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Comments of Myles McCallum about the Nova Scotia Sword

1/20/2016

58 Comments

 
Myles McCallum sent me an email this morning with a list of the observations he made about the Nova Scotia sword while filming last night's episode of The Curse of Oak Island. He has given me permission to publish them here. Mcallum writes the following:
"1. The manufacturing technique. The use of a bivalve mold instead of a single-cast mold seems inconsistent with Roman bronze casting. Also, the fact that the mold join line was left intact is more consistent with industrial manufacturing processes of the late 19th through mid 20th centuries.

The low quality of the cast, particularly the features on the face of Hercules, suggest that this item would not have been gilt or covered in gold or silver leaf. Doing so would completely obscure the figure’s face. If this were an important item in the possession of a Roman general/admiral, then he would have wanted something that looked realistic.

2. The wear on the artifact did not seem to indicate that it was very old. I work with artifacts found in terrestrial contexts, not from maritime sites, but there was just too much of the artifact intact (not enough weathering), and the patina on it seemed a bit fake (you could see that it covered only parts of the figure’s face and body, but did not penetrate into the many nooks and crannies. Also, the patina itself is not consistent with what I know of water or lake patinas, that are generally yellowish in colour, not grey or green. Also, I was not sure why there was a patina on top of a patina (the grey on the green; seemed a bit weird to me).

3. The artifact was most certainly not ever a sword. Romans used iron swords, not bronze weapons. Also, there was no tang holding the blade to the hilt.

4. The blade itself was made by folding brass, not casting, which seems suspect, based on what I know of Roman bronze and brass casting, and the join between the hilt and the blade was really poorly done.

5. The fact that the sword had not disintegrated quite rapidly after being removed from its watery grave is highly suspect. Without conservation, one would expect the salt crystals that would have formed in the cavities and crevices of the object to rapidly advance oxidation, and large chunks would have been missing from the artifact as a result. This is not the case.

6. The manner in which the sword’s blade was dull. One would expect something really ancient to have no edge anymore, but the blade on the sword was thick and square, and it looks like it was never sharp. I say this because the brass was folded over the edge and had never been sharpened, although there had been a more recent attempt to sharpen the sword using a power tool.

7. Also, a couple of days after we filmed, I managed to find what looked like an identical sword for sale on ebay in Europe, and it was clearly labelled as a modern replica or souvenir.

8. The provenience of the sword is also highly suspect. If it comes from a shipwreck of Oak Island, an area that people have been crawling all over for the past century, then why have no other Roman artifacts been identified? Also, based on what I know of Roman ships, which were built hull-first and as such incredibly solid but not very flexible, the chance of one surviving the passage across the North Atlantic seems remote at best. They were coasting vessels. If we are talking about a Roman warship, these vessels were not very seaworthy. They were essentially long and narrow, oared vessels meant to be afloat for short periods, not for weeks on end." 
58 Comments
Gina Torresso
1/20/2016 07:11:41 am

Andy, thank you for all your heard work, and putting this all to rest. There are still some skeptics out there, mostly, blinded to these facts.

You hard work has been appreciated... Keep digging !!

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Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 07:33:14 am

Remember, there are 49 other pieces of Roman evidence coming in the white paper. I hope Dr. M has a look at these as well.

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George Johnston
1/20/2016 07:52:02 am

Peter, the only one that states this is Pullitzer. I spent 10 months as Communications Director for the partners and the only artifact that was ever mentioned in our convesations was the sword. I have serious doubts that anything else was ever discovered.

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josh link
1/20/2016 08:18:13 am

George, How exactly was Pulitzer involved with the sword? aside from promoting the hell out of his own theories by it?

In interviews he indicates the sword was taken to Marty and Rick -- But he also seems to indicate he had it tested... Are both true?

Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 08:18:57 am

I know, I was being somewhat sarcastic regarding the 'evidence'. Most of what JHP has left is circumstantial spin and mumbo jumbo regarding off-site carvings etc, not artifacts from the island. Nonetheless, Dr. M is clearly a Roman academic so would be qualified to speak to any assertions about Roman connections, time lines etc.

Bob Jase
1/20/2016 08:16:05 am

So he's saying that the aliens gave Commodus a crappy sword? Damned Reptilians!

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Andy White
1/20/2016 08:21:52 am

Number 4 is interesting in terms of the similarities we've noted in the blades:

"4. The blade itself was made by folding brass, not casting, which seems suspect, based on what I know of Roman bronze and brass casting, and the join between the hilt and the blade was really poorly done."

I'm not sure what to make of it. It makes me even more interested to see the Italian eBay sword firsthand, since it apparently has the same ridges and "J" marks. How could those similarities not be the result of casting from the same mold?

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killbuck
1/20/2016 08:57:49 am

There is at least a possible answer for this. I put this into the plausible "what if" category as a thought experiment.

Assuming the OI sword being a late 19th century curio made for the Victorian market and their fascinations with all things classical...

A foundry shop in the late 19th century, say in Italy, might have produced a number of sword blades by folding sheet brass. Later, the hilt could be cast onto the blades using a two piece ceramic mold. This is far more efficient that making a sand cast for each casting.

A standard piece of equipment would have been (and still is) a drop hammer. This is not a hand held hammer, but rather a machine. This device allowed metal workers to exert heavy controlled force, straight down onto a piece of metal. This is especially essential for forging steel, but drop hammers are an all purpose tool for working both hot metals and cold, soft metals like brass. There is a flat stationary anvil portion- a sort of secure table. Above this is the hammer, a very heavy plate.

Once a bend in a piece of brass stock is roughly done, such a device would be ideal for "squashing" the fold into the basic blade.

It is entirely possible, that the hammer or the anvil portion of the drop hammer could have scars, scratches or other minor damage from use, that would leave very similar marks on the blade stock. Many folded blades could be made quickly, and brass especially, all could take on marks left by the drop hammer.

Continuing the what if...

If at a later time, one of these early generation replicas was used as the mother for a two piece mold, traces of those marks would carry into the mold.

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Andy White
1/20/2016 09:02:22 am

Interesting. It makes me even more eager to get a close look at the Italian eBay sword (and show it to my friends here). If the "J blade" swords are a later generation than that represented by the California sword, we might guess there will be differences in the manufacturing process that will be evident. A shift in manufacturing could also explain why the fullered portion of the blade disappeared from the design.

Trevor Kenchington
1/20/2016 04:54:52 pm

I was wondering whether the hilts could be cast onto the blades of these things, rather than the whole being cast in one piece. That would help explain the variation in blade lengths.

I've never seen, far less used, a drop hammer so this may be ignorant. But would a hammer used to squash folded brass flat have put defects into the blades that were so similarly placed relative to the blade tip? Is it possible that the machinery was used to punch a blade-like shape out of folded-brass stock at the same time as squashing it? If so, inverse images of defects in the punch/hammer unit would appear in the same place on each "blade".

Killbuck
1/20/2016 10:00:55 pm

Trevor

Very likely, yes. Particularly if the blade blanks are positioned by a kind of jig to hold it in alignment. But no matter where the imperfections were placed on any particular blade, if you later were to take any random sword made this way and used it as the mold mother, all the cast swords would have that particular mark in the same place.

Cleo
1/20/2016 10:23:54 am

The parent could have been folded and the subsequent generations could still have enough detail in them to show the indications of it. The presence of the lines is something that could be present in the parent or something new to the cast offspring. Without a parent who can know?

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Andy White
1/20/2016 08:25:53 am

It's also pretty funny that he was able to find online what I presume is the same Italian eBay sword we've been looking at.

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Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 08:29:48 am

...which would put it more than a year before we found it listed in Sept 2015

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Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 09:04:52 am

Sorry, messing up dates in my head, so not more than a year ago but presumably late in 2014, so several months ago.

Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 09:08:22 am

...not 'ago'....but 'before'.........I need COFFEE!!!

Andy White
1/20/2016 09:09:52 am

You're in time out. Come back when you're sober.

Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 08:32:00 am

CONSPIRACY! The University swapped the swords and are hiding the real ROMAN SWORD!

http://imgur.com/s6Uz3l2

I also see faces in pictures of Mars.

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Andy White
1/20/2016 08:42:26 am

I would not be at all surprised to see the allegation that there was some kind of sword swap. There's certainly enough of them hanging around. They might have just picked up another one in the parking lot outside.

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Killbuck
1/20/2016 09:09:19 am

Yep, he had that angle feed to twitter followers days ago, just in case. You see, he DID predict it!!! Reclusive genius!!!!

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Jonathan Feinstein
1/20/2016 10:02:40 am

In the tone of one of those old Judy Garland Mickey Rooney movies:

"Hey kids! Let's start an academic-intellectual cabal! It'll be fun!"

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Trevor Kenchington
1/20/2016 09:12:53 am

I'm not quite dumb enough to argue details of Roman practices with a specialist but I'll hazard a few points from a nautical-archaeology perspective, since so many archaeologists have strictly terrestrial experience and training.

Myles McCallum wrote in his #2: "the patina itself is not consistent with what I know of water or lake patinas, that are generally yellowish in colour, not grey or green". Neophyte wreck divers reach for what they see as yellow metal, expecting brass, but end up clutching rusty steel. Copper alloys in seawater typically develop green corrosion products, though the right alloy in the right situation will look grey-blue -- and in other situations will show the colour of their underlying metal, just to be confusing. As I have noted before, the OI sword-like object didn't look like something that had been long in saltwater ... but not because of its greenness.

In his #8, he wrote: "based on what I know of Roman ships, which were built hull-first and as such incredibly solid but not very flexible, the chance of one surviving the passage across the North Atlantic seems remote at best. They were coasting vessels. If we are talking about a Roman warship, these vessels were not very seaworthy. They were essentially long and narrow, oared vessels meant to be afloat for short periods, not for weeks on end". Fully oared vessels (as distinct from sailing vessels with enough oars to get in and out of harbour on a calm day) cannot make long open-sea voyages because they cannot carry enough water for all of the oarsmen. Build the hull wider and deeper to carry more water and she becomes unwieldy to row. If anyone made it across the Atlantic before the Norse and lived through the experience, then they were aboard a broad-beamed sailing vessel, not a narrow oared warship.

But equating solidity and inflexibility with skin-first (not "hull-first") construction was an error, if an understandable one. It is skeleton-first construction (with roots in late-Imperial Mediterranean ships but which came to full flowering in the late-Medieval era and persisted until the coming of iron hulls) which gives a solid and inflexible hull. The older approaches were, however, very seaworthy and much closer to modern ship (and aircraft) construction concepts. They were just too expensive in timber and highly-skilled labour to be retained (while, centuries later, the last versions proved incompatible with the carriage of heavy guns on the broadside).

Myles and I may just have to disagree on whether a Roman merchantman could have survived an Atlantic crossing. I have stated in a previous comment that they certainly could. He says that the possibility is remote, though offers no supporting reasoning. If there were surviving records showing how many round trips between Ostia and Alexandria a freighter made before needing major repairs, there might be grounds to argue the matter one way or the other, but I doubt that anything of the kind survives. Nor is it likely that anyone wants to build a replica just to test the ability of such a hull to cope with an ocean crossing. I'll just state that I can't see any engineering reason why the ancient Mediterranean style of mortice-and-tenon construction should not have stood up perfectly well to ocean condition for the month or six weeks need to get across.

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Eric
1/20/2016 03:26:12 pm

Because the Med isn't the North Atlantic. Ask any salty navy vet who served on a destroyer in both seas, or a fisherman off the Grand Banks, there is a world of difference between the sea and weather conditions between the two. Roman grain ships etc were designed for the Med. There's a reason they didn't venture out of the Mare Nostrum. The hull might have made it, with a crew of dead men-the Norse made it because of the ability to island hop on the Norway-Shetlands-Orkneys-Iceland-Greenland route.

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Trevor Kenchington
1/20/2016 04:46:32 pm

Eric: Don't confuse the Trade Wind belt, where any west-bound crossing by Mediterranean peoples would have gone, with the west-wind belt in temperate latitudes. The latter is a much tougher stretch of ocean (and I speak from some experience, including one crossing under sail). When I get the chance, I'll dig out my copy of the pilot charts and see how the sea states compare between the Med and the waters east of the Bahamas. But if "Santa Maria" could make it across, why shouldn't a much larger ship, built in the same part of the world 1500 years before?

Perhaps worth remembering that, along with many yachtsmen in some rather improbable craft, Heyerdahl completed the crossing by reed-boat -- though it did take him two attempts. It's really not that hard to get from the Canaries to the Bahamas, with wind and current on the stern, so long as you can carry enough food and water for a few weeks.

As to the Norse: Leif Erikson island-hopped Norway/Iceland/Greenland/Baffin Island (passing far north of the Shetlands) but, a couple of hundred years later, the Greenland traders ran direct from Bergen to Cape Farewell (and back, by the same route, on their return voyages). I doubt that anyone knows enough about the performance of Roman ships to say whether they could have made such voyages if they had first made it to Norway. Since they didn't, there's not a lot of point in speculating.

Eric
1/21/2016 06:10:40 am

I suppose you could create a computer simulation of a Roman merchantman and throw her into an North Atlantic winter storm. While not many Roman ships in the Med survive, the exceptionally well preserved Byzantine wrecks in the Black Sea could supplement that.

Although I think we both agree that the fringe theory is dead wrong-a lone Roman merchantman from Gaul or Britannia could have drifted to the Americas, sure, but one derelict, even if discovered by real archaeologists and subjected to proper excavation and documentation, is not sustained contact.

As for ship construction, Roman merchantmen were not the lineal ancestors of the Spanish and Portuguese ships, the carracks and naos-they drew from ship types in Northern Europe, the cogs, and created a hybrid design for Atlantic navigation. Of course, Prince John and that Genoese fellow also had the advantages of 1,500 years of advancing technology and navigation techniques, so a crossing time of an optimal six weeks was achievable to them whereas it would not be for the Romans. Of course, it is also a question of motivation-the Romans never bothered with heading to Hibernia, built Hadrian's wall and the Limes in Germania and settled into a defense of territory mode that lasted until the collapse. The empire had ceased being expansionist, militarily or economically. There is no rationale for Roman exploration

It's good to have someone else who, unlike these fringe people, have actually been to sea on oceanic voyages to bring their wilder flights of fancy down to reality. I have circumnavigated the Pacific twice in naval warships and ridden out the outliers of a typhoon. i shudder to think of those old sailors who took on the North Atlantic in those little wooden ships.

Trevor Kenchington
1/21/2016 07:27:10 pm

Eric: This is going to be long enough to trespass on Andy’s bandwidth but I think you have raised some important points.

For one: Whether society X _could_ have crossed ocean Y can be a fascinating point for discussion but isn’t very relevant to human history. Whether they _did_ cross carries a bit more weight but (despite Pultizer’s rantings) it cannot change anything major. What is really important is what lasting effect an ocean crossing had or, as you put it, whether there was “sustained contact”. After 1492, transatlantic connections transformed human society worldwide (and thereby changed ecosystems too). Earlier crossings just didn’t to that. The effects of the Norse presence in Greenland can certainly be found in the European historical record but they were pretty minor. The effects of the further voyages to Vinland don’t seem to have mattered at all to Europe (unless, just perhaps, they gave part of the impetus to the late-15th Century voyages) and they certainly had no lasting consequences on this side of The Pond. Perhaps even more to the point: Figuring out whether some earlier ocean crossing really had more implications than conventional wisdom claims needs study of those implications. The idea that travellers from the Mediterranean world gave a kick-start to the Olmec civilization, for example, can be debated in full without anyone discovering direct evidence that a ship did get across. Hence, finding such a wreck would not add to the discussion, except perhaps for encouraging it along.

Next: The key step between what voyages someone _could_ have made and those that they _did_ make is exactly your point that “There is no rationale for Roman exploration”. What made 1492 different was that European society was then poised for expansion and expand it did. The really useful question might be “why?” rather than quibbling over details of nautical technology. (And that’s a “why?” which the nutty fringe won’t wrap its collective head around.) It’s worth remembering that the Ming Chinese did not follow up on Zheng He’s voyages decades earlier. I think that modern societies have come to expect expansion but perhaps, over the long haul, it is more of an aberration than a normal human endeavour.

After all that, debating what the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean might have been capable of seems a bit insignificant — though still interesting. You, like others, say “Roman” but, if anyone did get across the Atlantic, I’d expect rather the Carthaginians or Phoenicians. Once Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean, they certainly had competent sailors (even if those were descendants of Greeks or Phoenicians) but Carthaginian society as a whole was more maritime oriented than the Roman equivalent and hence the more likely to mount exploratory expeditions into the far west. Even if the focus is Rome, saying what could have been done requires tying down a time period: the Eastern Empire lasted until 1453, when nautical technology was little different from that 40 years later. Even if we took the period from the founding of the Republic to the fall of the Western Empire, we’d be looking at a span of several centuries. Then there is the question of just whose voyage might be considered. It is easy to think of starting somewhere in the Med and sailing out through Gibraltar but there was voyaging north to Britain (for tin, if nothing else) and south to the Canaries long before the rise of Rome. An accidental, storm-driven crossing would start from somewhere outside Gibraltar, while a planned exploration should have used ships and men from those Atlantic routes, even if its inspiration lay in Carthage or Rome.

You suggested a computer simulation of a Roman merchantman. That would test the sea-kindliness of her hull shape but it would need data on shapes and I’m not sure that there is enough to reconstruct a large merchantman. (A couple of wrecks have survived near enough intact for their shapes to be reproduced but I think only smaller, coastal vessels.)

If there is doubt about whether an ancient Mediterranean ship could have got across, I would expect it not to lie in hull shape but rather construction: some might suppose that the basic structure would not stand the prolonged exposure to large, ocean waves. I disagree but I doubt that there is any way to be sure without full-scale replica trials and those would be hideously expensive.

In that respect, you wrote that Roman merchantmen were not lineal ancestors of carracks and naos. I can’t agree. The 15th/16th Century ship types were meldings of northern and Mediterranean forms but their basic hull structure (planking fastened to a pre-constructed skeleton) was exactly a development of Imperial Rome: the Kyrenia ship of the 4th Century BC had the classic mortise-and-tenon construction of the ancient Mediterranean. Th

Killbuck
1/20/2016 09:16:48 am

https://soundcloud.com/investigatinghistory/tv-smoke-and-mirrors-oak-island-roman-sword-sword-play-rebuttal

It's thankfully only about 6 mins.

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Andy White
1/20/2016 09:25:20 am

Ah ha ha - now THAT was funny. The original is now "most likely in Naples."

So silly.

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Killbuck
1/20/2016 09:38:46 am

Likely maybe there. But you better get there before the Illuminati, Vatican agents, the Templars ANNNND the Mafia do.

Jonathan Feinstein
1/20/2016 09:49:25 am

Sound be tested side-by-side with the other authentic swords around the world?

Step one: find an authentic (in this context) sword...

Haven't done that yet.

Actually as short as it is, this one would have an hour of laughs in it if his delusions were not so sad.

Mike Morgan
1/20/2016 09:24:44 pm

Actually, has he not just weaved his back to his statement of 12/22/2015, (caps mine) "OTHERS ARE SAID TO BE in a private museum in the Netherlands and a museum in Naples."?

Andy White
1/20/2016 09:40:07 am

And The History Channel is in league with the Catholics to suppress the truth. What a clown.

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Killbuck
1/20/2016 09:48:08 am

Anyone who attended catholic School knows, that those Nuns are capable of enforcing anything. Even a world wide academic conspiracy to HIDE THE TRUTH!!!

James Lawrence
1/20/2016 10:03:11 am

As a Canadian with family in Nova Scotia I am a bit ticked at his generalizations about those who live (or go to school) there.

I also believe he pronounced Dalhousie university as "dollhouse" university...

This guy really just blows me away.

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Trevor Kenchington
1/20/2016 10:46:20 am

As a Nova Scotian*, I might be ticked too. However, I listened for about a minute and a half until he said something about not wasting time. I figured that, at least, was good advice and hit the "stop" button.

[* In the interests of full disclosure, I am really only a CFA resident in the Province: full-status requires at least one grandparent born here.]

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ghettohillbilly1
1/20/2016 02:29:59 pm

I am from Nova Scotia and I am ticked, his slander campaign against us HAS to stop, he is trying to tarnish our international image and the credibility of our world class universities and media because they do not agree with his Roman theory about this now proven souvenier I'm seriously considering making a facebook page and youtube videos to discredit his spread of BS lies and slander who wants to join? lol

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Jonathan Feinstein
1/20/2016 04:02:27 pm

Don't for get to threaten him with a class-action suit on behalf of all residents of Nova Scotia!

Killbuck
1/20/2016 11:19:13 am

Here I go popping in again.... I have paintings to get back to, but this just came in.

I have no idea if anyone else here did this, but several days back, I contacted Design Toscano and asked them about the original source for their Gladiator Sword of Pompeii. I'm curious, is there an original from which this was copied?

(Another website- Ancient Sculpture Garden specifies it's a museum replica from the Naples Museum)

They just replied saying that it is not a direct cast copy, but modeled after photos of gladiator swords.

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Andy White
1/20/2016 11:38:39 am

I wonder what that means? I think it means "we have no idea where the original design came from, we just sent an old FHS to China and told them to make copies as cheaply as they could."

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Killbuck
1/20/2016 11:55:23 am

Occam's razor

Trevor Kenchington
1/20/2016 11:46:01 am

Sad that they didn't reveal their source. Sadder still if they don't know.

A while back, I went trolling for people selling model ships. No shortage of dealers and manufacturers claiming "museum quality models", when their products don't look like ships at all, still less the nominal prototype. The people who sell kits to hobbyists are worse: their models are usually more accurate reproductions (in miniature) but they con the buyers into devoting hundreds of hours in putting the pieces together -- and still end up with an object that doesn't look much like a ship when it is done.

Truth can be hard to find where Oak Island is concerned but we'd be fools to even go looking for it in advertising.

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sword skeptic
1/20/2016 02:04:22 pm

A sword from the Naples Museum [Gift Shop].

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Mark
1/20/2016 11:22:23 am

There is no chance JHP has even touched the sword, this guy uses any opportunity for publicity. He would have taken thousands of images with it.

Posed Shots of him holding it, some of him deep in thought testing it, some of him shocked at the results, him with a case chained to his wrist with it in super protective casing handing it over. Not a cheap motel white towl.

It's all about the drama.The guy is a muppet.

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Mike Morgan
1/20/2016 10:14:14 pm

I had made comments questioning whether he had actually had a "hands on" with the "J" blade FHS or was only working from pictures of it as implied in the HCH article. He stated in one of his filibustering webcasts that he had held it and used a "scope" on it.

Here is an exchange from his Facebook group earlier today where he explains his role.

"Clif Vooris Hut, plz clarify. Were you and a team sole possessors, for a time, of said artifact before it became known on the show? Were you present when the xrf was done? You know I'm a supporter of you, so I'm not asking to bust your horns, just trying to understand the timeline.

Hutton Pulitzer Clif Vooris I DID NOT possess it before the Laginas. They possessed it first. They were shown it, they brought me in when filming and having my XRF since I tested everything for the hand over to the museum. Then we all met at Dan's house and the owners of the sword came and brought specifically to show me. I did the archaeological photography documentation, measurements and the XFR and did 12 tests all over the sword. So the meeting was for me to test specifically. That was the only and last time I had it. Then it went to lawyers and the Laginas purchased it and they have had it ever since "

Andy, you being a real archaeologist, would you classify the "photography documentation" as being "archaeological" or being more of artifact "photography documentation" since it is not in situ?

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Cleo
1/21/2016 10:50:44 am

He took surface scans and he gives no breakdown of the relative composition. No intrusive sample of the metal body was taken, unlike the St Mary's U. Raman analysis. He's basically scanning a chemically patinated surface that is not free of impurities if one wanted to be picky about his methods.

In today's Epoch Times published article he talks about the absence of silicone as a significant proof. Silicone Brasses and Bronzes are modern alloys. If you find Si in the alloy you know it is very modern. Absence of it means nothing. It would certainly not be present in a Victorian creation. He's actually proposing a make or break test of antiquity here that isn't ever going to float.

Are we now to assume the Laginas switched the swords for sinister reasons. I wish he would say that because then they could sue him for libel.

Jonathan Feinstein
1/21/2016 11:24:33 am

To Cleo:

Well, rocks are for a large part made of silicon and our buddy, Mister Pullitzer, obviously has rocks in his head and he lives (if you use the term liberally) in the 21st Century aka the modern era, so I'm sure he thinks that having silicon in it is the only proof of being modern.

Well this argument, as flawed as it is, is easier to take than listening to him blubber over the lack of arsenic in the metal.

Peter Geuzen
1/20/2016 11:47:39 am

Cleaning up from last nights party:

http://imgur.com/PueEdUK

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Killbuck
1/20/2016 11:52:39 am

I just brew tea out of my nose when that opened!!! Hahahah.

Your Hercules is somewhat better endowed than the ones on the swords, or is that a rotational cod piece?

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Andy White
1/20/2016 12:25:51 pm

Add it to the database? It's just as Roman as all the others.

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J m hume
1/20/2016 06:26:51 pm

I enjoyed watching the show with all of you. It was a kick.

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Bobby B.
1/20/2016 07:00:23 pm

Andy, you watched the episode last night. What did you think of that rock with the odd carving in it? Clearly that was a 100% confirmed, smoking gun, history rewriting, Roman urinal, right?

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Mike Jones
1/21/2016 06:11:38 am

From the Jovan exchange Mike Morgan posted above, it sounds like the Laginas got Jovan to test and validate the sword before they plunked down [allegedly] 10 grand for it. Because of his, you know, Treasure Commander bona fides. Is this how it looks to y'all?

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James Lawrence
1/21/2016 09:06:14 am

So it sounds like JHP was directly responsible for the Lagina's being hosed out of $10,000. Shame on them for taking his 'word' on authenticity. I'll wager he is not on the invite list back to any episode soon.

That family is likely having a bit of a chuckle right now...(there is indeed a sucker born every minute).

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Eric
1/21/2016 09:18:21 am

Considering that Marty Lagina is worth around 2 million dollars, and is a successful businessman and engineer, the likelihood he'd drop any significant amount of money to purchase a claimed "Roman sword" without going to actual accredited experts and relying on some fringe weirdo's conclusions seems implausible. What I see as more likely is the "History" Channel and the production company dropped some cash so they could bring the whole "mystery" in to film an episode, and the Lagina brothers followed the script and acted like this whole sword thing was plausible until the experts told them no-for the cameras. I think anyone armed with a computer and a functional frontal lobe knows the OI sword was not Roman in about 5 minutes of web searching, as we all proved all on our own. A fool and his money are soon parted, but the Lagina brothers don't strike me as fools-just just businessmen having a lark and getting paid to pretend there is some mystery to solve on a treasure hunt program. I think in real life, they don't believe any of the lunatic fringe the producers bring in, but hey, if they are going to spring for a free trip to France so they can "explore" the conspiracy du jour and nod sagely while some crank pontificates about the hidden bloodline of Christ as they sip wine while the cameras roll, can you blame them? I think we shouldn't confuse the role they play on the "reality" show from what they really think, which, natrually, they keep quiet about.

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Cleo
1/21/2016 10:13:51 am

If that's the case the Laginas are going to love the story that's in the paper today about a groundhog that dug up a "potentially" jewel encrusted Necklace there years ago. Never a dull moment on OI.

Mike Morgan
2/26/2016 11:35:36 am

We now more information provided by one of the primary players in the Oak Island endeavor:

David BLankenship: the sword was got because Rick wanted it.
Yesterday at 11:01am (February 25)

David BLankenship: and rick paid for it not Marty as some have said but do not know.and it was bought before testing
February 25

Posted in "Fake Hercules Swords" @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/458600194323519/ under Andy's February 1 post linking to ""Oak Island" Producer Claims Sword Was Purchased To Discredit Pulitzer"

Reply
Killbuck
1/22/2016 07:09:09 pm

I saw in Epic Times article with jhp dated the 20th that he provided his test results of the "schword" with Epic Times.

Ah peer review, indeed

Reply
Killbuck
1/22/2016 07:23:38 pm

And the relentless jhp twitter feeds continue. Apparently we are all running scared.

(Actually I'm on the couch with my tablet.)

Images of Churchill saying never, never, never give up!

Reply



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