Group claims it’s found the Lost Colony

It sounds like a story straight from a frustrated sci-fi writer’s notebook of scrapped ideas, but evidence has been found proving that there’s really not much thrill on the huge puzzle connected to the small island in North Carolina, except for the possibility of a mass migration. They used the pottery shards and other uncovered artifacts – a hand-wrought nail, an aglet (or sheath) used on 16th-century clothes and other evidence of ancient settlers – to embellish their new chapter in the making.

If that’s the case, the ancestors of Virginia Dare may still be alive and well and living in America. This is where Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, drew her first breath. Did they try to sail back to England and die on the journey?

Another proof that confirms the theory is an etching on a post, estimated to have been made in 1590, that has the word “Croatoan”.

The mystery of Roanoke Island may be one for the books.

Cape Creek, located in a live oak forest near Pamlico Sound, was the site of a major Croatoan town center and trading hub. “The evidence is that they assimilated with the Native Americans but kept their goods”, says chief archaeologist Mark Horton. Some of these artefacts were found in late 16th century levels, and include German stoneware and copper ingots. Native Americans lacked such metallurgical technology, so they are believed to be European in origin.

“La Virginea Pars” map.

But while there are still discoveries to be made at Site X and other places where the “Lost Colony” may have gone, it’s unlikely a complete narrative of where the 100 missing ended up, said Luccketti. In 2012, researchers using X-ray spectroscopy and other imaging techniques spotted a tiny four-pointed star, colored red and blue, concealed under a patch of paper that White used to make corrections to his map. When he returned three years later, the colony was deserted. If such a site did exist, the theory went, it would have been a reasonable destination for the displaced Roanoke settlers. Here a significant number of native American sites have been located, through the 16th and 17th centuries.

Members of the First Colony Foundation excavated an area marked “x”.

Life in the New World was unforgiving. The bowl fragments are especially exciting, because the style of pottery (Border Ware) stopped being imported into the New World by the early 17 century-decades before the first recorded settler moved into the area in 1655.

With English settlement at Jamestown in 1607, there were reports that the colonists had moved inland, and some had been killed by the local Indians, but otherwise their fate remained unknown. As reported in the New York Times, the First Colony Foundation will reveal more about its findings and theory this week in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The 400-year-old mystery of the Lost Colony could at last be solved.

However, both the Hatteras team and the mainland team don’t claim this information is the end-all be-all, especially since exact dating of these objects is hard.