Starving Jamestown settlers ate teen girl, Smithsonian says

 A digital recreation shows the face of the girl who was eaten. (Smithsonian Institution)

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History held a press conference on Wednesday to announce breaking, albeit gruesome, colonial news: Evidence of the dismemberment and cannibalization of a 14-year-old British girl in Jamestown, Va., in 1609.

Forensic anthropologists say marks found on the girl's bones, uncovered during a recent archaeological excavation, suggest her brain, among other parts, was eaten by starving settlers.

“The chops to the forehead are very tentative, very incomplete,” Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the institute, said on Wednesday. “Then, the body was turned over, and there were four strikes to the back of the head, one of which was the strongest and split the skull in half. A penetrating wound was then made to the left temple, probably by a single-sided knife, which was used to pry open the head and remove the brain.”

The cause of the girl's death remains unclear, the researchers said. But according the Smithsonian, it is the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown.

“Historians have gone back and forth on whether this sort of thing really happened there,” Owsley said. “Given these bones in a trash pit, all cut and chopped up, it's clear that this body was dismembered for consumption.”

"It’s long been speculated that the harsh conditions faced by the colonists of Jamestown might have made them desperate enough to eat other humans—and perhaps even commit murder to do so," the Smithsonian magazine noted.

Owsley and his team conducted a CT scan of the bones, which were discovered last summer. Cut marks on the jaw, face and forehead of the skull, along with those on the shinbone, he said, are "telltale signs of cannibalism." And the skillfulness of the cut marks compared with those on her head suggest two or more butchers, he said.

He suspects there will be more cannibalized bodies to come.

“It’s fairly convincing, now that we see this one, that this wasn’t the only case,” Owsley said. “There are other examples mentioned here and there in the literature. So the only question is: Where are the rest of the bodies?”

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Starving Virginia settlers turned to cannibalism in 1609: study

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Settlers at Virginia's Jamestown Colony resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609, dismembering and consuming a 14-year-old English girl, the U.S. Smithsonian Institution reported on Wednesday.

This is the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas, according to the Washington-based museum and research complex.

A recent excavation at the historic site revealed not just the remains of dogs, cats and horses eaten by settlers during the cold "Starving Time" of that year, but also the bones of a girl known to researchers simply as "Jane."

Jane probably was part of a relatively prosperous household, possibly a gentleman's daughter or maidservant, said Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, who analyzed her bones after they were found by Preservation Virginia, a private nonprofit group.

Her back molars had not yet erupted, putting her age around 14 years, and there was a lot of nitrogen in her bones, indicating she ate a meat-rich English diet, Owsley said in a telephone interview.

It is not known whether Jane was killed or died of natural causes. The Smithsonian said there is no evidence of murder.

After her death, in a year when many Jamestown colonists starved, Jane's body was hacked apart by a butcher or butchers who barely knew what they were doing. She may have been chosen because others in her household were already dead and there was no one to bury her, Owsley said.

UNSKILLED CHOPPING

"There was very clear post-mortem dismemberment that involved chops to the forehead, chops to the back of the head that cracked the skull open," the scientist said.

"A puncture to the left side of the head was used to essentially lever and open the ... head to remove the brain. There are cuts all over the face and on the mandible, inside as well as out."

By 1609, Owsley said, the settlement was effectively operating under siege, with many of the male colonists killed by hostile Native Americans after venturing out.

Those who remained inside Jamestown's confines were often women, children and the sick. Those who dismembered Jane might well have been women, he said.

The cuts were "very tentative, hesitant," Owsley said. "This is not someone who's skilled in terms of kitchen work or butchery, and yet they know, out of sheer need, that this is what they have to do."

The brain, tongue, cheeks and leg muscles appear to have been eaten, with the brain probably consumed first because it decomposes soon after death, the Smithsonian said in an online announcement.

Scholars have speculated that extreme drought, hostile relations with the local Powhatan Confederacy and a lost supply ship made the Jamestown colonists desperate enough to eat humans. Writings had suggested it, but no hard physical evidence existed until now.

William Kelso, lead archeologist on the project, and his team discovered the girl's remains last summer.

"We found a deposit of refuse that contained butchered horse and dog bones," Kelso said. "That was only done in times of extreme hunger. As we excavated, we found human teeth and then a partial human skull."

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Xavier Briand)

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