Cannibalism Confirmed At Early US Settlements

Scientists say they have found definitive archaeological evidence that some of the earliest English settlers in America turned to cannibalism to survive.

Archaeologists say they have found bones of a 14-year-old girl at Jamestown, Virginia, that show evidence of being chopped clumsily as though to be butchered - what they call clear proof that she was eaten by humans.

The girl, whom researchers have given the name "Jane", is believed to already have been dead at the time, the Smithsonian National Museum of History announced on Wednesday.

Stories have persisted for years that the 6,000 starving English settlers resorted to eating dogs, mice, snakes and shoe leather at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America.

There were also written accounts of the settlers eating their own dead, but archaeologists had been sceptical of those stories until recently.

"Historians have questioned, well did it happen or not happen?" said Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley. "And this is very convincing evidence that it did."

A stone cross marks a grave at the Jamestown colony

Mr Owsley said the human remains date back to a deadly winter of 1609-1610 known as the "starving time" in Jamestown. The colony was first settled in 1607.

The settlers were under siege from the indigenous Indian population and had insufficient food to last the brutal winter and severe drought.

They were relatively inexperienced at gathering food, and had few stockpiled supplies.

Early Jamestown colony leader George Percy wrote of a "world of miseries" that included digging up corpses from their graves to eat when there was nothing else.

"Nothing was spared to maintain life," he wrote.

There is also a record of a man killing his pregnant wife, salting her remains and eating them. He was later executed for the crime.

The remains of the 14-year-old girl discovered in the summer of 2012 marks the fourth burial of human remains uncovered at Jamestown.

The bones show a bizarre attempt to open the skull. Animal brains and facial tissue would be considered accepted and desirable meat in the 17th century, Mr Owsley said.

The 14-year-old's skull shows signs of primitive butchery

Her remains were found in a cellar at the site that had been filled with trash, including bones of animals that had been consumed, according to archaeologists.

John Smith was the leader of the Virginia Colony, which was based at Jamestown.

He made a famous threat to those settlers who were not working hard enough: "He that will not work shall not eat."

He also said that the efforts in Jamestown helped to preserve the entire colony: "She next under God, was still the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine and utter confusion; which if in those times, had once been dissolved, Virginia might have lain as it was at our first arrival to this day."

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