several strong bridges between George's ideas and those previously established facts. A party of religious refugees escaping from Egypt would not necessarily have been averse to taking with them such treasures as were accessible. The Israelites set a classic precedent during the Exodus: they took a vast store of Egyptian treasure with them.
[3]
The engraved porphyry slab found between the eighty- and ninety-foot levels in 1803 and 1804 also gives a strong hint of Egyptian origins.

There can be no certainty that all the complex workings below Oak Island were made by the same people at the same time. A pre-Christian colony of Carthaginian traders, followed by Coptic refugees who might have heard legends and old tales of what their predecessors had accomplished, could well account for a second elaborate subterranean structure being superimposed upon an earlier one. A difference in sea-level of over thirty feet would have made their task far easier than the daunting excavationary work confronting nineteenth- and twentieth-century explorers.

Careful burial beneath oak platforms, clay seals, coconut fibre, and charcoal is reminiscent of the meticulous protective processes which guarded high-ranking Egyptian dead. Copts would have been familiar with all of this. Water tunnels and flood-traps to drown grave-robbers have much in common with the ancient Nile culture which jealously protected its dead by every means that human ruthlessness and ingenuity could devise.

George has also made a highly significant breakthrough in a totally different field, a discovery which will provide a wealth of valuable research material for Oak Island and Rennes-le-Château investigators for many years to come. “Only connect,” as E.M. Forster said on the title page of
Howard's End
. Having studied the Poussin paintings carefully because he shared our interest in the Rennes mystery, and having a detailed knowledge of the ancient Ogham alphabet, George suddenly noticed that many of the characters portrayed on Poussin's canvases have their hands painted in what appear to be Ogham alphabet signs.

George Young and Patricia Fanthorpe studying the Ogham letters on the Poussin canvases.

The Ogham alphabet is the oldest form of Goidelic, a Celtic dialect. Like all truly great codes and cyphers, its power lies in its simplicity. A vertical or horizontal line has one, two, three, or more shorter lines branching out from it at right-angles to represent letters. These branches can be left or right of a vertical line, or above or below a horizontal line. They are, therefore, ideally suited for use as hand signals. In theory at least, two competent Ogham users could communicate in this sign language without a sound being uttered. Was it used, perhaps, by early Irish monks under vows of silence? Or by prisoners trying to pass secret messages which their jailers must not hear? If Nicholas Poussin (1593–1665) was the master of priceless coded secrets which many Rennes researchers believe him to have been, then his hitherto unsuspected trump card must surely have been his knowledge of the Ogham script, and his incredibly cunning use of it in the hand signals of his shepherds, the shepherdess, and other characters.