[HN Gopher] Researchers discover evidence in the mystery of Amer...
___________________________________________________________________
Researchers discover evidence in the mystery of America's 'Lost
Colony'
Author : ryan_j_naughton
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-06-08 21:46 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foxnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foxnews.com)
| duxup wrote:
| The experience of early colonists is so fascinating. Some of
| these colonies were very tenuous and seemed very unprepared.
| codingdave wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No I don't think they are anything alike.
| dentemple wrote:
| Even today, with modern information available to us, people
| still woefully underestimate what it would take to live in a
| true wilderness.
| lazystar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The colonists didn't have anything near this level of
| technology though...
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Lazy,
|
| You cannot live this way. I can walk you through anything
| related to home care.
| lazystar wrote:
| 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.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| use age1s6cz86s99unkfm2sqy045w5w79n8lyyulwu9qy3gkaeydmexw
| v5qvkh2pp reply with your contact if you want help.
| lazystar wrote:
| lol. not sure what age1s6cz86s99unkfm2sqy045w5w79n8lyyulw
| u9qy3gkaeydmexwv5qvkh2pp means, but if youre in the
| greater seattle area and want to teach me how to be an
| adult, shoot me a text. 360-624-3791
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| On the other hand, just letting it grow isn't going to
| hurt anything.
| cafard wrote:
| With a modern mower, it's pretty hard to hurt yourself.
| mikestew wrote:
| I wouldn't necessarily assume it's at all modern. I've
| had Briggs-and-Stratton-powered mowers that had the deck
| rot from corrosion long before that B&S engine dies.
| Point being, if the mower was "provided", who knows the
| vintage? It sure isn't going to be the landlord's top-
| shelf mower fresh from the dealer.
| xnyan wrote:
| It's actually pretty hard to hurt yourself on the active
| blade of a push mower. I've only heard of one account of
| this happening first hand, someone 1) slipped while 2)
| gripping and not releasing the handle interlock switch as
| they slipped while 3) pushing the mower uphill and 4)
| wearing flip flops. Don't do that, and you'll be fine.
|
| I don't have any data but I'd assume it's vastly safer to
| mow the lawn than drive a car.
| everforward wrote:
| Probably depends heavily on how you normalize the risks,
| and I had a good chuckle at the thought of "injuries per
| 100k miles" applied to lawn mowers.
|
| I would guess lawn mowers are higher risk per time or
| distance, but lower prevalence in injuries per year. I
| would guess the injuries are mostly a) hit rocks, b) did
| something dumb with the mower, or c) general outdoors
| risks like slipping or being bit by snake, etc.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Don't mow rock, wear protective eyewear and a mask if you
| don't want to inhale dust/pollen/etc and you will be
| protected from 99.9% of all conceivable injuries from a
| modern gas mower that has a safety switch.
| yawgmoth wrote:
| Adjust the height to the highest setting.
|
| Put gas in it. If there's a soft rubber thing near the gas,
| hit it twice to provide some fuel but no more as you risk
| "flooding" the engine.
|
| Hold down any handle at the top of the mower, often the
| thing will require you to manually hold it down during
| start and all operations.
|
| Look for the starter pull. It's often on the right, on the
| motor or mower handles. It's a piece of plastic attached to
| a cable. Give it a yank with a full follow through. It
| doesn't have to be maximum effort but too gentle won't work
| either.
| timnetworks wrote:
| this is maybe the most accidentally insightful post I have
| seen on HN. Or satire so sharp it cuts in line.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Note that once the grass has grown past a certain height,
| you won't be able to use a mower anymore even if you want
| to. At that point it will require a line trimmer (a.k.a.
| weed whacker) which is a lot more work.
|
| Though personally I'm a fan of "kill your lawn" efforts.
| You can smother it with cardboard (or burn it, or till it,
| etc) and replace with native meadow.
| ddingus wrote:
| Sure you can! Ask me how I know.
|
| (Has cleared overgrowth consisting of both vines and
| grasses roughly a meter high give or take some)
|
| What you do is tip the mower up, holding the handle near
| the ground and push it right into the mess. Then lower it
| down, essentially taking a "bite", which will cut many
| folded over plants.
|
| Pull back, then tip and advance repeatedly, cutting more
| each time.
|
| I cleared a quarter acre this way. Took one hard
| afternoon and a couple tanks of gas.
| lazystar wrote:
| hmm ok. its mainly ryegrass, though, so i dont think itd
| be a problem to cut through. i just think its really
| pretty, plus the birds/squirrels/chipmunks seem to like
| it a lot.
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| 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/Subsistenc...
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| > Less than a decade later, separatist Pilgrims landed in
| New England, and by contrast, grew crops immediately, and
| cultivated diplomatic relations with their neighbors.
|
| And, as I understand it, settled into areas which had
| previously been cleared and cultivated by the natives but
| had been relatively recently abandoned.
|
| https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Pilgrims-and-
| the... "The Pilgrims decided to establish their colony in
| an area that had been cleared and abandoned by the
| Patuxet Indians. One colonist remarked, "Thousands of men
| have lived here, which died in a great plague not long
| since; and pity it was and is to see so many goodly
| fields, and so well seated, without men to dress and
| manure the same."
|
| That's one amazing head start. And, had they not had it,
| the Pilgrims probably would have died, too.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >The Jamestown colonists didn't even attempt to plant
| crops for several years after their arrival
|
| Source? I'm pretty sure they planted corn and wheat as
| soon as they could, in the first month of arrival. "The
| 15th June we had finished our fort... we had also sown
| most of our corn on two mountains. It sprang a man's
| height from the ground."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Maria_Wingfield
|
| By the third year (1609) they had cleared and planted at
| least 40 acres https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_boo
| ks/hh/2/hh2b2.htm
| WalterBright wrote:
| Jamestown also starved because they tried collective farming
| (communism). It didn't work for them any more than it worked
| for anyone else.
|
| So did the Pilgrims for their first year. They starved, too.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Walter, I appreciate your comments but you surely have to
| know Jamestown settlers were in no way practicing communism
| as it's understood today.
| msgodel wrote:
| Marx didn't write about communism until a couple
| centuries later. The ideas were very similar though.
| fakedang wrote:
| It's funny how the father of communism was basically an
| intellectual who leeched off of his wealthier capitalist
| relatives (the family behind Philips NV).
| WalterBright wrote:
| Google "did jamestown use communal farming?"
|
| And they did. After it utterly failed, they moved away
| from it to individual ownership of farms.
| SideQuark wrote:
| Google "does communal mean communism".
|
| Conflating them in the same sentence, then doubling down
| on that, is either intellectual dishonesty or ignorance.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Always the same excuse, that it wasn't "real" communism.
|
| Quoted from your reference:
|
| "Communism is ... a stateless, classless society where
| resources are owned communally" which, if you read about
| Jamestown, was the situation with their agriculture.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Jamestown was hardly a dictatorship of the proletariat
| where workers owned the means of production, nor was it
| stateless or classes. It was quite literally a strong
| state's company town that was kept afloat by investors,
| where rich colonists had servants that grew cash crops
| lol
| taeric wrote:
| This mostly fails a sniff test to me? And indeed, reading the
| linked article doesn't support your editorializing. To quote:
| "There is some evidence that they had poor fishing skills,
| but other factors may have contributed more to their
| failures"
|
| The idea that they were not nearly as efficient at building a
| town as they could have been is not at all surprising. All
| the more so when you consider just how different the storm
| season was compared to what they were used to.
|
| But the idea that they failed due to their own inadequacies
| feels like a stretch? Like, had they "stayed home" what kind
| of life do you think they had there? People used to have to
| do far more of their own survival than modern people can
| really understand.
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| From the article:
|
| 'They suffered fourteen nets (which was all they had) to
| rot and spoil, which by orderly drying and mending might
| have been preserved. But being lost, all help of fishing
| perished.' (25)
|
| (25) Strachey, W. 1998b [1610], 'A True Reportory of the
| wrack and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, knight, upon and
| from the Islands of the Bermudas; his coming to Virginia,
| and the estate of that colony then, and after under the
| government of the Lord La Warre', in Haile 1998, p. 441
|
| I originally learned this by talking with a Jamestown
| National Historical Park docent. I said that, having grown
| up in Virginia in the 20th century and knowing what
| tidewater Virginia was like in the 17th century, it would
| have been very hard to starve to death. American chestnut
| was still the dominant forest tree, and provided literally
| tons of nuts _per tree_. Black walnut and acorn were also
| plentiful and make good survival foods if you know how to
| prepare them. The Chesapeake Bay had enormous oyster beds,
| with oysters being described as "the size of dinner
| plates", and John Smith said that he thought he could have
| walked across it on the backs of fish, and if you know how
| to dry or salt fish it doesn't matter that the sturgeon and
| rockfish are seasonal. Mussels and crab, likewise, would
| have been plentiful, and unlike fish, accessible year
| round. Deer, turkey, rabbit, groundhog, squirrel, opossum
| and raccoon were plentiful, and passenger pigeon were also
| around, not having suffered the overhunting they did in the
| early 20th century.
|
| She indicated that the majority of the English settlers
| weren't farmers or fishermen and didn't have the hands-on
| experience to make use of the resources at their disposal.
| I went home and did a bit of internet research on that
| statement, and it seemed fairly accurate.
|
| I do not claim to be a trained historian of colonial
| Virginia; I just grew up there.
| taeric wrote:
| You are still strengthening the claim beyond the paper,
| is my point. The paper, specifically, has several other
| explanations beyond "they didn't know how to care for
| nets."
|
| For example: The colonists' performance
| in fishing in the first years, in common with all
| other activities, must also have been severely
| hampered by their generally poor health,
| malnutrition and subse- quent lack of energy. For
| a period of five months there are said to have
| been only five men healthy enough to man the
| bulwarks of the fort against hostile Virginia
| Indians. During such difficult times it is likely
| that fishing would have been restricted and
| perhaps would have been halted altogether.
|
| That is, it isn't just that they were not "professional
| fisherman." Something that probably didn't even exist in
| the modern sense of the word. They were in a much harsher
| environment than was anticipated.
|
| The low stock of salt and not having the same dry season
| that they were used to from the other side of the
| Atlantic almost certainly played much more heavily, as
| well. (And to be clear, that paper covers these as heavy
| influences.)
|
| Probably also worth remembering how parasite ridden all
| of the food supplies you are mentioning would be. Our
| food supply is supernaturally clean, nowadays.
|
| At any rate, my main gripe here is the mental image of
| "second sons that didn't know how to do anything" that
| you conjured. Certainly possible, but feels far
| overstated, to me. They had managed to survive a ship
| across the ocean. Something that was not a passive cruise
| journey.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >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.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If this is the case then there should be DNA evidence as well.
| Presuming that assimilation led to procreation.
| ilamont wrote:
| 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-lo...
| lipowitz wrote:
| 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.
| card_zero wrote:
| There's no descendants, bones, or other source of DNA known to
| belong to the colonists to work from.
| exe34 wrote:
| 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.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The English have good records. We could perhaps find the
| decendents of relatives who stayed put and then find their
| "hey you guys seem to have more DNA in common than you ought
| to" counterparts of native american heritage.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The native population of the area was well mixed with European
| and African genes in the 18th and 19th century. It would be
| very difficult to determine whether there was also mixture in
| the late 16th / early 17th century.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| TLDR: the Roanoke Colony moved to Hatteras Island.
|
| From a backbarrier island to a barrier island (towards the sea)
| derbOac wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Where did they go?
|
| Were there other settlements ?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| 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.
| lmm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| labster wrote:
| This may come as a surprise to you, but there were many
| settlements in America before Europeans ever showed up.
|
| No other British settlements in the hemisphere, though.
| Failed expeditions did end up in other nations colonies, but
| this was never pleasant for either side. But they would have
| had to go hundreds of kilometers by sea to find other
| Europeans, without a proper ship and on meager supplies.
| Joining the natives was the best way to survive... but which
| natives?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Perhaps the one they had somewhat "okay" relations with and
| whose leader's son made several trips to Europe with John
| White.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manteo_(Native_American_leade
| r...
| bluGill wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| superb_dev wrote:
| I'm not convinced either. If they assimilated into nearby
| native populations, wouldn't someone have found a colonist or a
| descendant that could tell the story?
| bluGill wrote:
| Oral history is not very good at long term tales. I know my
| grand parents stories, but even my great grand parents is
| something that I know little about and I have trouble passing
| that on to my kids (and that includes the great grandpa who
| was murdered and thus a more compelling story)
| opello wrote:
| I am also skeptical that the iron scale was "proof positive"
| but the anecdote about reading from books seemed pretty
| convincing about the integration:
|
| > "We have one little snippet of historical evidence from the
| 1700s, which describes people with blue or gray eyes who could
| remember people who used to be able to read from books,"
| aisicbxjOsb wrote:
| > they have centuries to learn just like the rest of us
|
| This seems like a massive assumption to make. Sub Saharan
| Africa has tons of iron ore and it's still debated whether or
| not they developed iron working on their own. Your point relies
| on (an approximation of) blank slatism which seems highly
| highly unlikely given the natural variation in all other areas
| of life.
| bluGill wrote:
| Okay, I'll grant that they might not have developed iron
| working if it was possible. However that doesn't change the
| larger point that it was impossible for anyone living in that
| area to develop metal working as metals were not available.
| No matter how much ability you have, you will never develop
| metal working because you need a large existing industrial
| base to use the ores in North America. (there is/was a lot of
| high grade ore in North America, it just isn't near the
| surface)
| astine wrote:
| _a camp fire gets plenty hot for blacksmithing - just wait for
| the coals and then blow on them_
|
| Maybe if you're working with bronze or copper, but iron forging
| requires much higher temperatures than a campfire can provide.
| That's why the iron age took place after the bronze age, forges
| capable of making iron workable were not yet invented. It
| wasn't a trivial invention.
| bluGill wrote:
| Charcoal - which you get from campfires is hot enough. It
| takes a lot more of it though and a lot of other effort. when
| bronze is available it is generally good enough and a lot
| easier, but historians tell me iron was used throughout the
| bronze age in small amounts. iron really needs steel to be
| signicantly better than iron and that took a while-
| freedomben wrote:
| (I am a layman here so take this with a grain of salt) I
| believe you are correct, however no campfire will have
| enough airflow to get that hot unless you have a bellows or
| some other way of injecting air into it, and you'd have to
| have it structured in a way that it can efficiently burn
| the fuel. I'm not much of a blacksmith but had a friend who
| was into it and whose dad also was, and we did a pretty
| fair amount of "experimenting" as kids :-D I know from
| experience that elevation makes a big difference too,
| though I've never measured.
|
| Would be fascinating for someone with knowledge of this to
| weigh in!
| bluGill wrote:
| Charcoal is great for forging, though as you say getting
| airflow is tricky. Still this is manageable - clay and
| rocks are abundant on earth so there are options.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Is this story available from a reputable source?
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