This is a guest blog post contributed by Peter Geuzen. Peter is familiar to fans of #Swordgate as the producer of numerous illustrations documenting the proliferation of Fake Hercules Swords since December of 2015. He has recently assigned me the task of creating a prize for Swordgate's upcoming Third Anniversary Super Terrific Happy Hour Celebration. So I assigned him this blog post in return. Enjoy!
The Curse of Oak Island has started another season with a few episodes of the obligatory 1/3 recap of the previous episode, 1/3 recap of the recap, 1/6 new material, and 1/6 recap of the new material, per episode. The show airs Tuesday nights in the United States and Sunday night in Canada. To avoid any spoiler issues, this blog is being done on a Monday after the Canadian crowd has had a chance to catch up on the most recent episode.
Welcome to Pilumgate. Don't worry, it won't last long. You might be able to hold your breath until it's over.
You have to wonder if Kevin Burns (Executive Producer & Writer, Prometheus Entertainment) is watching the reactions to his Oak Island cash cow as they happen after each show and season. You have to then wonder if he literally does everything for a reaction. Throw out the red herrings and the scraps of . . . well, scrap, basically . . . as it gets pulled from yet another borehole, or caisson grab, or backhoe pit, or this beach, or that piece of forest, or a full swamp, or a drained swamp . . . you get the idea. As the show keeps trying to be about something, it keeps delivering essentially nothing. Scraps of minor finds are inevitable with the amount of digging and metal detecting going on. Give any historic location in Nova Scotia the same level of effort and you wouldn’t find much of anything different. It’s all stuff from the last couple centuries, but on Oak Island there is also stuff from all the past dead end searches.
Ignoring all these scraps from the last few years, and since this blog is about fake Roman stuff, we leapfrog forward from Fake Roman Swords to the most recent fake Roman find. Kevin Burns has thrown a pilum at us.
First let’s build up the context. The supposed non-actors who don’t star in a scripted show have become actors portraying non-actors who do star in a scripted show. They know what they are expected to say, when to say it, and thus they know what exactly has the best chance of making the final edit back in the Los Angeles studio. As a result, when swinging a metal detector turns up a pointed piece of iron, it’s best to start with a conclusion and worry about details later. Fist pumping yelps of TEMPLAR are now mandatory. The obligatory cell phone speaker call to bring over the always conveniently close by fellowship members has to happen next. The bros then high five all around and Prometheus immediately cuts to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy. In other words they found this iron spike thing and immediately gave it a bromance declaration as a Templar crossbow bolt.
Welcome to Pilumgate. Don't worry, it won't last long. You might be able to hold your breath until it's over.
You have to wonder if Kevin Burns (Executive Producer & Writer, Prometheus Entertainment) is watching the reactions to his Oak Island cash cow as they happen after each show and season. You have to then wonder if he literally does everything for a reaction. Throw out the red herrings and the scraps of . . . well, scrap, basically . . . as it gets pulled from yet another borehole, or caisson grab, or backhoe pit, or this beach, or that piece of forest, or a full swamp, or a drained swamp . . . you get the idea. As the show keeps trying to be about something, it keeps delivering essentially nothing. Scraps of minor finds are inevitable with the amount of digging and metal detecting going on. Give any historic location in Nova Scotia the same level of effort and you wouldn’t find much of anything different. It’s all stuff from the last couple centuries, but on Oak Island there is also stuff from all the past dead end searches.
Ignoring all these scraps from the last few years, and since this blog is about fake Roman stuff, we leapfrog forward from Fake Roman Swords to the most recent fake Roman find. Kevin Burns has thrown a pilum at us.
First let’s build up the context. The supposed non-actors who don’t star in a scripted show have become actors portraying non-actors who do star in a scripted show. They know what they are expected to say, when to say it, and thus they know what exactly has the best chance of making the final edit back in the Los Angeles studio. As a result, when swinging a metal detector turns up a pointed piece of iron, it’s best to start with a conclusion and worry about details later. Fist pumping yelps of TEMPLAR are now mandatory. The obligatory cell phone speaker call to bring over the always conveniently close by fellowship members has to happen next. The bros then high five all around and Prometheus immediately cuts to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy. In other words they found this iron spike thing and immediately gave it a bromance declaration as a Templar crossbow bolt.
Skip to the next episode (of course, a two-episode-per-find minimum rule applies) and it becomes confirmed as iron (duh) with manganese. So let’s just leave it at that and not even explore the complete metallurgy and possible age. Let’s just cut to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy, and say it’s as old as any random single digit century BC while showering the screen with sparks and flames.
Next, let’s get this guy on Skype:
Next, let’s get this guy on Skype:
I really want to think they specifically call him an "antiquities expert" for a reason. Back in the day, Mr. 100% Confirmed used a "Roman Antiquities Expert" for his leap of faith confirmation fantasy about the Fake Roman Sword. Kevin, are you messing with us for fun? Anyways, long story short: this "antiquities expert" points to a line drawing in a book and declares the iron spike thing to be a Roman pilum, which is essentially a javelin tip. Can you guess what happens next? Cut to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy, and show Roman re-enactors carrying pilums with tips that look absolutely nothing like the iron spike thing.
The re-enactment pilums are an order of magnitude longer, an order of magnitude larger in diameter, and have a completely different point style than the relatively small and not too scary looking iron spike thing that our heroes found on Oak Island. Now of course any randomly made spear tip from a random blacksmith of any random past century could end up looking exactly like what they found. Perhaps some random Roman arms maker randomly made smallish versions of pilum tips. Maybe these randomly passed through the New Ross Vortex and ended up down river on Oak Island. Randomly possible. Here in lies the rub of course. The "antiquities expert" is not shown to get past his randomness. He provides no expert antiquities analysis of any depth to verify in detail that his finger pointing at a line drawing wins the burden of proof test. All other conceivable possibilities of what the iron spike could be are valid hypotheses. A line drawing based opinion is nonsense. A Roman pilum was nonetheless exactly what the scripted non scripted show wanted to see, to not look scripted, if you follow.
Just to add to the fun here, our "antiquities expert" is currently the purveyor of an online auction business called Ancient Resource. Several times a year he offers up hundreds of artifacts per sale to the highest bidder. We’re talking low thousands of things per year and the business is a decade and a half old. There are of course several other businesses on the net like this and several eBay shops doing the same. The math starts to become a challenge. Needless to say, ‘If it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ which is just another way of saying ‘Buyer Beware’.
For even more fun, our "antiquities expert" is a former employee and writer for the History Channel and his major claim to fame in that regard is a production called “UFOs in the Bible.”
To complete the picture, his business is 14 miles (23 km) or 30 minutes from the Prometheus offices in Los Angeles. They are literal neighbors, while being 3700 miles (5900 km) from Oak Island. On a final fun note, if back in the day anybody out there actually saw a copy of the "Sword Report" by Mr. 100% Confirmed, you might recall a section in it that was a deluded guilt by association picture gallery. "If it’s green and looks Roman, it must be Roman" was essentially the argument. A little research of that gallery at the time found that the highest percentage of pictures from dealer types were in fact from our current 'antiquities expert." Coincidence maybe, but man we are really having a good run at figuring out things that aren’t a coincidence.
So we are going to end Pilumgate as fast as we started it. No inventory, no metallurgy study, no comparative morphology groups, no 3D models, nothing. Easy enough to say “Do your own research” to use the classic line from Mr. 100% Confirmed. Google away for 1) antique fishing spear tine, or 2a) antique frog eel spear, or 2b) antique clam (or scallop) rake (I had to get ‘scallop’ in here somehow, if you know what I mean), or 3) Nephilim fondue fork, or 4) cub scout blacksmith badge weenie roast stick, or whatever else comes to mind. But seriously: start with numbers 1) and 2). Nova Scotia, with a history of semi-nomadic Mi’kmaq culture relying on fish and game, followed by European contact fishermen and traders, followed by modern era commercial and sport recreational fishing, is the factual material culture chronology that applies. Romans are nonsense. Occam's razor - look it up if you don’t know what it means. Do your own research.
Just to add to the fun here, our "antiquities expert" is currently the purveyor of an online auction business called Ancient Resource. Several times a year he offers up hundreds of artifacts per sale to the highest bidder. We’re talking low thousands of things per year and the business is a decade and a half old. There are of course several other businesses on the net like this and several eBay shops doing the same. The math starts to become a challenge. Needless to say, ‘If it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ which is just another way of saying ‘Buyer Beware’.
For even more fun, our "antiquities expert" is a former employee and writer for the History Channel and his major claim to fame in that regard is a production called “UFOs in the Bible.”
To complete the picture, his business is 14 miles (23 km) or 30 minutes from the Prometheus offices in Los Angeles. They are literal neighbors, while being 3700 miles (5900 km) from Oak Island. On a final fun note, if back in the day anybody out there actually saw a copy of the "Sword Report" by Mr. 100% Confirmed, you might recall a section in it that was a deluded guilt by association picture gallery. "If it’s green and looks Roman, it must be Roman" was essentially the argument. A little research of that gallery at the time found that the highest percentage of pictures from dealer types were in fact from our current 'antiquities expert." Coincidence maybe, but man we are really having a good run at figuring out things that aren’t a coincidence.
So we are going to end Pilumgate as fast as we started it. No inventory, no metallurgy study, no comparative morphology groups, no 3D models, nothing. Easy enough to say “Do your own research” to use the classic line from Mr. 100% Confirmed. Google away for 1) antique fishing spear tine, or 2a) antique frog eel spear, or 2b) antique clam (or scallop) rake (I had to get ‘scallop’ in here somehow, if you know what I mean), or 3) Nephilim fondue fork, or 4) cub scout blacksmith badge weenie roast stick, or whatever else comes to mind. But seriously: start with numbers 1) and 2). Nova Scotia, with a history of semi-nomadic Mi’kmaq culture relying on fish and game, followed by European contact fishermen and traders, followed by modern era commercial and sport recreational fishing, is the factual material culture chronology that applies. Romans are nonsense. Occam's razor - look it up if you don’t know what it means. Do your own research.
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