3 ms·

To me, the presence of the stone found at 90 feet makes me think the whole thing was just a fake treasure pit designed to waste your adversary's time. If you we

by jamoes 12y ago

To me, the presence of the stone found at 90 feet makes me think the whole thing was just a fake treasure pit designed to waste your adversary's time. If you were truly trying to hide a treasure, why would you intentionally leave semi-cryptic clues about what lay below? It's kinda like a reverse-proof-of-work. It takes you a constant amount of time (probably a few weeks of work for a crew working on digging the ~100 foot pit and leaving a few fake clues). Then, once you tell someone else about it, it has the potential to occupy years of their life attempting to discover the "treasure" you told them about.

mcphage 12y ago
> the presence of the stone found at 90 feet You mean that really important stone which somehow got misplaced—or put into a fireplace—and so we have this replica "for reals you guys"?
- swang 12y ago
  They don't really mention what happened to it but they never said it was misplaced or that it was lost. The mention of the fireplace was during the time where no one had a clue what was written on the stone.
  - zwily 12y ago
    At the end, they say that the stone has been lost since 1930.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > You mean that really important stone which somehow got misplaced—or put into a fireplace On a total tangent: People used to just hack up important monuments all the time if they thought they could use them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury > In the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, locals destroyed many of the standing stones around the henge, both for religious and practical reasons. The antiquarians John Aubrey and William Stukeley however took an interest in Avebury during the 17th century, and recorded much of the site before its destruction. > The majority of the standing stones that had been a part of the monument for thousands of years were smashed up to be used as building material for the local area. This was achieved in a method that involved lighting a fire to heat the sarcen, then pouring cold water on it to create weaknesses in the rock, and finally smashing at these weak points with a sledgehammer.
astrobe_ 12y ago
Indeed, As a pirate I would certainly not spend weeks digging an elaborate treasure vault that would need a full crew. Putting all of my goods at one location wouldn't look like a good idea either. I would rather bury my treasure at different locations, and not too deep so that the job can be done quickly with the help of a couple of "expandable" guys. This has the extra advantage that retrieving it is easier, and may serve as a life insurance if I get caught and tortured (or at least buy time and give chances to escape or be rescued). This also probably requires a map. Carving it in stone is probably the best (memory fades, paper burn), but here I would use caution again and would not write everything on a single stone.
- chris_mahan 12y ago
  If I was a real pirate, I'd store my treasure in another island, or rather spend it on cannons, women, and booze.
- lovemenot 12y ago
  Perhaps it is more apt to imagine yourself as a semi-autonomous band of pirates, rather than as an authoritarian individual. Their design challenges were both to hide loot from outsiders and to make it difficult for any smaller group of band members to return to the scene without alerting most of the others. This elaborate arrangement could have been designed to buy time for the rest of the group to hear about excavations and return to claim their share. From having only read the article, my theory is that the band had discovered a naturally occurring shaft part-filled with sea water. They somehow blocked the base of the shaft then drained it with lowered buckets. It is feasible that their skin-divers were able to work from air pockets in the cavern below. Also, that the divers may have discovered a swimable route to open water. With an empty shaft, they now needed to shore up and back-fill several times to make looting from below difficult and dangerous. They'd have been concerned about one of their number draining all the back-fill and treasure into the cavern using gunpowder. Hence they built many layers, each of which would have been very risky to tunnel into, even for someone who knew the design. The depth of the earth layers, partial air gap and strength of shoring materials might have been calculated to be particularly unstable, when not supported from below. Since the treasure was be recovered from the top, it is most likely that the pit had worked exactly as intended. The treasure was already long gone before anyone else noticed the pit. Its trappings were left in place and made generations of greedy people the poorer. The message stone, if it existed, was a wind-up. Its spirit suggests it was done at the time of recovery. Pleased as they were to find everything as they'd left it. This had cost almost no effort for a lasting glow of satisfaction. The pit itself had not been tremendously difficult to make either. So there is no reason to believe it had ever hidden more than just ordinary wealth. This theory is not flawless. Nevertheless, I believe it makes sense to consider design parameters around building an untrusted network.

by jamoes 12y ago

mcphage 12y ago

> the presence of the stone found at 90 feet You mean that really important stone which somehow got misplaced—or put into a fireplace—and so we have this replica "for reals you guys"?

swang 12y ago
They don't really mention what happened to it but they never said it was misplaced or that it was lost. The mention of the fireplace was during the time where no one had a clue what was written on the stone.
- zwily 12y ago
  At the end, they say that the stone has been lost since 1930.
DanBC 12y ago
> You mean that really important stone which somehow got misplaced—or put into a fireplace On a total tangent: People used to just hack up important monuments all the time if they thought they could use them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury > In the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, locals destroyed many of the standing stones around the henge, both for religious and practical reasons. The antiquarians John Aubrey and William Stukeley however took an interest in Avebury during the 17th century, and recorded much of the site before its destruction. > The majority of the standing stones that had been a part of the monument for thousands of years were smashed up to be used as building material for the local area. This was achieved in a method that involved lighting a fire to heat the sarcen, then pouring cold water on it to create weaknesses in the rock, and finally smashing at these weak points with a sledgehammer.

astrobe_ 12y ago

Indeed, As a pirate I would certainly not spend weeks digging an elaborate treasure vault that would need a full crew. Putting all of my goods at one location wouldn't look like a good idea either. I would rather bury my treasure at different locations, and not too deep so that the job can be done quickly with the help of a couple of "expandable" guys. This has the extra advantage that retrieving it is easier, and may serve as a life insurance if I get caught and tortured (or at least buy time and give chances to escape or be rescued). This also probably requires a map. Carving it in stone is probably the best (memory fades, paper burn), but here I would use caution again and would not write everything on a single stone.

chris_mahan 12y ago
If I was a real pirate, I'd store my treasure in another island, or rather spend it on cannons, women, and booze.
lovemenot 12y ago
Perhaps it is more apt to imagine yourself as a semi-autonomous band of pirates, rather than as an authoritarian individual. Their design challenges were both to hide loot from outsiders and to make it difficult for any smaller group of band members to return to the scene without alerting most of the others. This elaborate arrangement could have been designed to buy time for the rest of the group to hear about excavations and return to claim their share. From having only read the article, my theory is that the band had discovered a naturally occurring shaft part-filled with sea water. They somehow blocked the base of the shaft then drained it with lowered buckets. It is feasible that their skin-divers were able to work from air pockets in the cavern below. Also, that the divers may have discovered a swimable route to open water. With an empty shaft, they now needed to shore up and back-fill several times to make looting from below difficult and dangerous. They'd have been concerned about one of their number draining all the back-fill and treasure into the cavern using gunpowder. Hence they built many layers, each of which would have been very risky to tunnel into, even for someone who knew the design. The depth of the earth layers, partial air gap and strength of shoring materials might have been calculated to be particularly unstable, when not supported from below. Since the treasure was be recovered from the top, it is most likely that the pit had worked exactly as intended. The treasure was already long gone before anyone else noticed the pit. Its trappings were left in place and made generations of greedy people the poorer. The message stone, if it existed, was a wind-up. Its spirit suggests it was done at the time of recovery. Pleased as they were to find everything as they'd left it. This had cost almost no effort for a lasting glow of satisfaction. The pit itself had not been tremendously difficult to make either. So there is no reason to believe it had ever hidden more than just ordinary wealth. This theory is not flawless. Nevertheless, I believe it makes sense to consider design parameters around building an untrusted network.