Secret in 400-year-old map may have finally solved the mystery of Roanoke

Researchers believe they might have finally cracked the case of a creepy unsolved mystery that has baffled historians for centuries.

What was lost is now found.

Researchers believe they might have cracked the case of the lost colony of Roanoke — a great American mystery that has eluded historians for centuries.

The caper concerns a group of some 100 British settlers who landed on Roanoke Island off North Carolina in the 16th century to establish an English foothold in the New World, Popular Mechanics reported.

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But then, just three years later, both the colonists and their settlement vanished without a trace.

Their whereabouts baffled historians for centuries until 2012 when experts with the British Museum analysed the 400-year-old “La Virginea Pars” map drawn by one of the colonists named John White, finding that the parchment displayed the location where they may have ended up, GB News reported.

The secretive spot is in present-day Bertie County, North Carolina, where archaeologists had discovered ceramic artefacts of British origin.

The English expedition, which was backed by Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh, arrived on the island in 1587, establishing the first permanent English settlement in America.

It was also where Eleanor White Dare, daughter of Governor John White, gave birth to Virginia Dare — the first British baby born in the New World.

John White depicted finding a tree carved with ‘Croatoan’. Picture: Stock Montage/Getty Images

White subsequently returned to England on what was supposed to be a quick supply run but was waylaid for three years by the Anglo-Spanish War.

When the governor finally returned in 1590, he found his settlement completely abandoned, save for a wooden post with the word “CROATAN” carved into it — which was the name of another island situated just south of Roanoke, as well as the name of a Native American tribe that lived there.

Numerous theories swirled regarding the fate of the 115 colonists, which Popular Mechanics dubbed “one of the greatest mysteries in American history”. Some scholars speculated that they’d died of disease while others claimed that they’d been massacred by Spanish settlers or hostile Native American tribes.

Meanwhile, others claimed they’d been assimilated into a tribe, either voluntarily or by force.

Those remained mere conjectures for 422 years until British Museum curator Kim Sloan and colleague Alice Rugheimer shed literal light on the mystery — they put John White’s map on a lightbox to see what was behind the blank cover-up, whereupon the duo discovered a symbol for a fort.

The Roanoke Island mystery may have been solved. Picture: British Museum

“I said to Alice, ‘I think we just discovered the intended site for the Cittie of Raleigh, the colony that John White was sent to Virginia to found,’” Ms Sloan told Popular Mechanics. “And then I think I swore.”

The apparent fort was located toward the western end of Albemarle Sound, less than 100 miles (161 kilometres) from the Roanoke settlers’ last known whereabouts.

The location happened to be a dig site called 31BR246, where, in 2007, researchers excavated a specific type of English pottery that was “limited to the earliest settlement sites in Virginia, possibly dating back to the sixteenth century”, per British archaeologist Nicholas Luccketti.

It suggested that the location, now known as Site X, was a previously unknown English settlement. North Carolina’s First Colony Foundation scanned the repository using satellite-based remote sensing technology but didn’t discover “topographic features resembling a settlement like Jamestown or Plymouth”.

However, the probe did yield more artefacts, including a colonial shoelace tip and a tenter hook used for securing cloth, which the foundation believes could have only belonged to the Roanoke refugees.

The map was painted by John White between 1585 and 1586. Picture: British Museum

The findings suggest that while Site X didn’t harbour all the Roanoke settlers, a few of them likely decamped there.

Experts suspect that they could have been a small colonial family seeking aid from a Native American encampment called Mettaquem.

In 1937, archaeologists discovered another clue, known as the Dare Stone, which contained writings from Eleanor White Dare.

One side displays the sign of the cross — a symbol of emergency — and the phrase “Ananias Dare & / Virginia Went Hence / Unto Heaven 1591 / Anye Englishman Shew / John White Govr Via”.

The other side, written from Eleanor’s perspective, outlines how the colonists left Roanoke and faced two years of “Misarie” (misery).

The stone, researchers say, shows that more than half the colony died and also contains news of a ship arriving off the coast.

First Colony Foundation plans to continue probing Site X to glean more insight into the lost Roanoke colony’s fate.

This article originally appeared on NY Post and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Secret in 400-year-old map may have finally solved the mystery of Roanoke