Peenie Wallie: Did Arturito Find Treasure on Robinson Crusoe Island?

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October 02, 2005

Did Arturito Find Treasure on Robinson Crusoe Island?

"...the truth is that the olives are being harvested before planting the olive trees." - Leopoldo González, mayor of Juan Fernandez.

Arturito did find a treasure on Robinson Crusoe island. Of this, there is no dispute. The treasure is publicity, and he's probably gotten more than anyone anticipated. Possibly more than he deserves.

Technically, he isn't a robot and his name isn't Arturito. He's a remotely controlled rover named "TX Araña" ("TX Spider"). He's commonly referred to as "Arturito"("Little Arthur") because "Arturito" sounds like "R2D2". And they call him a robot because it sounds more exciting than a rover. Got it?

So what did this little 4 wheeled rover find exactly? Well, at this point, it's hard to say. Some say he found hundreds of tons of treasure. Some say he found no such thing. I'm sure that I don't know what he found. But I do know this. They haven't actually pulled anything out of the ground yet. No gold. No silver. No emeralds. Nada.

Ostensibly, the treasure is all wrapped up in red tape by Conama and Conaf. They're arguing over how the treasure will be divided, and what laws to apply in this situation.

Meanwhile, in the giddy aftermath of their initial claim of discovering the treasure, some of the voices rising from the din aren't convinced that anything has been discovered at all.

The Rise of the Pundits:
There are a few things about the story that I don't quite get.

If Bernard Keiser has been on the island for 7 years with ground penetrating radar and sensitive electromagnetic equipment and never found the treasure, how did Arturito find it so quickly?
Why announce to the world that you've found it, before you've recovered a single ingot?
They claim to have located the treasure on a high part of the island, where it would have been difficult to take the treasure. This doesn't jive with the story, because Webb supposedly split his mast, buried the treasure, and planned to return immediately after repairing the ship in Valparaiso. Why would he hike up into the mountains with tons of treasure if he planned to return ASAP to collect it? Wouldn't it make more sense to bury it closer to sea level?
There is zero soil at Cerro Tres Puntas. It's all volcanic rock. So, we're supposed to believe that they climbed 3,000 feet to the top of Cerro Tres Puntas and bored 50 feet down into volcanic rock to bury the treasure?
Why bury it on Mas a Tierra at all? Why not on Isla Santa Clara or Mas a Fuera? They saw far less traffic than Mas a Tierra.
As for the robot, I'm not even sure where to begin. R2-D2 has an "antiplasma reactor"? There is no such thing. I've read at various places that the robot uses sonar, radar, or gamma rays. Which is it? All of the above? None of the above? Throw in the problem of translating from Spanish to English, and it's hard to know if the technical inconsistencies are due to fraud, language barriers, or just rampant incompetence of the idiotic talking heads.
Why does the robot have wheels on it? Any type of platform that's sending waves into the ground should be in contact with the ground, I would think. Not 3 inches above the ground. I mean, I'm not sure what that robot is doing, but I can't imagine that being 3 inches off the ground helps things.
Bernard Keiser, who's searched for 7 years with three authentic treasure maps and found nothing, doubts that they've found anything. He thinks it's a publicity stunt for Wagner's robot, but I personally doubt this. They already had plenty of good publicity for their robot, and pretending to find something that they couldn't produce would actually be very bad publicity for their robot.
The New Scientist appears somewhat skeptical about how the miraculous robot Arturita ("Little Arthur") actually identifies sub-surface objects. They're dissecting whether the claim is that Arturita uses Ground Penetrating Radar(GPR), or magnetometry, or some combination of both. They seem to indicate that, no matter what technology you use, it's more of an art than a science to identify subterranean objects.
Finally, George Edmunds, author of "Kidd: The Search for his Treasure" weighed in today with this observation:

"Believe me, 'Anson's treasure' will never be found on JF Island. The robot R2D2 may have found an anomaly but certainly not a (the) treasure. B Keiser was invited to talk to us (Myself and research collaborator)but declined. Time will show he made a big mistake!"