7 ms·

Researchers discover evidence in the mystery of America's 'Lost Colony'

Fairburn 1y ago
[flagged]
duxup 1y ago
The experience of early colonists is so fascinating. Some of these colonies were very tenuous and seemed very unprepared.
- codingdave 1y ago
  Not unlike youth in our current society who leave home then bounce around from one place to another until they find the spot they want to settle in for a while. I mean sure, colonists from hundreds of years ago are different than young adults of today.... but the tenuous nature, in general, of people out exploring the world for a new home is unsurprising.
  - duxup 1y ago
    No I don’t think they are anything alike.
- dentemple 1y ago
  Even today, with modern information available to us, people still woefully underestimate what it would take to live in a true wilderness.
  - lazystar 1y ago
    I've got a great example of this. I'm renting a house that provides a gas powered lawnmower for tenants to use, and I've elected to just let the grass grow because I have no idea how to use the thing
    - rpcope1 1y ago
      Are you joking or something? It's just check the gas and oil, hold down the brake lever on the handle, pull the crank a few times and away you go. Maybe it's old and has a fuel bulb or a choke, or fancy and has a transmission and the lever to engage it, but it's really not complicated at all.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        I grew up around many different sorts of power tools. By my mid-20s I was comfortable using routers, table saws, sawzalls, jigsaws, jackhammers and more. But nobody in my family had any gas-powered motors for anything at all. I'm 61 now, and a volunteer firefighter. We have lots of gas powered chainsaws, circular saws, ventilation fans, and more. I'm still extremely uncomfortable with starting these engines.
    - floren 1y ago
      Now look, there's debates to be had about whether or not lawns are good idea, or how long grass should grow, etc. but there's no excuse for not figuring out how a gas mower works. I could tell you here in a paragraph or you could watch a 30 minute Youtube which will contain in it somewhere the 1 minute of actual instructions you need. It's a pretty damn simple system.
    - jf22 1y ago
      The colonists didn't have anything near this level of technology though...
    - pizzafeelsright 1y ago
      Lazy, You cannot live this way. I can walk you through anything related to home care.
      - lazystar 1y ago
        just anxious. i live pretty remote; if i get hurt and cant get to a phone, no one will find me until my lease expires. one of the downsides of auto payments i think.
- GlenTheMachine 1y ago
  The Jamestown colonists starved to death literally living on the shore of the most productive marine environment on earth. They didn’t know how to care for the fishing nets, so they rotted, and then didn’t know how to fix them. The issue was that many of the colonists were second sons of relatively wealthy families, and weren’t all that familiar with fishing or farming. The first son inherited everything, and the second son had to make his way in the world, and colonizing was an enticing prospect for making your fortune. Poorer families, at the very early stages, weren’t sending their sons on these ventures because they needed the labor at home. https://historicjamestowne.org/wp-content/uploads/Subsistence_Fishing_at_Jamestown_2006.pdf https://historicjamestowne.org/wp-content/uploads/Subsistenc...
  - CGMthrowaway 1y ago
    As someone who grew up next to Jamestown, I can add some context. John Smith, one of Jamestown's leaders, was not from a wealthy or privileged background. "The issue" may have been less about class and more about poor organization, leadership and unrealistic expectations. Fishing and farming skills also deserve context. The soil around Jamestown was marshy and brackish, unsuitable for traditional English farming methods. Yes there were lots of fish but they only ran seasonally (sturgeon etc). The "starving time" you are referencing was made worse by a drought and cutoff trade with the indians
    - elevation 1y ago
      The soil may have been brackish, but this wasn't their main setback. The Jamestown colonists didn't even attempt to plant crops for several years after their arrival. Their first ship brought jewelers and smiths to work the gold they assumed they'd find, but didn't have a real plan for agriculture. The majority died of starvation and disease, but the survivors were sustained by meager leftover travel supplies from newly arriving ships, and by raiding neighboring natives for their corn. Less than a decade later, separatist Pilgrims landed in New England, and by contrast, grew crops immediately, and cultivated diplomatic relations with their neighbors. The Pilgrims settled in a higher latitude with a shorter growing season, but during their first drought they had already stored enough supplies to share with local natives. Jamestown could have been on a similar footing if they'd prioritized survival and diplomacy over finding treasure for the crown, the chartering company, and themselves.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >were very tenuous and seemed very unprepared. Old world politics at the time explain most of this. Some of the english colonies were, ugh, rushed and less well funded than they would have been under ideal situations. This is basically the same reason they didn't look too hard to see what happened to the Roanoke colony.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    It was the VC model of colonization. They expected a few sites to fail to prosper.
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  How would you have prepared, were you in their shoes? Roanoke Island was first landed in 1585. The only foreknowledge of the area would have been wildly embellished and optimistic reports (competing for financing, royal favor and prestige) from the likes of Spanish and French expeditions, or Sir Francis Drake. This was mostly limited to coastal recon and said little of the dangers of malaria, indian politics, seasonality, etc. For example, the Amadas-Barlowe Expedition (1584) described Roanoke Island as "the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful and wholesome of all the world," with fertile soil, abundant wildlife, and friendly natives
chiefalchemist 1y ago
If this is the case then there should be DNA evidence as well. Presuming that assimilation led to procreation.
- ilamont 1y ago
  400-year-old traces would be hard to detect owing to admixture, but if they could find identical-by-descent segments that would be very compelling, as the research into Native American traces found in Polynesian populations shows: https://gizmodo.com/native-americans-voyaged-to-polynesia-long-before-europ-1844305610 https://gizmodo.com/native-americans-voyaged-to-polynesia-lo...
  - lipowitz 1y ago
    If Croatoan ceremonies didn't involve cremation it could be quite a bit easier.. I don't really see the article's evidence as very compelling. Many things may have been collected from the site and ultimately discarded in the trash heaps without the proposed integration.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- card_zero 1y ago
  There's no descendants, bones, or other source of DNA known to belong to the colonists to work from.
  - exe34 1y ago
    The way it works for molecular phylogeny is that you try to find things that are conserved. E.g. if you find a small village in Europe where people haven't moved around much and you find a rare mutation that is also present in one other part of the US, then you might be able to put some numbers on the likelihood that this mutation/gene came from a the original place. Find a second gene, find some artefacts from the right place/time and you have an emerging picture.
  - 1y ago
rich_sasha 1y ago
[flagged]
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
TLDR: the Roanoke Colony moved to Hatteras Island. From a backbarrier island to a barrier island (towards the sea)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
derbOac 1y ago
I have family in the area and my impression from archeological and historical news, articles and books from there is there isn't really one definitive moment where everyone in the colony just kind of up and left to the same place at the same time. If I had to bet, there was a kind of gradual process of degradation of the colony and some went one way and others went another. This was interesting to read and it seems kind of definitive, and my impression is it's consistent with other things I've read. But if I recall correctly, there's also evidence from other sites that some from the colony also went elsewhere. It seems reasonable to me to think that if things were breaking down, there might be differences of thought or preference about where to go, and that they might have also assumed they weren't totally cutting off contact from one another, being in the same area.
- the_real_cher 1y ago
  Where did they go? Were there other settlements ?
  - lmm 1y ago
    There were native people living there (in ways that leave little trace in the archaeological record), I've heard it argued that many colonists may have chosen to join them.
    - schainks 1y ago
      Related, some good examples of this elsewhere during the colonies, with first person evidence cited in Tribe (http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger)
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    The 1619 project touched on this well. Slaves and indentured servants snuck away and joined native settlements and even had fringe settlements of their own eventually. Working in one of the colonies for some rich guy prioritizing tobacco to pay dividends over food wasn’t a fun time.
bluGill 1y ago
I'm not convinced. The reason the natives didn't have the ability to forge iron was more related to there were no good ore deposits to work with. If you are intelligent and see a blacksmith work a few times you can figure out how to forge iron if given some - it is a lot of effort and your first attempts will not be good, but if something is broken you don't lose anything by putting it in a fire and attempting to fix it. (a camp fire gets plenty hot for blacksmithing - just wait for the coals and then blow on them) However the lack of quality ores that were easy to get at meant that they didn't have any metal working in that part of the world and so of course they wouldn't know how to do it. Iron would have made the natives life much better if they had it, and they were smart enough to figure out how to work it from scratch if they had it (they have centuries to learn just like the rest of us) Which is to say the facts are fit equally well by saying "The natives saw blacksmiths work in the colonists. So when aliens took the colonists way in a spaceship after they collected the iron which remained and learned to forge them into useful tools for themselves". Ridiculous of course, but it fits the facts just as well.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Is blowing on it really good enough? People don't have that much breath, and you'd have to put your face right up to the heat. You could use a blowpipe of some sort. But better, a bellows. Was there any evidence of either? Although the South and Central Americans worked bronze, the North Americans did not. I doubt a leap directly from nothing to iron smithing could occur.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    They didn't have metal options - in north america metals are mostly found in deep mines. I agree that blowing is not ideal - but it would work. A flat board as a fan, or even bellows are options. The larger point is none of these would leave evidence behind.
  - klank 1y ago
    Whether or not forced air (blowing) would be necessary would depend on the coal temp, metal size, and how you want to shape the metal. Simple forging of small enough pieces within a large enough coal bed might not even require forced air to reach a workable temp.
vpribish 1y ago
[flagged]
buildsjets 1y ago
Is this story available from a reputable source?

[flagged]

The experience of early colonists is so fascinating. Some of these colonies were very tenuous and seemed very unprepared.

codingdave 1y ago
Not unlike youth in our current society who leave home then bounce around from one place to another until they find the spot they want to settle in for a while. I mean sure, colonists from hundreds of years ago are different than young adults of today.... but the tenuous nature, in general, of people out exploring the world for a new home is unsurprising.
- duxup 1y ago
  No I don’t think they are anything alike.
dentemple 1y ago
Even today, with modern information available to us, people still woefully underestimate what it would take to live in a true wilderness.
- lazystar 1y ago
  I've got a great example of this. I'm renting a house that provides a gas powered lawnmower for tenants to use, and I've elected to just let the grass grow because I have no idea how to use the thing
  - rpcope1 1y ago
    Are you joking or something? It's just check the gas and oil, hold down the brake lever on the handle, pull the crank a few times and away you go. Maybe it's old and has a fuel bulb or a choke, or fancy and has a transmission and the lever to engage it, but it's really not complicated at all.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      I grew up around many different sorts of power tools. By my mid-20s I was comfortable using routers, table saws, sawzalls, jigsaws, jackhammers and more. But nobody in my family had any gas-powered motors for anything at all. I'm 61 now, and a volunteer firefighter. We have lots of gas powered chainsaws, circular saws, ventilation fans, and more. I'm still extremely uncomfortable with starting these engines.
  - floren 1y ago
    Now look, there's debates to be had about whether or not lawns are good idea, or how long grass should grow, etc. but there's no excuse for not figuring out how a gas mower works. I could tell you here in a paragraph or you could watch a 30 minute Youtube which will contain in it somewhere the 1 minute of actual instructions you need. It's a pretty damn simple system.
  - jf22 1y ago
    The colonists didn't have anything near this level of technology though...
  - pizzafeelsright 1y ago
    Lazy, You cannot live this way. I can walk you through anything related to home care.
    - lazystar 1y ago
      just anxious. i live pretty remote; if i get hurt and cant get to a phone, no one will find me until my lease expires. one of the downsides of auto payments i think.
GlenTheMachine 1y ago
The Jamestown colonists starved to death literally living on the shore of the most productive marine environment on earth. They didn’t know how to care for the fishing nets, so they rotted, and then didn’t know how to fix them. The issue was that many of the colonists were second sons of relatively wealthy families, and weren’t all that familiar with fishing or farming. The first son inherited everything, and the second son had to make his way in the world, and colonizing was an enticing prospect for making your fortune. Poorer families, at the very early stages, weren’t sending their sons on these ventures because they needed the labor at home. https://historicjamestowne.org/wp-content/uploads/Subsistence_Fishing_at_Jamestown_2006.pdf https://historicjamestowne.org/wp-content/uploads/Subsistenc...
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  As someone who grew up next to Jamestown, I can add some context. John Smith, one of Jamestown's leaders, was not from a wealthy or privileged background. "The issue" may have been less about class and more about poor organization, leadership and unrealistic expectations. Fishing and farming skills also deserve context. The soil around Jamestown was marshy and brackish, unsuitable for traditional English farming methods. Yes there were lots of fish but they only ran seasonally (sturgeon etc). The "starving time" you are referencing was made worse by a drought and cutoff trade with the indians
  - elevation 1y ago
    The soil may have been brackish, but this wasn't their main setback. The Jamestown colonists didn't even attempt to plant crops for several years after their arrival. Their first ship brought jewelers and smiths to work the gold they assumed they'd find, but didn't have a real plan for agriculture. The majority died of starvation and disease, but the survivors were sustained by meager leftover travel supplies from newly arriving ships, and by raiding neighboring natives for their corn. Less than a decade later, separatist Pilgrims landed in New England, and by contrast, grew crops immediately, and cultivated diplomatic relations with their neighbors. The Pilgrims settled in a higher latitude with a shorter growing season, but during their first drought they had already stored enough supplies to share with local natives. Jamestown could have been on a similar footing if they'd prioritized survival and diplomacy over finding treasure for the crown, the chartering company, and themselves.
potato3732842 1y ago
>were very tenuous and seemed very unprepared. Old world politics at the time explain most of this. Some of the english colonies were, ugh, rushed and less well funded than they would have been under ideal situations. This is basically the same reason they didn't look too hard to see what happened to the Roanoke colony.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  It was the VC model of colonization. They expected a few sites to fail to prosper.
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
How would you have prepared, were you in their shoes? Roanoke Island was first landed in 1585. The only foreknowledge of the area would have been wildly embellished and optimistic reports (competing for financing, royal favor and prestige) from the likes of Spanish and French expeditions, or Sir Francis Drake. This was mostly limited to coastal recon and said little of the dangers of malaria, indian politics, seasonality, etc. For example, the Amadas-Barlowe Expedition (1584) described Roanoke Island as "the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful and wholesome of all the world," with fertile soil, abundant wildlife, and friendly natives

chiefalchemist 1y ago

If this is the case then there should be DNA evidence as well. Presuming that assimilation led to procreation.

ilamont 1y ago
400-year-old traces would be hard to detect owing to admixture, but if they could find identical-by-descent segments that would be very compelling, as the research into Native American traces found in Polynesian populations shows: https://gizmodo.com/native-americans-voyaged-to-polynesia-long-before-europ-1844305610 https://gizmodo.com/native-americans-voyaged-to-polynesia-lo...
- lipowitz 1y ago
  If Croatoan ceremonies didn't involve cremation it could be quite a bit easier.. I don't really see the article's evidence as very compelling. Many things may have been collected from the site and ultimately discarded in the trash heaps without the proposed integration.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
card_zero 1y ago
There's no descendants, bones, or other source of DNA known to belong to the colonists to work from.
- exe34 1y ago
  The way it works for molecular phylogeny is that you try to find things that are conserved. E.g. if you find a small village in Europe where people haven't moved around much and you find a rare mutation that is also present in one other part of the US, then you might be able to put some numbers on the likelihood that this mutation/gene came from a the original place. Find a second gene, find some artefacts from the right place/time and you have an emerging picture.
- 1y ago

rich_sasha 1y ago

[flagged]

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

TLDR: the Roanoke Colony moved to Hatteras Island. From a backbarrier island to a barrier island (towards the sea)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

derbOac 1y ago

I have family in the area and my impression from archeological and historical news, articles and books from there is there isn't really one definitive moment where everyone in the colony just kind of up and left to the same place at the same time. If I had to bet, there was a kind of gradual process of degradation of the colony and some went one way and others went another. This was interesting to read and it seems kind of definitive, and my impression is it's consistent with other things I've read. But if I recall correctly, there's also evidence from other sites that some from the colony also went elsewhere. It seems reasonable to me to think that if things were breaking down, there might be differences of thought or preference about where to go, and that they might have also assumed they weren't totally cutting off contact from one another, being in the same area.

the_real_cher 1y ago
Where did they go? Were there other settlements ?
- lmm 1y ago
  There were native people living there (in ways that leave little trace in the archaeological record), I've heard it argued that many colonists may have chosen to join them.
  - schainks 1y ago
    Related, some good examples of this elsewhere during the colonies, with first person evidence cited in Tribe (http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger)
- Spooky23 1y ago
  The 1619 project touched on this well. Slaves and indentured servants snuck away and joined native settlements and even had fringe settlements of their own eventually. Working in one of the colonies for some rich guy prioritizing tobacco to pay dividends over food wasn’t a fun time.

bluGill 1y ago

I'm not convinced. The reason the natives didn't have the ability to forge iron was more related to there were no good ore deposits to work with. If you are intelligent and see a blacksmith work a few times you can figure out how to forge iron if given some - it is a lot of effort and your first attempts will not be good, but if something is broken you don't lose anything by putting it in a fire and attempting to fix it. (a camp fire gets plenty hot for blacksmithing - just wait for the coals and then blow on them) However the lack of quality ores that were easy to get at meant that they didn't have any metal working in that part of the world and so of course they wouldn't know how to do it. Iron would have made the natives life much better if they had it, and they were smart enough to figure out how to work it from scratch if they had it (they have centuries to learn just like the rest of us) Which is to say the facts are fit equally well by saying "The natives saw blacksmiths work in the colonists. So when aliens took the colonists way in a spaceship after they collected the iron which remained and learned to forge them into useful tools for themselves". Ridiculous of course, but it fits the facts just as well.

WalterBright 1y ago
Is blowing on it really good enough? People don't have that much breath, and you'd have to put your face right up to the heat. You could use a blowpipe of some sort. But better, a bellows. Was there any evidence of either? Although the South and Central Americans worked bronze, the North Americans did not. I doubt a leap directly from nothing to iron smithing could occur.
- bluGill 1y ago
  They didn't have metal options - in north america metals are mostly found in deep mines. I agree that blowing is not ideal - but it would work. A flat board as a fan, or even bellows are options. The larger point is none of these would leave evidence behind.
- klank 1y ago
  Whether or not forced air (blowing) would be necessary would depend on the coal temp, metal size, and how you want to shape the metal. Simple forging of small enough pieces within a large enough coal bed might not even require forced air to reach a workable temp.

vpribish 1y ago

[flagged]

buildsjets 1y ago

Is this story available from a reputable source?