
17th-century remains of a young girl excavated from Jamestown, Virginia, show evidence of cannibalism in the colony.
Last week, the news broke that evidence of cannibalism had been found at the Jamestown colony in Virginia. Cut and sawing marks have been found on the skull and leg bones of a young woman, suggesting that her flesh was stripped and eaten after death. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. The cannibalism is thought to date from the “starving time” of 1609–1610. The findings were a confirmation of what had been recorded in various accounts of the “starving time, ” when only Only 61 of 500 colonists survived. Nevertheless, there was considerable disagreement among historians whether the accounts were accurate, or merely propaganda spread by various factions associated with the settlement. The physical evidence appears now to have largely settled the dispute.