Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony.

[JaneyVee]

Newly discovered human bones prove the first permanent British settlers in North America turned to cannibalism over the cruel winter of 1609-10, US researchers have said.

Scientists found unusual cuts consistent with butchering for meat on human bones dumped in a rubbish pit.

The four-century-old skull and tibia of a teenage girl in James Fort, Virginia, was excavated from the dump last year.

James Fort, founded in 1607, was the earliest part of the Jamestown colony.

"The evidence is absolutely consistent with dismemberment and de-fleshing of this body," said Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.

Written documents had previously suggested the desperate colonists resorted to cannibalism - but the discovery of the 14-year-old girl's bones offer the first scientific proof.


Researchers fashioned a three-dimension replica of the girl's face

The rest: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22362831#TWEET741061

[kestrel91316]

1. Oh, that Virginia COMPANY of London was quite the organization.

Eating people to help ensure PROFITS.

[sfpcjock]

7. LoL

If only she could have held out for Turty McTurtle McConnell and Paul Ryan to make here corpse into soylent green

[Blue_Tires]

18. Soylent Green wasn't science fiction, it was a menu, baby!

[Sherman A1]

2. Interesting

Thanks for posting.

We visited Jamestown a few years ago and watched the on going dig for a bit. Really enjoyed the visit.

[geek tragedy]

3. OMG the details of what they found.

Not going to post it, but

[azurnoir]

4. Interesting thanks n/t

[REP]

5. Neat. Very likely one of my ancestors was a cannibal.

There's pretty good evidence he was there then.

[dawg]

9. That's true for most of us.

It seems like I once read that it was, perhaps, especially true for those of us with British heritage. IIRC, the outbreak of Mad Cow Disease turned out to be less lethal for the general population than expected because of the prevalence of protective genes that could only have evolved as a protective measure against the sort of diseases you get through cannibalism.

[REP]

19. Well, I'm of Welsh descent

So I have British heritage but not English!

My Jamestown ancestor may - or may not - be my one know English peep; no one knows anything about him really and the name is common along the Welsh Marches.

[Bohunk68]

12. Makes me wonder now about one of my ancestors,

Stephen Hopkins, who went there with his wife and three daughters. They died in the famine and he then went to Bermuda before returning to England and then coming over on the Mayflower in 1620 to Plymouth Colony.

[SpookyCat]

15. I believe we are...veeeeeery distantly...realated.

Yaye my family just got bigger! LOL!

[Bohunk68]

21. I once came across an item that claimed

30,000,000 million Americans could claim descent from the 28 Mayflower families that had descendants. I'm also descended from Richard Warren. Who probably had a cousin, Elizabeth Warren, wife of John Bigalo. They all came from the same area of England north of the Thames along the coast and south of The Wash. Also descended from the Welshman, Henry Luce, whose name was probably spelled Lewes. The overwhelming majority of Luces in this country are descended from him and his wife, Remember Litchfield. They had 10 sons that lived and were on Martha's Vineyard.

[RudynJack]

6. It's hard to imagine

what drives people to this. I've read many accounts of the Donner Party, various people lost at sea, etc. etc.

It's horrifying, but I can't judge them. I don't know what that kind of starvation feels like. Hopefully, this girl died of other causes. In that case, it's hard to blame people for not using what was available to them.

But it's still hard to imagine starving in a relatively lush world.

[REP]

17. They had eaten their horses, dogs, cats, then rats, mice, their leather shoes ...

... and it was winter, and the indigenous people were trying to kill them. There simply was no food. This girl probably died either of starvation or sickness or both; that her body was found in the rubbish heap is a sign the survivors were too weak to bury her (in probably frozen ground), not disrespect.

It's almost impossible to imagine such horror in our modern world, but if my dead body could keep someone from dying of starvation, I'd consider that an honorable burial.

[Brickbat]

8. I love that they can find these details: "The cuts to the girl's bones also indicate the work was

hesitant - whoever performed the dismemberment was not a skilled butcher of animals. It is also possible the ersatz butcher was a woman, as they made up the majority of the fort's inhabitants."

[marions ghost]

10. Wouldn't there be

squirrels, deer, birds, fish, clams, turtles, and other small animals on Jamestown Island in the winter?

They must not have been very good hunters. Or in touch with any Indians.

[Xithras]

11. Not for long.

Jamestown island is fairly small, and 200+ people would have hunted its animal population to extinction within a couple of months. The site was chosen because it was defensible, and not because it offered good hunting prospects.

The settlers assumed that they could trade with the natives, and while that worked for a while, the relationship eventually went south. The local natives had an effective seige around the island, kidnapping and killing any settlers they found hunting or foraging for food. The natives were trying to kill them off.

[justiceischeap]

13. Many scientists speculate that's what happened on Easter Island too

small island too many people to sustain.

[marions ghost]

14. thanks for that insight

I see how it happened now. You motivated me to google and I found this essay...

---------------

"As Captain John Smith admitted, "Now although there be Deer in the woods, Fish in the rivers, and Fowls in abundance in their seasons; yet the woods are so wide, the rivers so broad, and the beasts so wild, and we so unskillful to catch them, we little troubled them nor they us." The colonists were forced to admit that "had the Savages not fed us, we directly had starved." Most of the first colonists were also ignorant in military matters. The Virginia Company of London directed that military drill be conducted where the Indians could not witness it, "for if they See Your Learners miss what they aim at they will think the Weapon not so terrible." (2)

Despite their inexperience and weakness, the English expected to dominate the Indians. From the beginning the Virginia Company wrote that the relationship would inevitably become hostile: "for you Cannot Carry Your Selves so towards them but they will Grow Discontented with Your habitation." (3) The combination of dependence and assertiveness is a dangerous one, and it led the English into swaggering behavior in encounters and to extreme acts of retaliation when they saw a challenge. Smith would seize a child hostage as his men entered a village because he believed that weakness led to bloodshed, and all leaders used threats to force reluctant tribes to provide food. Smith said these policies earned Powhatan's respect, and he certainly admired Powhatan's strategic and tactical acumen. The two men and the forces they commanded settled into a wary truce in the early years. After Smith left the colony in 1609, less experienced leaders took over and the relationship deteriorated into outright war punctuated by extreme acts of vengeance."

http://www.virtualjamestown.org/essays/kupperman_essay.html

[Aristus]

20. The original inhabitants of Jamestown were not hunters. And didn't have any useable skills at all.

They were self-styled "gentlemen adventurers" who had no survival skills of any kind. They were used to lazing around in England while other people did the work.

They must have thought that servants were going to do all the work in the New World, while the "gentlemen" got to take their ease. Well, a winter of starvation might have changed their thinking on the subject, but, true to form, they simply hired people to do the work for them. They hired a company of Polish workmen to do the carpentry, hunting, tanning, building, weaving, etc.

Someone along the way found out that if they imported workmen from Africa, they could employ them as slaves instead of having to pay them like the Polish laborers.

That's how slavery got started in Virginia.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

16. I was watching "The New World" last night.

The movie alludes to cannibalism.

If it was anything close to reality, it was a rough time in those days.

[kwassa]

22. I really liked this movie.

A Terrence Malick mood piece, but wonderfully done.

He really does show what idiots the colonists were.

[arely staircase]

23. the sadness of this reaches through the years

I wonder if they were eating the dead or if they killed to eat. I think the Donner party began their cannibalism by doing the former but progressing to the latter. We will probably never know because nobody there would have recorded it either way, I am guessing.

[Raine]

24. Interesting, THANKS for posting this. nt