Does treasure sink in the ground?

[Frankn]

The short answer is NO. There are exceptions like quicksand, but I doubt you are T.H. in quicksand! If a coin is dropped on the ground, a certain amount of dirt is blown on it by the wind. A certain amount is shoved on it by passing people or animals but the main coverage is done by dying vegetation. The coin does not sink,it is covered. If gold, which is heavy, sunk in the ground there would be no placer gold. It would all be at the center of the earth by now. I have been on the beach and seen old coins sitting two inches above the beach on small "sand towers". The wind and tide had removed several inches of sand from the beach. When I dig here in Md. I can tell how long an object has been in the ground by the depth. It makes no difference how much it weighs. I found several objects on a past hunt that were between 3" and 4". I knew they had been in the ground since the mid 40"s in fact two pennies were dated early 40's. I found an ax head,very rusty, at 10+". I knew it had been in the ground for over 200 years. Areas with little vegetation get most coverage from wind and water. All right lay it on me, but back it up!!

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[Frankn]

gmanlight: If I am not mistaken, He was surrounded by advertisement for fisher and his books during the whole show! Now when do you want to get the bridge? P.S. I have never seen the guy before, but I have a habit of calling them like I see them!

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[Frankn]

Shambler: You knock me but offer no reason yourself! I think the 400 folks here would like to hear your reason why your toy sunk 6" in 35 years, but the 3' fence is still 3'. Swr just called it like he saw it!

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[orion024]

No dogs in this fight...however, from personal experience of house restorations (mid to late 1800s)...items found under the house (coins, nails,bottles, knob/tube insulators) have been found laying on top of the ground.

Given this, a coin will not simply sink if just laying on the ground under these conditions.

SWR congrads on stating the truth The main reason for the coin not sinking under the house, is due to the fact that water cannot act upon soil, water is the best compaction tool known to man. Nothing will settle dirt better than water! Maybe water is the key to the coin sinkage theory!!
Frank'n your welcome!

 

[Frankn]

Orion024: Your point about water is well taked, but I have always considered water an erosion factor. Then again, rain hitting the ground could splash soil over a coin. I have theories about what can and cant happen,but I have not pieced it all together yet either. I have been in the desert and seen things on the ground that look like they have been there forever so maybe water is part of the answer.

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[Frankn]

Lets take the people and personalities out of the equation! THE SITUATION: You walk out on the beach. You tie a thin string to a wedding ban. You set it on the sand. Within seconds, while you are watching,it sinks to 23". Vote -believeable or Unbelievable I don't know how to set up a count so you will have to follow and count the votes yourself.

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[orion024]

Lets take the people and personalities out of the equation! THE SITUATION: You walk out on the beach. You tie a thin string to a wedding ban. You set it on the sand. Within seconds, while you are watching,it sinks to 23". Vote -believeable or Unbelievable I don't know how to set up a count so you will have to follow and count the votes yourself.

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Unbelievable, unless while your watching a rogue wave came through or a hard rain came down, I would then have to go to the Believable side! Great point Frank'n about the rain splashing soil & dirt to cover the coin up! Another way coins get "sunken" is because of flooding, the water loosens hard-pan into mud, then you got all the weight and current of the water pushing down on the coin in the soft mud, causing sinkage! Did you ever notice {coins/arrowheads} are deeper in the ground along the river/creek/lake and in low-lying valleys that might have flooded compared to {coins/ arrowheads} found on the tops of mountains or in the desert? Its a good idea to have a deep seeking machine in these flooded area or low-lying valleys and bottoms! Water is more powerful and mysterious than one may think! Everything is a result of mother nature!

 

[AUDuke]

Pull tabs and foil are lighter than the surrounding soil, yet they are frequently found several inches deep, since being lighter they couldn't sink therefore they must get covered. Conversely in the Sonoran desert, I have found things that were lost or discarded a 100 or more years ago sitting on the surface.
I have found gold nuggets on the surface and not on bedrock with desert varnish on them. I dont know how long it take desert varnish to form, but its quite a while.
It all depend on the conditions, density, shape and other variables

 

[fathead]

Wow! i always thought that items in the woods were covered by decayed leaves and items in the open were covered by someone or something applying downward pressure during soft soil conditions. I mow occasionally and even drive my pick um up truck over my lawn. So with my delicate 220lbs added, that is between 600 and 2000 lbs of weight on a coin. (disclaimer- I have not used state certified scales to weigh these items so please do not refute my theory based on me talking out of my backside) I know my truck leaves a 4 inch rut in soft soil conditions. Eventually the lawn self corrects,but I am guessing that the metal objects stay lower.

I'm sure that these are too hairbrained and scientifically unsupported to garner much support, but I have spent at least 38 seconds of my life thinking about this matter.

Thank you.

-Fathead

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Ladies and Gentlemen: While many of you are correct in your specific condition, you are using too narrow a vision on the overall world wide conditions.

Yes, objects do work their way down in many conditions for one reason or another. In one case the object may lay exactly where it was originally deposited for many many years, Swr's example of a protected enviornment, yet on the beach or a stream, it may quickly work it's way down until stopped by an area of greater resistance, say a clay layer. Remember under certain conditions sand or soil effectively becomes a fluid - a gold pan, or an area that exhibits similar conditions. (Quick sand for example?)

Then again we have normal materiel depositing over the object from erosion, and don't forget simple air borne or moved materiel.

Many archaeological sites are under 30 - 50 ft from some of these reasons and they do not include heavy items, just bones, feces, etc.

So there is no one simple answer, it depends upon any things, the local conditions.

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[bigwater]

BigWater, Specific Gravity is used in a test involving WATER. It is actually the ratio of the mass of a given volume of WATER to that of the same volume of the tested substance. The test doesn't work solid to solid. Your refrigerator test is just using vibration like the units that clean shell caseings. Gravity is not involved. Your one statement is incorrect. If you put an iron disk in the bottom of your cup and your silver dime on top of it. The dime will Never sink to the bottom of the cup!! I can agree with your theory that earth vibrates. My house is on a concrete slab and I can feel every train that passes and the tracks that are at least 3 mi. away. As for heavier solids sinking into other solids, Like gold into quartz, not true. The gold in quartz got there when they were in a liquid form deep in the earth.

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Yes, specific gravity is a test based on water. Water has a known weight, and we can weigh every other object on the planet based on how much it weighs vs. the amount of the weight of the water it displaces. This gives us a way to determine how heavy an item is related to the other item we're comparing it to. But it doesn't mean anything other than how much an object weighs in relation to how much water weights. It doesn't tell us how much a solid weighs in relation to another solid. We have to do those calculations separately. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that one solid that weighs five times the weight of another solid will sink in the lighter solid.

Gold in quartz IS found due to sinkage. I'm not going to deny that there might be some gold that ends up in quartz due to deep earth marriage, but there's no way you'll convince me that's the only reason. Around here, rivers are formed because the rocks form dams that cause the water flowing down the hills to form a streambed. This process takes thousands of years. Gold is washed down into the riverbed and because it is heavier than the rocks it encounters, it either goes under it, or into it. Quartz is soft and easily fractured., and it will absorb gold. The next time you find a small nugget of gold, place it in your mouth. Bite down on it slightly and let your teeth sink into it. You'll find that you can eventually chew it up like a Tootsie Roll. Gold is so maleable that it will find it's way into any crease and crevise it can, and a crease in a quartz dam is a perfect place for it to land.

 

[Frankn]

AUDuke: Not to get off the subject, but would you mind telling me where you found those "varnished" nuggets. It sounds like your on to Peg Leg Pete's find? Real de Tayopa: You add another factor,Air borne items. Right now the pollen is "raining" down in my area. BigWater: You state quartz is soft and easily fractured. Don't you mean hard and easily fractured? Soft items like gold distort. Gold doesn't sink into rocks! It might fall into cracks in rocks. Perhaps that is what you meant. As far as chewing gold like a tootsie roll, Dam- you've got good teeth!

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[bigwater]

What I really meant is light instead of soft. Sometimes my fingers get ahead of my brain. Quartz only has a specific gravity of around 2.6, so it's easily thrust up from the soil. That's why you'll find it lining the sides of river beds... because it helped form the river beds.

My reference to gold sinking into quartz was exactly what I meant to say though. Heavier minerals will sink into lighter minerals. It doesn't occur overnight, depending on the difference in specific gravity it can take thousands of years, but as an example:

Take your average building brick, you know, the red brick that surrounds your house. Take a hunk of lead and lay it on that brick and leave it there for a couple of years. You won't notice that lead chunk get any smaller, but if you take that brick and have it anylized, you'll find that it has a higher lead content at the spot where the lead sat than it will have in the surrounding areas. That's because the lead leached into the brick due to the lead being heavier than the brick. If you leave that lead brick there for ever, it'll eventually disolve into the brick completely. You won't still be around to prove it... it'll take a few hundred years, but it'll happen eventually.

It's the same with gold and quartz. With gold at 19.3 and quartz at 2.6, forces of nature will leach gold into minute cracks in quartz, and the gold will eventually find it's way all the way through it if there is a path. Quartz is a better gold detector than anything made by Whites .

And I was being facetious about chewing gold like a tootsie roll. However it's very easy to tell gold from fools gold by biting down on it. The maleability of gold , and lack of grit makes it really easy to tell when you pop it in your mouth and put a little pressure on it between your canines.

 

[steve from ohio]

There are just so many variables as to how deep something sinks into the ground.

Tree roots can make things sink or make them raise higher in the ground. The pressure of grass roots going into the ground has an effect of sinkage. We've all seen weeds that grow in a crack in blacktop that eventually destroys that blacktop. Water gets in the ground and freezes causing the ground to expand. It then contracts when it thaws causing the coin to sink.

Rain, floods, the type of weeds or grass in the area. Temperatures, wind, the worms, groundhogs, moles, chipmunks, lawnmowers, people traffic and on and on all effect the depth that something is in or on the ground.

I really don't care if it sinks or not. But I do care that all that stuff that people used to own is down there. I don't care how it got there, just as long as I find it. That old gold or silver was a lot of money back then. It was something that meant a lot to the person who lost it. Picking up something that someone used to own. That person is probably dead by now especially if it is something very old. I just appreciate the fact that I can go with a device and find that old stuff.

 

[Frankn]

Big Water:Specific Gravity is a weight to mass # used with water to determine the identity of a mineral. It does not work solid on solid.-- On your brick theory. Lead oxidizes into a white powder known as lead oxide. When you check the spot where the lead was, you detect a surface coating of lead oxide.-- the problem with your gold / quartz theory is that gold does not oxidize. It will remain stable forever!

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[Shambler]

Shambler: You knock me but offer no reason yourself! I think the 400 folks here would like to hear your reason why your toy sunk 6" in 35 years, but the 3' fence is still 3". Swr just called it like he saw it!

There's a surpise! Even when pointing out he's comparing a fence to a tiny toy car as a means of slight-of-hand, he still does it. Brilliant.

 

[Frankn]

Another knock from Shambler and still no reasoning to back his example! Tell me friend why did the toy sink 6" and the fence sink 0" if all things sink in the ground. You brought up the example I didn't! Could It be that they don't actually " sink "?

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[Shambler]

There are at a minimum 5 posts here explaining ways this could happen, but you're asking for it again as a means of keeping your circular argument afloat.

Remember your theory can't work on the cars since 6" of dirt has not piled up the fence so to keep your theory instact, we'd have to believe the dirt only piled on the cars. Come on! You're continuing this even in the face of the math being a complete mess.

Now let's talk reality. I was an air traffic controller in the military for 13 years. 7 of those years I was a TERPS (Terminal Instrument Procedures) specialist. I was responsible for taking yearly data from surveyors and modifying instrument approaches to airports to maintain safe distances from obstacles. Most of the work was because of the addition of obstacles, but some of the work was because of changes in height. EVERYTHING was sinking except the runway which because of surface area was not expected to sink other than in certain areas where the ground was less dense (yes that is measured and 3 mile long and 500' wide runways require some measuring). The point of elevation used to measure other things against was an area at the approach end of each runway, so theoretically that area could rise making everything else seem to sink (although at varying rates) but that would be incredibly unlikely since that height is measured via altimeter by the FAA during TERPS flight checks. Some things were several feet lower than where they started. Radio and water towers were the worst offenders, but whole buildings where sometimes measured a foot lower than at the time of construction.

Just because it's harder to gauge than a coin doesn't mean larger things aren't sinking, and it surely doesn't mean that factors such as rain, worms/insects, animals, flooding, growing and dying of roots, vibration, freeze/thaw cycles, density, surface area, and YES gravity don't play a direct part (and all are mentioned in this thread).

I find it very difficult to believe that you are or were in construction and had no idea the purpose of footers, slabs, or foundations.

Now you can go back to your simple arguments and "complex dirt piling up science".

 

[Frankn]

Shambler: I not only built my house, I designed it. That included figuring the vertical load on the footers by the slab and the house.I just checked. In ten years it has not sunk. I am just trying to figure out what is happening to objects dropped on the ground, that's all! Now, with your experience you have brought up an important point! The ground actually "sank" but the runway didn't. You may have an important part of the answer. Maybe the ground actually "shrinks" by decay and drying and is built up again by composted and other matter, but only in certain areas. That would explain why objects stay on the surface in the desert. We are slowing piecing this together. Good show Shambler.

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[Rusted Nail]

My theory is this, a 100 years ago someone said where can I put this where no one can find it. 8" in the ground. Fifty years ago people were getting lazier and only placed them in the ground 4". Now days people are so lazy they will not bend over and pick them up off the surface. Just me 2 cents. HH

 

[RigDean]

Those objects in the desert could have been buried at one time, until a wind came through and blew the covering material away exposing the object. How many times could this cycle have occurred in a hundred years? Wind blows, covers it up. Wind blows, uncovers. rains come, covered. wind blows, uncovered...

Treasure gets down there somehow so let's go dig it up!