Jakarta –
How could a society of 115 men, women, and children just disappear? This is a question that has haunted historians and archaeologists for hundreds of years regarding the disappearance of a group of citizens from English which is in Roanoke Island, United States.
As quoted detikINET from Discover, this mystery dates back to 1587. At that time, a group of English colonists landed on what is now known as Roanoke Island, on the outer edge of North Carolina. They want to shape british colony first permanent in North America.
“Their idea was to create an English village,” says Andrew Lawler, journalist and author of The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
They were middle-class Londoners trying to escape the abundance of filth and disease in the British capital and headed for the New World, as the United States was then called, as a way of acquiring land.
They were led by John White, who was appointed governor of the new colony by Sir Walter Raleigh, the expedition’s financier. Immediately upon arrival, White returned to England to gather more supplies.
He had wanted to leave for Roanoke immediately, but the war with Spain led Queen Elizabeth I to order all ships to be dispatched. As a result, White was unable to sail across the Atlantic until 1590.
When he finally arrived in Roanoke, White was shocked to find the colony abandoned. The building has no signs of burning and no human remains, so the assumption that the colony was slaughtered by the Algonquian natives who lived there is broken. “It looks like they left in an orderly manner,” Lawler said.
White knew that the company had considered moving 50 miles inland. Before leaving Roanoke in 1587, he had them leave a carving in a tree or rock to indicate the new location if they moved.
As he surveyed the abandoned settlement, he saw the word “CROATOAN” carved into a fence post. And so, he assumed they moved on from Roanoke to Croatoan Island (now known as Hatteras), located about 60 miles to the south.
Next page, theory regarding the disappearance of the Roanoke colony>>>
(fyk/fay)
