Re: King Solomon's Mines
HOLA Rebel! Funny you should mention Ft Knox! I was stationed there a few decades back, and one fine day (off duty of course
) I decided to go take the 'tour' of the store house with all the gold. I was shocked when I got to the gate and they refused to let me enter. I said what about the tours, and the guards told me they had stopped allowing tours of the vault. So I started asking around and got a very strange rumor - that there was a really good reason why they were not allowing anyone to tour the vaults anymore, because there was NOTHING in there! I got more curious so asked a few officers and was told "no comment" several times, along with that rumor was false the vaults were full of gold. So why no tours? What, do they expect someone is going to slip a few eighty pound bricks of gold in their pockets and sneak out?
Well a couple of years ago there was a special on TV touring the vaults, because of that nasty rumor! The program showed room after room filled to the ceiling with bars of gold. Hmm, now how can you tell from TV if they are real gold bars, or if the rooms are actually filled, not just a facade of bars in front by the doors? We can't, but the TV special accomplished the mission of dis-spelling the rumors - however it really didn't prove anything. I do know they store a surprising amount of gold in West Point (of all places!) and a lot was buried in the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9-11 which few people knew about until after.
I have to make a correction - I wrote
1321 (must have been thinking of that new book/theory 1421, the year the
Chinese discovered America/Australia/Antarctica/circumnavigated Earth etc - pretty far out stuff) when the
correct date would have been
1398 for the year when Sinclair sailed to America. More than ninety years after the suppression of the Templars began in 1307.
Sinclair is quite a mystery - for I have seen both claims with evidence to support it, that he was NOT a Templar, and that he WAS a Templar. If he were not a member of the Templars, why should they trust him to haul away and secret (hide) their most valuable/dangerous treasures? Even Sinclair's voyage to America is shrouded in mystery - he allowed no maps to be made, and why did Sir Gunn die? Fighting with natives? That would argue against cooperation/intermarriage with native people, or perhaps they
forced labor of natives to help in the massive work at Oak Island, the stone tower in R.I. or the stone walls/fortress in Quebec? If it were forced labor, they might not be too friendly - but this is ALL conjecture on my part. Maybe Gunn died of illness or mishap, or even old age - a knight would not be out of character to go adventuring in his sixties if he felt fit enough to go. Sinclair left clues in Rosslyn, if we can figure them out. Whence came the coconuts, or to be more precise the coconut fiber? Quite a bit was used in the drain lines making the traps, and it surely didn't come from Nova Scotia or New England! Did Sinclair voyage further south? Zeno makes no mention of traveling farther south than where Rhode Island would be; but then Zeno was not a Scot either but a Venetian. There is also a Zeno map, which did not appear until 1558 (produced by a descendant of Nicolo) and is believed by some scholars to be a hoax, produced to grant Venice a claim on the newly discovered lands in America.
To play the devil's advocate, if Sinclair were not transporting something terribly valuable/dangerous to a 'secret land' (remember Carthage seemed to consider America her own secret land) what on Earth was he doing? He was certainly not exploring, not in the manner of Lief Erikson or Columbus, he made no announcements to the world about any new discoveries, apparently didn't found new colonies, nor make any attempt to exploit the Americas for the abundant timber, furs, fish, etc nor explore for minerals. So what
was Sinclair doing on that voyage, if NOT carrying away some kind of Templar treasure/dangerous artifact to a place where no European would be able to get it? To me, it rather looks like Sinclair WAS spiriting away Templar treasures to America, which would fit with his behavior, and explain many things - like who actually built the Money Pit, and what is buried within it.
I have not made the connections to the KGC, in my opinion the linkage is just too tenuous for me. On what research I have on the knights of the golden circle, they were really a Civil War-genre group. It should not be surprising to find KGC evidence/linkages in Canada, where many a Copperhead went rather than be drafted into the Union Army.
It is interesting, and I realize that much of the theories cannot be proven with the evidence we have - however there are known facts; the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from history, and according to the bible was "hidden in it's place" - where was that place? Under the Temple Mount? If so, (another IF) then it is quite possible that the Templar knights could have found it; the huge treasure amassed by king Solomon almost certainly had a good amount buried with him - but where was Solomon buried? Under the Temple he built? It would not be unheard of; Solomon was certainly NOT buried where the other kings of Israel were buried (and tombs later looted by Judaean kings hungry for money) and what about the Holy Grail? A major problem with this 'house of cards' theory (maybe not quite that shakey!) is where the Templars stored their most valuable or dangerous treasures? Ancient sources say Malta, but like you mentioned Rebel, they were really the first 'bankers' of Medeival times; if their treasures were stored in France, why is it that the King of France or his agents failed to locate and seize any of it? Sicily was another stronghold of the Templars, with plenty of castles etc but again no Templar treasures ever found there either. As rich as the Templars were, virtually nothing of their vast treasures has ever been found! Then we have the wild cards in the mix, like the Cathars of France; were they truly allied with the Templars?
Of course this is the stuff of which Hollywood conjures up movies like the Da Vinci Code and similar high drama and mystery, however Hollywood (and the authors producing their screenplays) take
great liberties with the facts and mix in
all sorts of utterly un-founded (if thrilling and controversial) myths along with the facts. There is even a relatively new 'genre' of fiction books now, called "Historical Fiction" but sold IN the NON-fiction, historical sections of bookstores, written by the same sorts of authors who just love to mix in fantasy with fact; and we the public have many folks who
cannot tell the difference between historical fiction and history. I really wonder what the future holds with people accepting historical fiction AS history!
Sorry for yet another long-winded post - I get carried away pretty easily with this subject. Good talking with you again Rebel!
Oroblanco
"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"--Groucho Marx
YO HO HO !!! 
SORRY, it was the son, who did it... King Roger II of Sicily... (singing... 'What cha gonna do, when they come for you... BAD BOY! BAD BOY!... AHOY! MAKE 'EM WALK DA PLANT !!! YO HO HO !!!) 
