15 thoughts on “The Lost Colony Of Roanoke”

    1. This may well be a bogus article, but free advice from anonymous commenters on the Internet should be taken at face value (i.e. worthless) without supporting evidence. Would it have been too hard to post a link to show why it might be faked?

    1. Per my thoughts above – thanks Gordon!

      Still some issues with refreshing comments – I didn’t see Gordon’s comment until after my first post …

  3. Same site suckered me in on a report that Attila the Hun’s tomb had been located… They make it sound plausible on the first read, but if you look closely there are all kinds of hints that it’s fake. For example, its Johns Hopkins University, not John Hopkins.

    1. It’s also unlikely that an Indian tribe would take white settlers as slaves, then bother to bury them in “Christian sepulchers.”

      The site appears to be the Internet equivalent of the Weekly World News.

      1. “It’s also unlikely that an Indian tribe would take white settlers as slaves, then bother to bury them in “Christian sepulchers.” ”

        It’s plausible that the slave owners would allow the slaves to bury their own in a manner the slaves prefer.

        Not making any comments about the veracity of the article.

  4. Also, Laurens County is in South Carolina (not North Carolina), the Enoree River is in northwestern SC, and Lanford is in Laurens County, SC.

  5. What puzzles me regarding the lost colony mystery is why it’s such a big mystery. If you say the words “lost colony” people invariably think of Roanoak.

    But, when it comes to lost colonies, there’s a vastly larger one that’s almost ignored; Viking Greenland. Why?

    Historical import doesn’t explain it; by any measure, Greenland was the more important of the two. The first person of European descent to be born in North America was born in Newfoundland (A brief colony there was an offshoot of the one in Greenland) over 400 years before Columbus was born. His name was Snorri, though he has nowhere near the name recognition of Virginia Dare.

    Size and duration? Roanoak was tiny, and a flash in the pan; a couple of years. Viking Greenland, on the other hand, had three major and several minor settlements along Greenland’s west coast, and a population in the thousands. As for duration, Viking Greenland existed for longer than the USA has, by double. Viking Greenland was first settled in about 985 AD, and existed until somewhere between 1400 and 1500. It thrived for 400 years, then began to decline. Why? There are theories, and some are quite convincing (the leading one is that the onset of the little ice age made agriculture less viable in Greenland, as well as increased sea ice, so played a large role). But, we don’t know for sure. We also have no idea what happened in the final decades of the colony after contact was lost sometime during or after 1408.

    Oh, and for one more tie-in of the importance of Greenland; per the biography of Columbus written by his son, Columbus visited Iceland in 1477. Iceland was the source of the Greenland colony, and also the Greenland sagas were well known and preserved in Iceland. Did these tales of the lands to the west play a role in Columbus’s belief that one could reach Asia by sailing west? (He was trying to reach Asia when he discovered the new world.)

    So to me, the biggest mystery is why Roanaok is so much more famous a lost colony than Greenland?

    2. Probably because Viking Greenland did not serve as prelude to a sustained European exploration and settlement of North America, whereas the Roanoke Colony did.

      And, well, frankly, Greenland, while part of the New World, isn’t part of North America.

      But I agree that the disappearance of the Greenland colony is a fascinating mystery.

      1. Actually, I think that Greenland is considered by most modern geographers to be a large island that is part of North America, though it’s culturally European.

        1. Fair point, Rand; but I think the fact that the island of Greenland is a far more remote part of North America than an island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina is a notable part of the reason why Roanoke excites more interest than Greenland.

          Well…that, and the fact that the Roanoke colony’s disappearance was, relatively speaking, so sudden, and features cryptic clues like the carvings.

Comments are closed.