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Girl's Bones Prove Cannibalism Among Jamestown Settlers

Agnus Dei Farrant |
May 1, 2013 | 4:27 p.m. PDT

Executive Producer

An outdoor cooking area in Jamestown Fort (Creative Commons).
An outdoor cooking area in Jamestown Fort (Creative Commons).
Newly discovered human bones are evidence the first permanent British settlers in North America at James Fort, Va., resorted to cannibalism in the winter of 1609-1610.

A partial skull and tibia of a 14-year-old girl were discovered in the trash pit of the Jamestown colony with cut marks consistent with butchering meat.  

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

The marks indicate the girl’s brain, tongue, leg muscles and cheeks were probably eaten.

From Bloomberg

Chop marks to the forehead and the back of the skull showed the girl’s head had been split open, and knife marks on the jaw showed flesh had been removed from her face.

The marks on the girl’s bones are “physical evidence consistent with survival cannibalism,” the researchers said in a statement. It’s not clear from the remains how she died or whether she was the victim of a homicide.

"There were numerous chops and cuts - chops to the forehead, chops to the back of the skull and also a puncture to the left side of the head that was used to essentially pry off that side," Owsley said. "The purpose was to extract the brain."

According to BBC, the cuts to the girl’s bones also indicate hesitation, meaning that whoever performed the dismemberment was not a skilled butcher of animals. 

The winter of 1609-1610 is called “the Starving Times” for Jamestown, when only 60 of the original 300 settlers survived a winter of starvation, sickness and Indian attacks. 

From the BBC

First they ate their horses, then dogs, cats, rats, mice and snakes. Some, to satisfy their cruel hunger, ate the leather of their shoes.

As the weeks turned to months, nothing was spared to maintain life. How many of the growing numbers of dead were cannibalised is unknown. But it is almost certain the girl was not the only victim.

A ship, Lord De La Warr, carrying food and new colonists discovered the survivors. 

"It's somebody doing what they had to do," Owsley said of the cannibalism.

 

Reach Executive Producer Agnus Dei Farrant here.



 

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