Chess Boxing

Of course, if a nearby tribe had massacred the colonists, why wouldn't the bodies have been left behind? The lack of any remains strongly suggests that the colonists left on their own.

I remember a theory about the Roanoke colonists moving to live with Central American natives based on later colonists wondering why certain tribes had a random sprinkling of pale skinned, blue eyed members. Can't recall details atm. To Google!

The colonists became middle-aged slackers and moved into their moms' basements and spent all their time playing the popular, for the time, "Pilgrims and Indians" role playing game.

via cracked.com
http://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved-mysteries-with-really-obvious-solutions.html

The Obvious Answer:

That second group of settlers didn't really get the chance to investigate what happened to the original bunch, because a few years later an even bigger mysterious phenomena occurred: Blue-eyed, pale-complexioned Indians began showing up on nearby Croatan Island.

So what to make of these mysterious children, who looked like they might have been the descendents of white/Indian mixed race parents? On CROATAN island?

It's almost as if, we don't know, a certain group of settlers realized their colony sucked, and went and found some natives nearby who seemed to know how to live off the land. And that they then left their shitty colony forever to go live happily ever after on Croatan Island, and to have impressive amounts of sex with the natives.

Roanoke was pretty definintely solved by Josh Berstein's "Digging for the Truth" episode, in which they collected DNA samples from several local native tribes, and compared it to known relatives of the colonists from Scotland. The colonists were absorbed in to several local tribes when their colony failed (because it was too small and too poorly supported).

Cahokia is also not all that mysterious, really. Normal story of too many people living too closely together for too long, and depleting the land to the point where they just couldn't grow enough food locally with the technology they had. Imported food is expensive, so everyone moved away. (Yeah, it's a lot more complicated, and more violent, than that, but that's the basic story.) Cahokia was local to me in high school. As a side note, the locals in the area, Missouri and Illinois, will latch on to *any* chance to extract money from tourists, and Cahokia is certainly a good attraction, and that much better if it's somehow mysterious. Shoulda been there with one of the locals convinced the barge lights on the underside of the clouds over The River were UFOs. T-shirts and beer stands in the streets!

The folks from roanoke hooked up with the equally mysterious Cahokians from the midwest. they ultimately settled in what is know known as Roswell, New Mexico

This Cracked article covered the Roanoke mystery quite well: http://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved-mysteries-with-really-obvious-solutions.html

Concerning Cahokia;

I'm a PhD candidate in archaeology, so I while probably have my head up my butt, it might be a little less than the author.

We know a lot about the group occupying that area, there are known as Mississippians and Cahokia is one of a large number of sites known to have been inhabited by these folks. Aztalan is likely the northern extent of the group in Wisconsin and the sites reach at least as far as Moundville Alabama.

Maize/corn (imported from Mexico orginally) was the basis of nutrition for this culture and it was this energy rich abundant food that created surpluses needed to support full time mound builders and artisans. It's also their downfall since maize doesn't carry the same nutrition as a mixed diet of gathered foods and wild game. There is a set of clear indicators in skeletal remains including caries in teeth and a higher incidence of rickets and other diseases related to malnutrition.

As for all the skeletons in the mound. What isn't mentioned is that they are grouped around a central figure that has nicer stuff than anyone else. Sound familiar at all? Yeah, these individuals were to accompany him into the next life as some sort of attendants. Pretty common stuff in the historical record.

If you want a bit more mystery and smaller but amazingly cool mounds, look at the Effigy Mounds built by the "Ft. Ancient" culture. Or the Hopewell group centered out of Chilicothe Ohio. (Shout out to my Buckeyes from Michigan!) The interesting thing there is that they DON'T have a easy food source but had advanced crafting, mounds that accurately predict long term astronomical observations, and it's beginning to look like there is some interesting math encoded into the mounds. And how did they get all those exotic materials into Ohio from as far away as the UP of Michigan, Wyoming, and the East and Gulf Coasts? At a time of increasing warfare? And most importantly, what were they trading for the material? There's nothing from Ohio found in any of the artifact records of those areas.

So yeah, there's some weird stuff out there. But it isn't either of these places. And there's no aliens, sorry. Humans are capable of all sorts of amazing things all on our own, thank you very much.

Thanks for the other debunk Coyote!

In Spain we think they went back to the island because they like being lost.

Neither of these cases sound particularly mysterious to me. At least, not anymore so than a number of other cases where we merely don't have all the evidence.

On a side-note, while there are still plenty of mysteries involved with the pyramids, we've come a long way in unlocking the secrets to their construction. Dr Rainer Stadelmann in particular has brought about many very reasonable explanations for how construction was accomplished.

I thought 'Roanoke' when I read 'Mysterious Sites' and remember reading about the appearance of blue-eyed natives in the region afterward, like the other readers above. Strange stuff!

Now if only we could solve the mysteries of ghost ships with still-warm food on the tables... and no occupants anywhere on the ship.

The first time I heard of "Croatoan" was in Stephan King's Storm of the Century

Has no one thought that maybe it was aliens?

:)

Interesting.

About the Roanoke settlement I've understood that the main pointwhy people did not understand the dissapearance of that settlement, was because for ages people just did not want to believe that anyone would want to choose to abandon the European way of life for a socalled "primitive" lifestyle. This cultural Eurocentristic view stood in the way of any comprehension of what happened there.
Same thing could be seen all over the world where Europeans or people of European-culture somehow got stuck outside their safe culture in the rough outback and they had to survive without all the backup of their own folks- Either their colony got strong enough to survive and prosper, or if they couldn't get strong soon enough, they just died of starvation or by being overrun by natives and they vanished because they didn't grasp the survival-skills of that location in time. Or they survived by simply let themselves be absorbed by the ways of the land- by those who already lived there succesfully. You see similar tales of individuals and groups in Australia, the America's, Asia and Africa. And lots of times that same disbelief of other Europeans that their own people willingly for any reason would choose to assimilate with natives, socalled "primitives".....

@Foreigner1

Reminds me of the computer game Fallout, where in a post-nuclear world there are people who chose to live a tribal way of life, while others decided to stay and live in the destroyed ruins of cities where crime and discord is rampant, while calling themselves the "civilised folk". It was quite an effective parody of that mindset.

I suggest you check out "Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony" by Lee Miller. It is a great read and presents the disappearance and basically a political gambit. Alternatively, there is also the hypothesis that the Roanokers, joined with folk brought from Latin America by British privateers, joined up with some local native Americans and their microsociety led to the development of multiracial groups like the Portygee (Melungeons) and the Carolina "Redbones."

What is interesting is that high school teaches you when the settlers arrived in the Americas; they discovered small tribes of "barbaric" people. HOWEVER, archaeologists & anthropologists are beginning to discover or argue (as this article appropriately indicates) North and South America were already thriving populaces of huge tribes/forms of government that had advanced trade routes and other technological advances thought not to have existed initially amongst the natives. The theory exists that these native tribes had already endured tremendous decreases in population due to rampant diseases and that is why their tribes were so small when the settlers first arrived. of course, their numbers dwindled further once the settlers introduced small pox and syphillis but we already knew that... A really interesting read that covers a lot of this theory is "1491"- can't recall the author, but it's rather enlightening- cheers!

Re Rumpus: Thank you so much!! I'm a grad student in archaeology as well and this was a bit irritating to me. Cahokia isn't that big of a mystery any more, you're totally right there are several other places that are less well known.

So many theories, so little time. I have to write a paper theorizing what happened.