I keep hearing "well there has to be something attached to AE because of all the artifacts, fire pits, ect being in ONE location"
Excuse my ignorance, but has the island been searched from end to end? Or did TIGHAR pick a likely spot and start looking?
Because if it's the latter, all this debris could be located there, simply because that is where they are looking, right?
The island could be loaded with debris, if you look in another spot and clear off some brush you might find 10 more "fire pits" and old bottles.
But lets say the castaways did pick the 7th site as their hangout. I will tell you a small story- I used to go all night fishing at an island located in the middle of a large lake in Florida. It was hell to get to. Nobody lived on it, there wasn't electricity within 5 miles, but inevitably when we showed up there was another pile of ashes, some beer bottles, junk. If fish exist, rest assured a fisherman will find them. (see notes about the abundance of fish easily caught on Niku). When me and my brother would start a fire we never used one of the existing burn pits, they were full of ashes and the ashes were inevitably wet, so placing dry fat lighter wood(to start the twigs on fire), on top of wet ashes didn't make sense, the wet ashes would make the bottom of our pile wet.. It was easier and faster to clear off a new round sandy area and pile up some sticks. Water percolates through sand very fast, a squall on top of an existing pile of ashes makes for a black wet mess.
No big mystery there. They had plenty of sandy spots to start fires, why use a wet one?