Comments on: Researchers have not yet uncovered any potential wine pairings.

Researchers have not yet uncovered any potential wine pairings.

elizardbits — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:41:34 -0800

Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony.

"Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened," said Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both archaeological and forensic. "I think that it did. We didn't see anybody eat this flesh. But it's very strong evidence." (images attached to the article are of bones and bone fragments but are not particularly gruesome)

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:45:54 -0800

(ugh, this came too late to submit to the Sleep Of Reason horror anthology, but now I have my theme for the NEXT one, thanks)

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:47:32 -0800

This will significantly color future viewings of Disney's Pocahontas.

By: seemoreglass

seemoreglass — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:48:10 -0800

Happy Thanksgiving.

By: Melismata

Melismata — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:49:41 -0800

There was a great article in the National Geographic a few years ago about Jamestown, and all the great archeological work that's being done there. One part of the story described the natives' reaction to the settlers' ill-conceived attempts to survive, basically saying "are they out of their frickin' minds?!" Thanks for posting this.

By: blurker

blurker — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:50:31 -0800

It's stories like this that make me want to go back and reread American history. They certainly never told us about things of this nature in 5th grade.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:51:29 -0800

Blurker - Crash Course U.S History is pretty good at filling in the holes in your education

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:51:51 -0800

Researchers have not yet uncovered any potential wine pairings. I'd have to go with "Virginia Dare" muscadine wine.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:51:59 -0800

The first comment is gold: It just goes to show that people will be innovative and industrious in supporting themselves if we can just get rid of this safety net. Sincerely, Paul Ryan

By: Debaser626

Debaser626 — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:53:15 -0800

Researchers have not yet uncovered any potential wine pairings. Happy Thanksgiving. Umm... Too soon, man... Too soon.

By: seemoreglass

seemoreglass — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:53:50 -0800

It's stories like this that make me want to go back and reread American history. That there might have been cannibalism at Jamestown is mentioned in Zinn's People's History, IIRC. So only the confirmation, such as it is, is news.

By: zombieflanders

zombieflanders — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:57:39 -0800

Wow, the promotions for Hannibal are just getting more and more intricate.

By: eriko

eriko — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:57:46 -0800

Umm... Too soon, man... Too soon. Yeah. Clearly we're thinking about Memorial Day barbecue here....

By: cmoj

cmoj — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:57:46 -0800

I was thinking Jonestown for some reason and thinking of an entirely different Owsley. I was reading an entirely different conversation. I prefer mine.

By: bleep

bleep — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:57:58 -0800

A teenage girl, you don't say, probably the most vulnerable person in the whole group, wow, shocker.

By: QueerAngel28

QueerAngel28 — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:59:31 -0800

this reminds me to get my SO to watch the movie ALIVE. He's never seen it. elizardbits, I know he'll thank you.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:59:50 -0800

By: DU

DU — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:59:55 -0800

A teenage girl, you don't say, probably the most vulnerable person in the whole group, wow, shocker. Wouldn't the "most vulnerable" person by definition be the one they eat?

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:00:24 -0800

Actually QueerAngel, you should watch Ravenous

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:00:48 -0800

reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten Teryucken

By: elizardbits

elizardbits — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:00:56 -0800

Also, the Colonial Williamsburg Journal cited in the linked article is full of really interesting stuff.

By: Ralston McTodd

Ralston McTodd — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:02:29 -0800

But I thought teenage girls were the villains who got innocent men convicted of witchcraft! That's what we learned in 11th-grade English class, anyway.

By: Horace Rumpole

Horace Rumpole — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:03:01 -0800

The victim identified?

By: three blind mice

three blind mice — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:07:08 -0800

It would seem that this is also evidence of four hundred year old murder. It would also seem unlikely there will be justice for the victim.

By: marienbad

marienbad — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:08:06 -0800

NO DOXXING! "this reminds me to get my SO to watch the movie ALIVE. He's never seen it. elizardbits, I know he'll thank you. posted by QueerAngel28 No he won't. Trust me.

By: The Underpants Monster

The Underpants Monster — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:09:27 -0800

*cancels Mars One ticket*

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:09:37 -0800

It would also seem unlikely there will be justice for the victim. She is remembered and cared for. Her perpetrators are mere shadows and dust.

By: Avenger

Avenger — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:12:14 -0800

It's also possible that she died of natural causes and was then eaten, rather than murdered. A man was tried and executed for doing the same thing to his wife in Jamestown after she died naturally, IIRC.

By: PuppyCat

PuppyCat — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:15:18 -0800

She is remembered and cared for. Her perpetrators are mere shadows and dust. Full of win - so well stated.

By: ricochet biscuit

ricochet biscuit — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:19:34 -0800

Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony. The phrasing suggests a Harryhausenesque skeleton calling a press conference to address allegations.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:24:32 -0800

I'm not saying cannibalism didn't happen, but that article is certainly, um, variant in how certain it is:

What's certain is that some members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism to survive...

They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists...

"Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,"...

So just as in other cases of cannibalism I've read about casually (the Donner Party), it's actually not certain at all, and a chopped up body ("butchered" seems like a term that pre-biases the evidence to point to cannibalism) isn't much more conclusive than what we already know. Other sources from the time period mention the man who "killed and salted his wife":

"There was one of the companie who mortally hated his Wife, and therefore secretly killed her." To conceal the crime, the husband "cut her in pieces and hid her in divers parts of his house." When other members of the colony noticed her missing, they searched the man's house and discovered the body parts. Gates said the man claimed "that his Wife died," and "hee hid her to satisﬁe his hunger, and . . . fed daily upon her" merely to excuse himself from the capital crime of murder. Gates had good reason to question the man's claims of starvation because a search of the house revealed "a good quantitie of meale, oate-meale, beanes and pease."

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:27:14 -0800

"a good quantitie of meale, oate-meale, beanes and pease" Not to mention all the extra "e"s.

By: Carillon

Carillon — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:27:22 -0800

Yeah CMOJ, I read Jonestown at first too and was then surprised by the blithe nature of the title. Makes more sense this way.

By: Rustic Etruscan

Rustic Etruscan — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:28:34 -0800

The flagship, Sea Venture, wrecked on Bermuda. Most of the passengers and crew escaped to the island, an event that became the kernel of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest." "Hey Prospero, magic us up some Milanese, we're hungry."

By: epj

epj — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:40:07 -0800

The story states that the marks on her bones show that she was dead when her flesh was taken off her bones. There's no definitive way of knowing if she died naturally, but given the number of bodies there would have been, I'm going to give the settlers the benefit of the doubt on that one.

By: philip-random

philip-random — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:42:33 -0800

The Terrence Mallick movie The New World doesn't really click as a whole, but the scenes of the colony enduring the winter are brutal and all too believable. Where there's people starving, there's every possibility of ...

By: Melismata

Melismata — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:49:21 -0800

Also, "Timothy" is running through my head.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:49:24 -0800

One similarity between Donner Party cannibalism stories and Jamestown cannibalism stories is no one (except, I guess, the dude who killed is wife) steps up and says, "Yeah, I totally ate some folks! I was starving!" It's always, like, rich people claiming that the poor folk were digging up the dead, or poor folk claiming that their neighbor went off into the woods and came back looking less hungry. It really is a little bit like a witch hunt.

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:49:46 -0800

Where there's people starving, there's every possibility of ... Horse d'oeuvres?

By: AdamCSnider

AdamCSnider — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:51:07 -0800

Man if it wasn't for horrible diseases they had no resistance to utterly demolishing the native population the story of the European conquest of the Americans would've been quite different (seriously, none of the colonies you read about in Early U.S history where in ANY way prepared to actually make a living, it's insane) Yeah, if you look at the death rates, it's pretty much reminiscent of early urbanization in Europe: people who went to the cities (or the Americas) died at horrific rates, but enough peasants/immigrants kept flowing in to make the project viable. Have to wonder if that's what the "settle Mars" folks are depending on. Just pour morons onto the deadly red sands until enough finally survive to make it viable.

By: ArkhanJG

ArkhanJG — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:51:31 -0800

and a chopped up body ("butchered" seems like a term that pre-biases the evidence to point to cannibalism) The term butchered is used intentionally; I read another reference to this story elsewhere early in the week (will try and find the link) with more quotes, where the scientists directly compared the marks found on the bones to those made by butchers on animal carcasses, both contemporary and historical IIRC - and found the tool marks to be extremely similar. So she was very likely butchered into cuts of meat after death, similar to animal butchery. Whether they ATE those cuts is of course conjecture, but does fit with the other evidence, including how many died in the colony due to starvation and illness.

By: Katjusa Roquette

Katjusa Roquette — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:56:42 -0800

Far the most part, cut marks consistent with butchering are a pretty reliable indication of the possiability someone was eaten. Have they looked at the ends of the bones? There are types of marks consistent with being cooked in a stew, which they should be looking for as well.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:06:19 -0800

Let's say I have a dead body in my house, and I can't bury it (because there are rumors that the poor folk are digging up buried bodies and eating them, or because I'm a murderer and I want to hide the body so I don't get executed). I've also butchered animals before (because this is the 1600s and I can't just buy my meat from the supermarket), so I know how to easily break a body down. If I then break down the human body the same way I break down an animal body, does that mean I ate it? Again, if we find a "butchered" body in a modern basement, do we claim that cannibalism was involved? The knife marks indicating stripped flesh seems more compelling.

By: tychotesla

tychotesla — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:20:51 -0800

The knife marks indicating stripped flesh seems more compelling. Butchering. As in, getting the tasty and big bits of meat. Tongue and brains and the like. Again, if we find a "butchered" body in a modern basement, do we claim that cannibalism was involved? It depends, was there a famine involved? Is the body butchered in a way consistent with someone actually wanting to eat the flesh? Were there reports of cannibalism? Then yes. I really don't see how someone butchering a body in order to preserve the choice bits of flesh from being desecrated by others (here's the tongue and the thighs, now lets bury them somewhere) makes more sense than that there was cannibalism during an incredibly harsh winter during which cannibalism was reported.

By: "Doctor" Terence Malick

"Doctor" Terence Malick — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:26:42 -0800

"The Terrence Mallick movie The New World doesn't really click as a whole" Every where I go there are gentlemen and ladies complaining about my Pocahontas Movie! What I think people misunderstand is what a big step forward it was in filmmaking! It was always supposed to be a remake of the Walt Disney Movies "Pocahontas" and I think it turned out pretty well for a cartoon! But some people (not naming names ROGER EBERT lol!) didn't even notice that it was a cartoon! I blame my friend Robert Zemeckis. His motion captured computer cartoons are so good! You can't even tell that every person in "The New World" is played by Andy Serkis (except Christopher Lee because he's a VAMPIRE).

By: Panjandrum

Panjandrum — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:49:15 -0800

> The story states that the marks on her bones show that she was dead when her flesh was taken off her bones.

The tentative cuts to the front of the skull and the deeper ones to the back are close together — evidence that she was dead, not squirming, when they were made.

If that's their standard for determining that she was dead prior to the butchering, it's not very conclusive. She could have just as easily been unconscious, though that's has the grim implications others have alluded to. If the cut marks are clearly peri, not post, mortem, then all we can really say is that they occurred when she was still, um, fresh.

By: Panjandrum

Panjandrum — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:52:24 -0800

> Man if it wasn't for horrible diseases they had no resistance to utterly demolishing the native population the story of the European conquest of the Americans would've been quite different Indeed, there's a reason former colonies in India and Africa are still filled with Indians and Africans, as opposed to the situations in the Americas and Australia. The early Europeans settlers in America were basically playing with a cheat code, and still almost botched the whole thing.

By: tychotesla

tychotesla — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:13:41 -0800

and still almost butchered the whole thing. FTFY

By: torticat

torticat — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:14:09 -0800

If that's their standard for determining that she was dead prior to the butchering, it's not very conclusive. Yeah but that's not all the evidence. When I saw this story (didn't it come out last month?), it was noted that cannibalism was reported in written accounts of that winter in Jamestown. Also, considering that only 60 of 300 settlers survived that winter, it would seem there were plenty of dead bodies to go around.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:41:59 -0800

Seconding Ravenous.

By: radwolf76

radwolf76 — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:16:17 -0800

By: Atreides

Atreides — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:28:10 -0800

As a native Virginian, it's a bit of pride to have Jamestown as part of the state's historic legacy. Not so much that it beats the well known Plymouth Colony by a number of years, but that it has the makings of one great movie, (crazy English captain who takes command of a colony spiraling out of control, starvation, a 14 year old girl who saves the colony, and the man who became her husband who becomes rich off a gamble over a few seeds, not to mention set against the background of the recent consolidation of the region's Native American tribes under the powerful Powhatan Confederacy).* *Yet to be made.

By: jetlagaddict

jetlagaddict — Fri, 24 May 2013 19:54:41 -0800

There's a pretty good intro to archaeological evidence for cannibalism here, including a bibliography with such winners as "Breakage patterns of human long bones" and the extremely good title "Widespread prehistoric human cannibalism: easier to swallow?" If that whetted your appetite, there's also "Consuming Passions: Reviewing the Evidence for Cannibalism within the Prehistoric Archaeological Record" and to finish it out, "Ancient Human Feces Points to Cannibalism." boy I can't wait to see what my Google ads look like after this

By: elizardbits

elizardbits — Fri, 24 May 2013 20:10:45 -0800

lots of hannibal and williams-sonoma adverts for me these days

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 24 May 2013 20:16:54 -0800

" maybe it's the marscapone .....or maybe it's people."

By: pernoctalian

pernoctalian — Fri, 24 May 2013 20:18:23 -0800

For what does "settler" imply, if not the willingness to settle? To settle for a meal of human flesh if my thoughts on the subject are to be believed!

By: Oyéah

Oyéah — Sat, 25 May 2013 11:18:12 -0800

Well then, when they burned "witches" at the stake, was it barbeque? Will this turn out to be the real origin of the term sandwich (sandwitch?) Could this have been the ultimate projection, women too evil to live, but not too bad with some salt?

By: Atreides

Atreides — Sat, 25 May 2013 12:47:34 -0800

It was the Puritans of the New England colonies that made a toasty art of witch trials and what not. Colonial Virginians, while worried, were not nearly as fervent.

By: caddis

caddis — Sat, 25 May 2013 14:45:01 -0800

Wine pairings? That is pretty offensive, especially considering the circumstance of her death.

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Sat, 25 May 2013 15:11:17 -0800

three blind mice: "It would seem that this is also evidence of four hundred year old murder. It would also seem unlikely there will be justice for the victim." Even though it was a missing white girl?

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Sat, 25 May 2013 15:14:04 -0800

homunculus: "Seconding Ravenous." Nthing Ravenous. Great cast, interesting story.

By: Joe in Australia

Joe in Australia — Sat, 25 May 2013 20:32:15 -0800

Thou still unroasted bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of stewing with some thyme, Jamestown historian, who canst thus express A casserole more sweetly than our rhyme

By: rmless

rmless — Sun, 26 May 2013 17:03:05 -0800

FTA: "Chemical analysis of the bone reveals an enriched "nitrogen profile," evidence of lots of protein in the girl's diet. That, in turn, suggests she was a member of a high-born family or at least lived in such a household for much of her life." Eat the rich?

By: roystgnr

roystgnr — Mon, 27 May 2013 08:31:48 -0800

It just goes to show that people will be innovative and industrious in supporting themselves if we can just get rid of this safety net.

What kind of double-irony is it when someone makes a statement which is intended to be ironic but which is actually literally true? Jamestown originally had communal property, the ultimate safety net, and the subsequent starvation didn't turn into surplus until after people were allowed to start individually keeping the results of their efforts.

By: Joe in Australia

Joe in Australia — Mon, 27 May 2013 10:22:22 -0800

An interesting theory, but don't you think the hypothetical socialist lethargy of the first group of settlers (nearly all of whom perished) might equally be accounted for by the documented effects of a drought, lack of agricultural skills, war with native Americans, a catastrophic fire, and the arrival of 300 further colonists without accompanying provisions. After the mass starvation of 1609-1610 the colony was reinitiated with settlers who were better chosen, better equipped, and better supplied. This makes it hard to compare the new settlers' capitalist vigor (who ate government rations while working their government-bestowed plots using government bestowed tools and government-bestowed seed) with the idle slothfulness of their unfortunate predecessors.