Adding to this, he said that the cross is quite ‘extraordinary,’ and they are still conducting their test. All the pieces of evidence indicate that the cross is from the 1300 A.D. Basically according to many experts, the cross could be either from 900 A.D. or 1300 A.D., and he thinks that the Templars might have left it in that neighborhood if it had been there. So, he thinks that for some business the Templars did visit North America even before Columbus came and if it’s true, he wonders about the Templar’s belongings.
In the interview, he goes on to say that at least part of that evidence is that they've never seen a cross similar to that one that was more recent than 1300 AD. I'd argue that the right person on Etsy could get you a cross basically identical to that one for less than $50, meaning that (if I'm understanding him correctly) this isn't evidence at all.
However, I have a problem with the statement that I quoted - namely, the tortured logic required to arrive there. Most of us metal detectorists understand that when we find a coin from 1900, that doesn't mean that the coin had been dropped there in 1900. It may have been dropped there an hour before we found it. The context in which it was found may tell us more, but all that date does is establish the earliest possible time that it wound up there, not the most recent. (Assuming that it's not a fake, of course. Then even the date on the coin would be suspect.)
This line of though essentially reads as, and apologies in advance if I'm misunderstanding what Mr. Burns meant: "We found a cross that we think is 700 years old in Nova Scotia, and the Templars were around 700 years ago, and some people say that the Templars went to Nova Scotia, so the Templars must have placed this cross here." Which, of course, is nonsense, as I could have placed that cross there five years ago. When one stops and peels apart each individual assumption - that the cross is as old as they think that it is, that Templars went to Nova Scotia, etc - the story makes even less sense.
I've come to realize though that I'm completely missing the point here. The point is that if we define "good television" as "a product that entices many viewers to watch it," this sort of story is good television, and that's what the producers of this show are after. I suppose my real gripe is that The Curse of Oak Island, like the overwhelming majority of "reality television," is portrayed as something other than the work of fiction that it actually is, and that at least some consumers are willing to accept it as such.
Now that I think about it, this is a pretty trivial thing to be annoyed over. First world problems, right?
Also, link to the interview in its entirety here:
https://www.monstersandcritics.com/...-aliens-makes-us-believe-exclusive-interview/ I didn't make it through the whole thing. It is...ah...interesting.