April Edition—2007 Hard copy Edition
Oak Island Update! – Cree Code Breaker Challenges 140-Year Old Cipher
MAHONE BAY, Nova Scotia –The enigma of Oak Island has been called one of the greatest archaeological and engineering achievements of mankind. Often referred to as Canada’s best-known unsolved mystery, Oak Island proudly boasts it’s title for hosting the site of the World’s longest treasure hunt in recorded history. Now in its 212th year this 10 million dollar project that has selfishly taken the lives of six young men is no closer to being solved than it was in 1795 when three teen boys discovered a shaft here and began digging for what they believed to be pirate treasure! The boys excavated down to the 30-foot mark, exhausted and unable to continue they realized the dig would be a much larger effort then they first imagined. What the boys found as they dug convinced all three that they had indeed discovered a man-made vertical shaft of sound engineering. Their only conclusion was that it had been built to hide an enormous treasure. Knowing that a proper excavation required equipment, animals and manpower the boys set out to find investment capital. It took years but they did find an investor with whom they became the founders of the Onslow Company, the first of many treasure recovery companies that would come and go on Oak Island. To date the cost of this intoxicating treasure hunt has far exceeded ten million dollars and consigned six sturdy treasure hunters to an early grave.
Now for the first time since the 1860’s one man has come forward to challenge the translation of a cryptic message found etched into a stone that was discovered at the 90-foot mark in the original shaft in 1803 by the Onslow Company. The stone vanished about 1900 and no known image or text was preserved showing the cryptic message. However a Mahone Bay schoolteacher in 1909 claimed to have copied the two line, forty-character coded text directly from the stone hoping that he could break the code himself. He provided the only image of the codex known to exist stating the code was a simple letter-for-cipher that was accurately translated by Professor James Leitchi, a professor of languages at Dalhouse University in 1860’s. Leitchi’s translation reads… “Forty feet below two million pounds are buried.” Although Leitchi’s translation has never been directly challenged it has always been suspicious since a business relationship is known to have existed between Leitchi and the Oak Island Association, the 1860’s recovery company.
Recently Keith Ranville, a Cree First Nations researcher announced his challenge of Leitchi’s translation stating… “Birch Island holds the secret to the meaning of the construction on Oak Island. According to the Lunenburg Progress Enterprise, Ranville claims that Leitchi’s method to break the code was flawed, citing that his translation using the First Nations tradition sees the codex as individual abstract symbols that were never intended to be translated into a single message. Using Ranville’s method to decipher the code, which reads more like a map, Oak Island is directly linked to its sister island, nearby Birch Island by underwater man-made shafts. He cites the repeated use of the triangle from the original inscription and points to the large triangle that he discovered on Birch Island, which is only visible from the air. The triangle on the 16-acre Birch Island takes up much of the Island, which Ranville believes is also the ancient burial grounds for those who were involved with the complex construction found on Oak Island.
Ranville’s work offers a completely different approach to solving the Oak Island mystery. Traveling across Canada Ranville has presented his findings to a number of scholars and groups many of whom have supported his work in principal. He has been interviewed on radio programs and his currently looking for funding to help pursue his research further. Those supporting Ranville’s research include mining engineer, Steve Zou, P.Eng.,PH.D, the Bear River First Nation of Nova Scotia, the Sault Ste. Marie Museum. To learn more you can log on to Ranville’s web site at: http://www.mythandmystery.com/oakisland/eerie_radio_episode_14.htm
Correspondence with Keith Ranville during December, 2006
Canadian First Nations
OAK ISLAND TREASURE HUNTER/RESEARCHER
Keith Ranville
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