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It's Sunday Morning: Do You Know Where Your "Roman" Evidence Is?

1/24/2016

21 Comments

 
The story about claims for a Roman visit to Nova Scotia continues to get sillier. With the "100 percent confirmed Roman sword" that started this debacle over a month ago now 100 percent debunked by both our work on this blog and the metallurgical results summarized on The Curse of Oak Island, focus on the sword has been supplanted by conspiracy claims, a new "smoking gun" piece of evidence, and some kind of bizarre war being waged on social media. This intent of this post is simply to bring you up to date about what's going on.
PictureThe California sword.
The Sword(s)

I would like to see the mystery of the Fake Hercules Swords solved. Even though they're not Roman, I still find them a fascinating problem. Who started making these things? What was the "original"? How and why did they change through time?  I think I find this to be an interesting challenge because historic data seem to be few and far between, requiring that we address these questions through archaeological methods and techniques: build an assemblage, try to understand and organize variability, gather information about the intrinsic characteristics of the items, construct and test hypotheses, etc. To that end, I began a Fake Hercules Sword database yesterday, and I started a group on Facebook to keep a line in the water there. 

In other sword news, I will have a statement from Dr. Christa Brosseau to publish on this blog first thing Monday morning. (Update 1/25/2016: here is Brosseau's summary.) Dr. Brosseau will be able to speak publicly about her analysis after the "sword" episode of The Curse of Oak Island airs tonight in Canada. She has indicated to me that she's been following this blog and will try to respond to questions here.

PictureDisassembly of antique Peavey, showing the spikes that could, if you really want to be silly, be mistaken for Roman crossbow bolts (used with permission of Oak Island Compendium).
Boltgate, We Hardly Knew You
​
The new piece of "smoking gun" evidence for a Roman visit to Nova Scotia wasn't much of a mystery and didn't last long. The "Roman crossbow bolts" that were featured to us in the latest laundry list of nonsense turned out to be modern logging tools called Peavey points. This one was quickly cracked by Nova Scotians who understand what the remnants of their own material culture look like. Have a look at this post, this post, and this one from Oak Island Compendium.  I feel pretty comfortable saying that the most plausible explanation for the "crossbow bolts" doesn't have anything to do with ancient Rome, Iberia, a 1000-year-old tree, a U.S. military testing lab, and a conspiracy to hide the truth.

Don't rewrite your history books just yet: the "crossbow bolts" are pieces of logging tools.

​So much for Boltgate.

I Just Assumed We Had All Graduated From Third Grade

As more pieces of the "evidence" for the Roman occupation of Nova Scotia have failed to stand up to scrutiny, we've been treated to a bizarre online temper tantrum that has included some person or group of people trying to disrupt various Oak Island groups on Facebook by creating fake profiles, reporting pictures as containing nudity (when they don't), and who knows what else. In a blog post on Friday, J. Hutton Pulitzer revealed that Facebook has apparently placed him on Double Secret Probation until Monday. He adds Facebook to the growing list of conspirators (e.g., academics like me, the Catholics, the media, The History Channel, etc.) that are trying to keep the world from knowing the truth about modern Fake Hercules Swords and logging tools that have allegedly been found in Nova Scotia.

This is all very juvenile and has nothing whatsoever to do with an objective assessment of the quality of the "evidence" that's being put forward. I'm going to stay out of the nonsense as much as I can and stick to looking at the nuts and bolts (I wonder how long will it be until we are actually shown a picture of nuts and bolts and told they're Roman).

Complete insulation from the idiocy, unfortunately, may not be possible.  Certainly these shenanigans are actually a part of the story: the case of #Swordgate makes it clear that battles over ideas, evidence, and opinions are multi-leveled and occurring in many different ways and places across the internet.  I have neither the time nor the appetite to fight them all, and I'm not planning on getting drawn into silly playground squabbles that will make no difference to the outcome. The arguments matter, sure, but my arguments are going to be based on things that are relevant to the questions at hand. 
21 Comments
Doug Crowell
1/24/2016 06:42:01 am

Can not wait to hear what Dr. Christa Brosseau can tell us.

Reply
Tom Grueter
1/25/2016 05:39:24 pm

I've been open-mindedly comparing the content of your (Andy White's) and Hutton Pulitzer's posts concerning the findings and claims of a possible Roman sword and possible Roman cross-bow bolt points on or very near Oak Island, Nova Scotia. When your shoddy attack crusade to boost followers, Mr. White, is over, I predict so will be any ounce of credibility you may have previously earned. You will be buried in verifiable facts and irrefutable logic. I hope your current followers compare both sources of information before continuing along with you on this slippery slope. History is changing before our eyes. Don't blink.

Reply
Andy White
1/25/2016 07:18:29 pm

Wait - "possible" Roman sword and "possible" Roman crossbow bolts? I was under the impression that they had been "100% confirmed." Maybe I missed something somewhere?

Peter Geuzen
1/24/2016 06:55:21 am

There have been other 'material culture' finds or things surmised as dropped on the island by travellers and JHP has poo pooed them all, obviously because they don't work with his story and agenda. A pair of scissors, leather shoes, come to mind, both dated in the hundreds of years old, not centuries. Every few episodes of the show they seem obligated to swing a metal detector around and find some rusty bit of something and then sit in a pub and talk about it. I believe they did in fact find a real bolt, as in nut and bolt.

Reply
Gary Long
1/24/2016 08:11:08 am

Peter - a hundred years is a century.

Reply
Peter Geuzen
1/24/2016 09:47:22 am

millennium......coffee.....Sunday.....last night..... :-)

Jonathan Feinstein
1/24/2016 07:27:41 am

Thanks for the credit on one of my observations about the Sonja Sword, but now that I have seen this close up of the CA sword, I'm thinking Sonja's might just be in better shape so more details of the fullering survived.

I have observed, however, that some (not all) of the nicks in the CA and Sonja blades seem to match up. Hard to tell for certain from just pictures, but I would not be surprised if we ultimately learn they came from the same source.

Reply
Andy White
1/24/2016 07:31:41 am

I'm going to check the California sword on Monday and see if those nicks/dents in the blade are paginated or not.

Reply
Andy White
1/24/2016 12:19:09 pm

Or, you know, patinated.

Andy White
1/24/2016 07:29:36 am

I think I remember that. There are several known sister nuts and bolts known from around the world. The original is in the Naples Museum. The nuts and bolts you buy at Lowe's are replicas of that famous nut and bolt. You can't see it now because it was taken to the British Museum to hide the truth and protect it from the mafia.

Reply
Pablo
1/24/2016 12:09:51 pm

That was one of the most bizarre comments in the history of Swordgate, don't forget that his friend saw the sword and thought it was interesting ;) wink wink

Reply
Kris Lawhorn
1/24/2016 07:54:03 am

I can not wait for the results to be published. Love your blogs and the information they provide.

Reply
Andy White
1/24/2016 12:20:32 pm

Thanks Kris!

Reply
Mike Cardarelli
1/24/2016 08:08:02 am

Thereafter is a TV show called "America Unearthed".
On one episode someone found a similar Roman. Sword. It was . found. to be a promotional sord made
in the early 1900''s. I suggest you contact the History
Channel.
Mike




Reply
Killbuck
1/24/2016 09:08:26 am

JHP's tweets, posts etc., are much the same chum as those of the great self declared astrophysicist Mike Bara... bot are so brilliant and dangerous to academic science (in their minds) that everyone is trying to silence them!!!!

Gads.

Reply
Andy White
1/24/2016 12:22:36 pm

Are you talking about the "Viking" one? They ended up finding a picture of it in a catalog, I think.

Reply
Killbuck
1/24/2016 05:25:54 pm

Oh yes indeed, it was a replica Viking style sword.

Viking Swordgate was so 2012.

Andy White
1/24/2016 06:14:45 pm

The Ulen sword.

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?100468-Sword-identification

Killbuck
1/24/2016 05:58:18 pm

JHP has a new Curse of Oak Island no drama Official fb page. He's making sure the haters don't get in, says he is checking everyone who wants to join of their true identity, and deleting the haters (anyone who asks a question). But you get to be there if you fawn over him.

Meanwhile on the popular COOI fan generated page, the shared Ancient Origins post of the Roman Artifacts article is not going well. Fans are overwhelmingly not buying it.

Ultimately unimportant but as Spock used to say... Fascinating.

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