A newly authorized 2025 excavation on Oak Island’s Lot Five has uncovered an ancient metal artifact that predates all known settlement on the island, stunning Marty Lagina’s team and forcing historians to reconsider the island’s true timeline.

In early October 2025, the Oak Island excavation team led by brothers Rick and Marty Lagina announced a discovery on Lot 5 that has dramatically shifted the focus of their long-running investigation—and potentially rewritten the island’s history altogether.

For generations, treasure hunters, archaeologists, and television viewers have been fixated on the Money Pit, the infamous deep shaft believed to hide gold, Templar relics, and ancient artifacts.

But according to the team’s latest findings, the island’s biggest secrets may not lie underground at all, but right at the surface.

The discovery occurred during a routine excavation on the western side of Lot 5, a parcel of land acquired by the Lagina brothers in 2021 after years of trying to secure access.

On September 28, the crew began a new grid search with advanced metal-detecting and soil-analysis equipment.

Veteran detectorist Gary Drayton was the first to notice a peculiar, unusually strong signal in an area that had previously offered no significant results.

“This one was weird,” Drayton recalls.

“It wasn’t behaving like gold, silver, or anything I’d expect.

It almost had a… layered tone to it.”

When the team dug down just under twelve inches, they recovered a small, flat, corroded object that immediately caught Marty Lagina’s attention.

“That is not from the 1700s,” he said on camera, brushing away wet clay.

“I’ve never seen metal decay like this on this island.”

At first glance, the object appeared to be a coin—round, thin, and roughly the size of a modern half dollar.

But the metal composition left the team baffled.

Preliminary field tests suggested a combination of copper, tin, and traces of antimony, a composition not typically found in colonial-era or maritime artifacts.

Even more strangely, the oxidation pattern hinted at extreme age—far older than any documented human activity on the island.

Two days later, forensic analysis conducted at a lab in Halifax dated the metal to somewhere between the 9th and 12th centuries.

If accurate, the artifact predates the earliest accepted timeline of European presence in Nova Scotia by at least 300 years.

The lab’s metallurgist, Dr.Lauren Hemsworth, contacted the team directly.

“There is no known trade route, cultural presence, or recorded expedition that explains this alloy ending up on Oak Island so early,” she said.

“If the dating is correct, someone with advanced metalworking knowledge was here long before the 1700s.”

This revelation has reignited some of the most controversial theories surrounding Oak Island—namely, the idea that medieval explorers, possibly connected to the Knights Templar or early Portuguese navigators, reached the island centuries before documented settlement.

While Rick Lagina typically avoids speculation, he admitted that the new find “pushes the boundaries of what we thought possible.”

The excavation team also recovered fragments of pottery and what appears to be a cast-iron cooking pot nearby, both buried in a layer of soil consistent with domestic human activity.

This suggests that Lot 5 may once have been not just a work site but a settlement—an early community whose existence has been completely absent from historical records.

During an on-site meeting filmed for the upcoming season of The Curse of Oak Island, Rick addressed the team: “For two hundred years, everyone has been digging down, convinced the treasure lies deep.

But maybe the real story—the one we’ve all been missing—is right here, close to the surface.”

Gary Drayton seemed equally convinced.

“A hammered coin, foreign metal composition, ancient pottery… that’s not accidental loss.

Someone lived here.

Someone worked here.

And someone brought this.”

The discovery, now publicly confirmed through the team’s official channels, has sparked intense debate among historians and amateur researchers.

Some argue the find could simply be contamination or misdating, while others believe it could be the most significant breakthrough since the first reports of the Money Pit in 1795.

Online forums, archival researchers, and Oak Island enthusiasts have already begun circulating maps, old maritime logs, and even speculations involving lost Roman expeditions and Templar voyages across the Atlantic.

For the Lagina brothers, however, the priority remains systematic investigation.

Rick has ordered a full archaeological sweep of Lot 5, including deeper soil coring and expanded artifact mapping.

“We owe it to history,” he said, “to follow this wherever it leads.”

As the season continues, the team hopes to uncover more artifacts that could confirm—or challenge—the early settlement theory.

For now, one thing is clear: Oak Island’s greatest mystery may not be buried in the dark depths of the Money Pit, but hidden in the ordinary-looking soil of Lot 5, quietly waiting to rewrite the island’s story.

Whatever comes next, this latest discovery has once again proven that on Oak Island, history is never as simple as it seems.