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No, no.

I've seen it.

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Ie.

What is that right there?

I mean, this just adds a whole new dimension to our understanding understanding of these early settlers.

You make a very compelling case. So how do you prove it?

You dig them up.

I can't wait, man. Let's do it. Look out.

When we think of Thanksgiving, we think of pilgrims, turkey, and doorbuster deals on flat panel TVs. But I've always been interested in a darker, earlier chapter of the American story.

The history books tell us that in 1607, Jamestown, Virginia, became the first permanent English colony in the now United States. There's just one problem.

That may not be true. You see, long before the Jamestown settlers ever laid eyes on the new world, an Englishman named John White led 118 men, women, and children across the Atlantic to Roanoke Island in 1587. White soon sailed back to England for much-needed supplies, but when he returned, he found the settlement eerily abandoned, with no sign of the colonists, dead or alive. The only clue to their fate? A single word, Croatoan, carved onto a post.

So what happened to these early pioneers?

Armed with new evidence, three different groups of Explorers are racing to solve this 400-year-old mystery.

So I'm headed to North Carolina, where I'll join these teams to discover the fate of the lost colony of Roanoke and the truth behind America's first mystery. History.

My name is Josh Gates. Look at that. With a degree in archeology and a passion for exploration. I have a tendency to end up in some very strange situations.

This is horrible. This is officially horrible.

My travels have taken me to the ends of the Earth as I investigate the greatest legends in history. We're good to fly. Let's go. This is Expedition unknown.

Okay, so to really understand the story of the Lost Colony requires the tiniest bit of a history lesson. Don't change the channel. This will be painless. This will be brief. We'll even use some fancy animated maps. Do take notes, though. There's going to be a quiz after. All right, deep breath. Here we go.

On March 25th, 1584, Queen Elizabeth I grants a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, authorizing him to set up a permanent English colony in the New World. Under the leadership of Governor John White, 118 settlers leave their homes to establish themselves on a strange and unfamiliar continent. The journey takes them from England, nearly 4,000 miles across the churning Atlantic Ocean, to Roanoke Island in the outer banks of what's now North Carolina. They spot the island on July 22nd, 1587, and come ashore to start their new lives, where they get to work planting and building a village in the new world. During their first month in their new home, Governor White's daughter, Eleanor Dair, gives birth. Her daughter, Virginia Dair, becomes the first English child born in North America. The celebration doesn't last long. Life in the village is demanding, and the settlers begin running short on supplies. They ask Governor White to return to England for life-saving help. He leaves arrives at the end of August, not knowing that this will be the last time he will ever lay eyes on any of the colonists.

See?

That wasn't so bad.

All right, I want to show.

I, too, arrive at the Outer Banks and cross over to the island of Roanoke. And while the colonists may have vanished, they're still on everyone's minds. My first stop on the island is the Fort Raleigh Visitors Center.

Walking through this museum, the mystery of the Roanoke Colony really comes into light. After John White left the colony in 1587, other than these scant remains, they seem to have completely vanished.

Nobody knows the exact location of the colony, though the few eerie artifacts that have been recovered suggests that it was near this very spot. So items like this are fascinating.

These three disks are called Nuremberg Tokens. They're named that because they were minted in Germany. These objects found at Roanoke were obviously brought here by the colonists. These are not things that the natives has had. But the problem is this is about all we've got. A few tokens, some beads, remnants of tools. There's no structures, no bodies, no clear evidence of what happened to the colonists.

I go behind the fort to meet an expert on the Roanoke mystery in the elaborate Elizabethan Gardens, named for Queen Elizabeth I, who chartered the colony. Here, Tom Shields is going to help me navigate the many possible endings to the Roanoke story.

In terms of the theories about the fate of the lost colonists, what do you think are the most reasonable?

There's two basic groups. They either died, probably here, or they moved inland and assimilated or lived on their own in some way or another.

Okay, so they either got killed or they left? Right. Okay, so in the They Got Killed camp, what are the likely ways in which that could have happened?

One is just disease. Almost every colony has lots of people dying early on in that way. Another possibility is starvation. They arrive here in August. They're English planters. They don't know they could probably get in one more good crop at this point in the year. Drought is one of those things that we look at.

So it could be lack of water.

Could be lack of water. Then there's also attacked by Native Americans.

Two earlier scouting expeditions by the English established relations with the natives that were uneven at best. Some tribes along the Coast were peaceful and cooperative, but the English enemies of other groups.

So all sorts of possibilities. Which one? We don't know.

The more optimistic possibility is that we can't find the colony because it moved.

So where would they have gone?

The basis for a lot of the places people want to look for that is based on what John White said they intended to do. Okay.

According to John White's journal, if the colonists had to relocate in his absence, they were to move the settlement 50 miles into the Maine, which most believe means into the mainland. They were also told to carve their destination into a post if they left. And White did find the word Croatoan inscribed into a wooden fence. But whether this was meant for him or what it means about the colony's location is a mystery.

So there's somebody who I think you might want to meet who can tell you more about the colony from an English perspective, from her own personal point of view.

Okay, sure. Yeah, happy to meet him. Oh, my God. Holy moly.

Wow.

Hello. Your Heiness. Good, sir. Very nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you as well. I'm actually here doing a story on your Roanoke colony. The Roanoke colony? I haven't heard from them in a while. I don't want to be too forward here, especially in front of royalty, but what the hell is going on here? Who are you? I'm Emily. You're Emily? I play Queen Elizabeth I here on Roanoke Island in the Lost Colony play. In the play? Yeah. I thought I was having an asset trip.

Turns out the Queen is a member of the Lost Colony troupe that has been reenacting their version of the Roanoke story since 1937. And it's still going strong.

Still going strong.

So We would like to invite you to be a part of the Lost Colony tonight. Oh, wow. Okay, when you say be a part of. We have a roll for you with a costume. Am I allowed to say no to the Queen of England? You're absolutely not. I would have your head. Well, then I guess I have to do it.

I'm rushed over to the theater, where about 20 minutes before the curtain is scheduled to go up, I'm hastily dropped into the hands of Associate producer Lance Culpepper.

How are you?

We need to get you into costume and fitting.

Okay.

We're going to measure you and see what costumes we can you into today. Not many of them, I'm guessing. If you'll take a deep breath for me. Okay.

Don't look so shocked. Did you see that? It was like she looked like she'd never seen anyone this size. I'm going to get around your waist. I'm measured for a costume that uses roughly three acres of fabric. Hey, Josh, you look great.

Thank you.

Ready for makeup? Yes. Let's go. Okay.

At some point, will I be seeing a script?

And quickly walk past the last of the Mohicans before heading to makeup.

I feel like it's too much. Is it too much? Yeah, you could probably tone it down a bit.

Five minutes before showtime, someone finally hands me a script. And guess what? I'm an Englishman. Typecasting. This play, written by Paul Green nearly 80 years ago, is actually the longest running outdoor drama in America. I'm honored to be a part of it since I'm fascinated by the story of the colonists, but also totally terrified since I literally don't know any of my lines. And now, Paul Green's The Lost Colony.

This is it.

This is it. Let's go.

And we're off and running. From the wings, I get a glimpse of the show, an ambitious production that recounts the colonists' brave journey to Roanoke. The playwright speculates that the settlers were ultimately done in by Native American attacks. As for me, I'm about to meet my own fate on stage in about two minutes. On Roanoke Island in North Carolina, I've been invited to take the stage with the cast of The Lost Colony Play, the mysterious story of the English settlers who vanished off the face of the Earth here 400 years ago. Speaking of vanishing, I just got handed the script, and I'm thinking about bolting for the exits. And now, The Lost Colony. I'm playing the of a man warning the ill-fated colonists not to travel to the new world. What say you, John?

Nabus!

Nabus! I say it's gospel.

Every living word.

11 months, eleven months I was there in that cursed land, and I would not go back for all the jewels of Spain. I walk off stage to thunderous applause. In my head, anyway. There was one problem with my performance, though. My cup was empty.

Now I need a real drink.

The next morning, I feel a real sense of purpose, having spent last night walking a mile in the world of the Lost Colony. Now, it's time to figure out what really happened.

While a lot of people are searching for the physical location of the Lost Colony, other people are trying to figure out the mystery in different ways. One of those people is a guy named Charles Ewen, who is a professor of Anthropology, and he's got a novel approach that he thinks might just crack the case.

It's about 100 degrees out right now, which seems appropriate. Since one of the newest theories about the Lost Colony is that it wilted in the face of a massive drought. To prove the colonists couldn't take the heat, the professors asked me to meet him in the swamp, along with Dendrochronologist Erica Wies.

Hiya. You're Charles? Hey, Josh. Good to see you. Nice to meet you. How are you, Erica? Hi.

Nice to meet you. Pleasure.

So what are we doing out here? What's the plan of attack?

Well, one of the things I'm interested in is finding out what happened to those folks. And if we're going to understand what happens to them, we really got to understand their environment.

Unfortunately, there's no one around today from the late 16th century. So how do we do that?

But there are still living witnesses to the time period back then, and those are some of the trees.

The trees.

So we actually have trees here in North Carolina that were alive when the colonists were here?

Yeah. North Carolina has some of the the oldest trees in the East, and some of them definitely date back to that era.

And how do you get those trees to talk?

We just have to pull a little core out of them and look at their rings because they're recording that information right in their tree growth.

I take it that's what this beauty is for.

Indeed. It'll get us where we need to go.

Okay, let's do it. Come on. Okay, let's go.

We get settled into the airboat and head out into the swamp in search of a tree old enough to spill the secrets of the lost colony.

Okay, Cap, you ready?

Ready if you are. All right.

Punch it, Chewy.

We speed through the narrow waterways, eyeing the older, larger trees along the banks. But finding a 400-year-old tree means going deep into the wilderness.

All right, Erica, it's Are you feeling older in here. Is that a fair assessment? Or is at least feeling spookier.

The trees are getting a little bigger back here, less disturbed back here.

We scan the waterline, but for the life of us, we can't see a tree for the forest. That is, until Professor Ewen spots something.

How about that one? That one looks pretty good. Which one are you looking at? Just off the portfile there, sticking in the water.

Oh, yeah, that's a big boy. Erica, what do you think about that?

That's a beautiful tree. We got to try that one.

Now that we've identified the tree, we pull in and suit up with harnesses to get a sample from a higher point on the trunk. Climbing a tree sure has changed since I was 10 years old. Once we're rigged up, the professor and our boat captain hoist Erica into the canopy.

Josh, you want to come up now?

Want to or have to? You need to come up. All right, I'm coming up.

This tree is not going to core itself, so I clip in and start to make my way up to meet Erica.

Okay, I am locked off, and I am not looking down anymore. Now we're up here. What do we do?

We're just going to drill a little hole to this tree and see what it tells us.

Okay, got it.

Erica begins the process of getting a core sample, but the tough hide of the tree makes it difficult for one person to turn the borer.

Josh, come here. Give me your hand, okay?

Okay, let me just see if I can see if I can swing my way over to you and get onto that ledge. Charles, don't drop me down there. Yeah, I got you. Okay.

Hi.

Hey. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. Yeah.

Okay.

Here There we go.

Take the top, take the bottom.

Turn.

Turn. I help Erica drill into the tree.

But as we focus on getting a sample, I lose focus on my footing.

Look out.

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I'm somewhere on the Roanoke River, dangling high in a tree with Dendrochronologist Erika Wies. We're taking a core sample, which may be able to tell us if the lost colonists were done in by a brutal the drought. While all of my elbow grease is being put into the drill, I accidentally lose track of my feet. Look out.

Charles, you got me down there?

I got you.

Once I get myself under control, Erica and I finish getting the core sample.

Okay, Charles, I need to pass you this core.

With our sample in safe hands, it's time to come out of the trees.

Charles, Charles, get me out of here. All right.

Coming down slowly.

Okay. Thanks, buddy.

That was so bad.

Easy to say, Charles. We were down here.

I was doing the heavy lifting.

That's true.

Erica follows suit, and once we're all back in the boat, she carefully extracts the core from the boring mechanism.

All right, moment of truth. Here we go. Okay, let's see what we've got.

The core is a cylindrical cross-section of the tree, revealing secrets from the past.

Do we see evidence on here of times when water is scarcer? Can that be corroborated here?

Well, so this tree definitely shows dry periods, wet periods over the centuries. So we just have to figure out exactly when those fell.

In examining the core, the more narrow the ring is, the drier the year in which it formed. In this case, we see there is an extended dry period nearly 450 years ago, right around when the colonists arrived at Roanoke.

This is really exciting, these data here, in that it really gives us a better picture of what a struggle it was for those folks here.

Do you think that it's possible that the ending of the colonists could be something as elementary as needing water?

Oh, absolutely. They were here with minimal supplies in an environment they'd never experienced. If this does bear out, that we've got a drought at that period, it would have been more surprising for John White to have found them when he got back. I mean, this just It adds a whole new dimension to our understanding of these early settlers.

This is a significant piece of evidence that the colonists may have succumbed to a horrendous fate, finding the new world only to starve to death on her shores. But the Roe and Oak bunch were hardy and resourceful, and there's still no direct evidence that a lack of water ultimately did them in. I'm back on the road to meet with a group of researchers on the mainland of North Carolina who have a totally different theory. They don't believe drought killed the colonists. In fact, they don't believe they were killed at all. One of the most debated clues in the Roanoke mystery comes from the journal of John White, who returns to England for supplies after the colony is established. He and the settlers agree that they should move 50 miles into the Maine if they need to abandon the colony while he's gone. But what and where does he mean?

When it comes to physical, tangible evidence that links us to the lost colony, there's not a lot out there. One of the most interesting potential clues is a map. It was actually hand-drawn by John White himself in 1585, and it depicts what is now the Coast of North Carolina.

White created one of the first British maps of the Roanoke area. The map has been preserved in the British Museum in London. But just recently, testing revealed startling new clues on the document. An archeological team called the First Colony Foundation is using this evidence to piece together the real location of the lost colonists. On the remote edge of a forest on the Roanoke River, I meet first Colony Archeologist Eric Dietz.

Are you Eric? Yeah. Josh. Josh, how are you? Nice to meet you, man. Nice to meet you. Yeah, it's a pleasure. So listen, this is not an easy place to find.

Yeah, it's a little off the beaten path.

Why way out here?

There's a lot of places that are 50 miles into the main from Roanoke Island. At this particular spot, we found something very interesting on the John White map that's in the British Archives. Really? I can show that to you if you want.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, so here's a really good quality copy of John White's map. Here's Roanoke Island. Do you notice anything odd God. On the map? Yes, on the map.

This? This is what?

That's a patch of some sort where they've either revised the map or there was a tear or something like that. If you look up here, there's another one.

There's another one right there.

Right in here, which is where we are.

That's a patch also?

Yes, it is. Wow.

What's under that?

That's a great question, and that's what we wanted to know.

The maps in the British Museum, so were they able to look at it?

Well, they used the light box with backlighting, and they used ultraviolet light, and they were able to see what was under the patch.

And was something under it?

Oh, something spectacular.

What did they find?

Oh, my God.

Look at that.

There's a symbol hidden under the patch.

There certainly is.

That's astounding. And we're in this spot. Yes, we are. And so what's the symbol? Symbol's a fort.

You're sure? Yes, no doubt. It represents a fort.

This is a bombshell find. This symbol was a popular marker for English forts. In fact, we know from historical illustrations that many early colonial forts took on this starlike shape.

And so why do you think that was covered?

Could be for secrecy. You may not be want to send a map back to England that would be captured, that would show where a fortification was. It could be that it was altered because the fort was never built.

Okay, but obviously a hugely intriguing place to look.

Yeah, it definitely proves that this is a place of interest to the colonists at the time that John White was here because he placed this for whatever reason on the map.

Okay, so what's the plan now?

Today, we're going to do some really high tech testing to peel away the vegetation.

And maybe see what that symbol is supposed to represent. Well, hopefully. All right. I can't wait, man. Let's do it. Come on.

The 60 acre piece of land under the patch is known as Site X, both because the shape of the symbol and because Site X sounds really cool.

Clay Hoare, nice to meet you.

Eric introduces me to the rest of his team and even shows me some artifacts that have already been excavated.

This is lead glazed earthenware. All right. You can tell the really distinctive yellow glaze.

They They are small fragments like this that they found at Site X with pottery discovered at Roanoke.

Here we have a basin, and this is an archeological example, and this dates to about 167 to 1610.

If you look at the glazing, the coloring, they're almost identical. And so items like this found on Roanoke. Yes. Incredible.

But what they're really searching for is evidence of a structure. The real question is whether or not there's a fort here. To find out, they're using a high-tech search tool.

This is crazy. What is this beast?

Well, it's a big copter that's going to carry some LiDAR for us so we can do some great imaging of this area.

I've been lucky enough to have seen LiDAR in action before. It works by firing millions of laser pulses from the air to reveal evidence of human construction on the ground. Eric's team from LiDAR USA has rigged up a portable laser unit to a powerful drone.

In terms of today, what's the plan? What are we scanning?

Well, site X is over in this direction here, and what we're going to have these guys do is give us a better idea of the topography. Maybe it opens up new areas for us to go look and test.

How big an area are we talking about scanning here?

We're going to do about 40 to 50 acres today. It'll take about 15 minutes to cover that area.

Only 15 minutes?

Fifteen minutes, and we'll get it like twice over in that time.

That's insane. Oh, man. The brave new world. Should we all be standing right here when it takes off? Yeah.

Okay, well, let's move to wherever we need to go. Eric and I take a step back while the LiDAR crew preps their custom drone for takeoff. Once the lasers are up and running, it's time to see what this baby can do. She's up. I'm 50 miles from Roanoke Island at a location referred to as Site X.

So it's off. It's off.

New examination of a colonial era map has revealed a hidden symbol of a fort. Now, the First Colony Foundation has just sent up a large drone, armed with a high tech laser, to see if the lost colony of Roanoke could have survived by relocating here in 1587.

You see, it's just a little bit above the trees.

The lower you are, the better the resolution is and the more data points you get.

Just a short 20 minutes later, the drone takes its final flight pass before Jean brings it in for a landing.

It's incredible. Arlene, now let's see if she found anything.

We remove the drive from the drone, and the data is ingested into a laptop, where advanced software renders a multi-layered traffic of the scanned area.

But look at that. It's completely three-dimensional. How crazy is that?

The program accomplishes in minutes what would have once taken archeologists months to complete. The software can even strip away the foliage, layer by layer, to reveal the ground beneath the trees.

Let's take a look around here and see what we see. What are some of the things that we're looking for here? What are some of the things that the LiDAR could reveal?

Any linear features that show up that run counter to the natural topography.

Straight lines, things like that.

Yeah, straight lines. Any depressions or mounds that might run on a regular spacing. Okay.

Do not see a giant star-shaped fort. Can we see any evidence of where you were digging before?

Possibly some of these little bumps are where the trenches were filled back in.

Okay. Yeah. What is that right there?

It's a good question.

Oh, wow. Okay. I really like this land form right here. What's nice is with the LiDAR, you can see the true prominence of that little ridge that sticks out here.

Is that natural?

No, you don't really see bright angles in nature.

That'd be a great strategic spot for a fort. Promising? It's already something important. We just need to dig more to find out what it is. And in the end, all this fancy equipment is nice, but we like to get dirty.

You still got to go dig holes, right? So now you get your high tech model and now more digging. Yeah, that's the fun part.

To an archeologist, finding a shape like this, hidden beneath centuries of vegetation, is like seeing the bat signal. This is very cool stuff, and it very well may lead them to more definitive evidence of a human presence here. However, there are also reasons to be cautious. For one thing, the LiDAR didn't show any signs of post holes or other constructions which would have been necessary to house 118 people. And if they're not here at Site X, where else could they have gone? Some believe the probable landing spot was an island known to John White and the lost colonists as Croatoan. And to us today, as Hatteras. I meet with local historian Scott Dawson from the Croatoan Archeological Society, who says he knows exactly where the lost colonists disappeared to.

Scott? Yeah, Scott Dawson. Josh.

Nice to meet you, man. Nice to meet you, Josh.ThanksThank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Oh, thanks for coming down.

So I take it you have a pretty strong theory about what happened to these folks.

I do. So basically, I feel like they went where they literally wrote down they went.Croatoan.Which is Croatoan.

When John White finally returned to Roan Oak Island in 1590, he found the colony had all but disappeared. There were no signs of attack, but the colonists themselves may have left behind a clue. White discovered a carving along the fence that read Croatoan. On a nearby a tree, he found another carving, Crow, C-R-O.

I mean, that certainly is the obvious answer, right?

That's exactly right. They literally carved it out in capital letters. That's pretty hard to get around.

Unlike other tribes in the area with which the colonists had hostile relationships, the Croatoan tribe had helped the colonists after they arrived and proved to be friendly trading partners.

And they had a relationship with the Croatoan tribe for years. They got along great with them.

I see. So it was an alliance.

Yes.

You make a very compelling case. So how do you prove it?

You dig them up.

To hear Scott tell it, it seems like the obvious solution. But that doesn't mean it's correct.

Let's do this.

The Croatoan Archeological Society has an active dig site where Scott believes they're on the verge of a major discovery. The dig is on the other side of Roanoke Sound, which gives Scott a chance to prove that he's not just a stuffy historian. To get there, he's wrangled some jet skis.

Let's go.

Let's see what you got. Come on. I'm not sure yet if Scott can really prove where the lost colony ended up, but I am sure of one thing. If he's right, I'm about to be the first person to jet ski into the history books.

Historian Scott Dawson is leading me to where he and a group of archeologists have been working to solve the mystery of the lost Roanoke colonists of 1587.

We cross over Roanoke Sound to Hatteras Island. Four hundred years ago, this was known as Croatoan.

Take that history, boy.

We're ripping along at a speed that would have made the early settlers here green with envy, until suddenly, speed is a little hard to come by.

Oh, Scott?

Yeah.

I got a slight problem here.

What's that?

I'm in a foot of water.

As it turns out, I'm not just standing on a sandbar. In the colonist's time, This used to be the beach. In fact, all you have to do is drop your hands into the water to find something historic.

Oh, my God. What is it? This is crotone pottery. This is pottery. It's pottery. It's shell grog. It's a pot.

Which just means there's shells mixed into it?

There's shells mixed into it. That made the pot stronger.

This is from 18th century?

From the 18th to 16th century in that area.

Let's see if we could find more of it. Aha.

Pottery.

Yes, sir. Okay, see, now that's really old, Josh. How old is this? From about the year 500.

You're telling me this is more than 1,500 years old?

Yeah.

That is crazy. Finds like this have helped Scott and his team identify that the native Croatoans lived here. After all, this was the island that was named for them. But were the lost colonists here, too?

We've got Croatoan pottery here, but how does that connect us to the lost colony?

The goal would be to find Elizabeth and colonial material mixed in with Croatoan material, which is exactly what we're working on at our main site, which is just a little bit inland.

Okay, great.

These shallow waters are federal property, so we carefully leave the pottery where we found it, and Scott shows me why we're really here. He leads me inland, where his colleagues have been working to excavate a major dig site. Hi, how are you? Hi.

You guys got a full scale operation going here.

Researchers from the University of Bristol and the Croatoan Archeological Society have uncovered a large Croatoan village, yielding thousands of artifacts. But how do you figure out if 118 English colonists were living here, too? Simple. You snoop around.

This is Charlie.

Hi, Charlie.

How are you doing?

I'm Josh. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Charlie, walk me through what's going on down here.

Essentially, when you live in a place, you leave rubbish behind. That's what we're looking at.

Right. You are routing around in Croatoan garbage.

Dirt, yeah, pretty much. We are going through their refuse, which to non-archeologist is an extremely odd thing to do. But for us, this is exactly what we want. We want all of this disgusting dirt because we're finding things like this.

What is it?

Massive fish vertebra. So we know that they're eating that specific breed of fish. They're using the materials that they have to gain the food that they need to survive. You've got water, you've got all the fish you could possibly want, you've got deer living on the land. And this pit itself shows that they're not just surviving, they're eating really quite well. Yeah.

One man's garbage is another man's key to solving a 400-year-old mystery. In this case, the fishbone seemed to tell us that if the Roanoke colony was plagued by a drought, the natives here didn't seem to have any trouble finding food. Another reason the colonists might have wanted to join forces.

So in terms of the lost colony, is it possible that they became fully integrated into this Croatoan life?

It's absolutely possible. In fact, the English were familiar with this tribe. So there's a relationship here that had already existed prior to the lost colony.

In order to find even the smallest artifacts that could prove the colonists were here, they've set up a sifting station.

Okay, now what do I do with this?

You just dump this in there?

All right, well, I could do that.

That's the A tiny bit.

Buckets of dirt are emptied into the trough.

All right.

Pushing through an increasingly fine series of screens. Finally, a hose is used to distinguish the artifacts from the remaining dirt. Okay.

Okay. Into the nitty-gritty. The nitty-gritty.

Yeah, you have to change up your eyes on this one because you're just looking for the tiniest little shape changes, tiniest little color changes. We have tiniest little teeth. This is from a sheep's head. It's the grinder at the back of the jaw.

We sift through the sample, finding plenty of dirt, but not enough pay dirt. Then a sharp eye changes that in an instant.Bead..

A bead. There you go. Nice.

Look at that. That's what's called a seed bead.

Wow.

That is awesome. Look at that. This would have been European?

Yeah, made in Italy, in Venice, most likely. It's strange because it's so tiny. It's actually made out of glass.

That is so wild to think that something so fine, so small, produced in Venice, made its way onto a beach in North Carolina hundreds of years ago. It's so cool.

These are very, very good examples of the difference between pre-European and European. These very European artifacts are being integrated within Native American dress.

It replaced the shell-based currency with of glass beads.

Something very small but very significant.

This bead may be all that's left of one of the famed colonists of Roanoke, a tiny forensic clue that speaks to us from the past and shows us that not only does beauty endure, it informs.

There is evidence to indicate that that last colony came down here. Why is it still so controversial, do you think? Why do you think that so many people don't accept that?

Before John White left the colony, there was some discussion of moving 50 miles into the Maine. Right.

While most people have taken 50 miles into the Maine to mean into the mainland, it's just as possible that Maine means Coast. And Croatoan Island happens to be, you guessed it, 50 miles down the Coast from Roanoke. As we continue to explore the site, the North Carolina skies open up, so we run for the cover of a small tent. Our dig is on hold, but Scott wants to show me a recently uncovered artifact here that could be the strongest tie yet between the Croatoan tribe and the Roanoke colony.

Okay, ready?

What the hell is that?

The handle of a rapier, which is a sword. Wow. And the blade would have been coming this way. Sure. Yeah. So the handle would have come here.

So this is definitely from the 1500s. This is from early colonial times.

Typologically, it's been dated using other samples to around 1580, 1590.

Wow. So this really is right in the money. This is lost colony time right here.

That's right. And the rapier is particularly good because a rapier is an extremely expensive gentleman's sword, and they even said in the sources, they would not trade her part with their sword.

Wow, right. So if it's something that they wouldn't have traded that was this valuable and this precious, possibly was actually brought here by its owner.

It's reasonable.

That is extraordinary.

The rapier isn't the only significant colonial relic found at this site. They found an Elizabethen gun barrel and even Nuremberg tokens, like the ones found at the original Roanoke site. The presence of these artifacts suggests the colonists and Native Americans may have been living here together at the same time.

And for you, Scott, do you think the lost colony folks came here? Are you are you convinced of that?

Most of my reasoning for believing they came down here is from the primary sources. They literally wrote down they came here. They had a relationship with this tribe. I mean, those things, the historical context, can't be thrown out the window.

And in terms of the archeological record?

The archeology is very circumstantial, but it's very compelling.

Until we find that one magical object that seals the deal, you'll continue to dig. Oh, yeah.

I'm not stopping.Thank.

You so much.Thanks, Josh. I really appreciate it.

The colonial artifacts from the island's native sites are too numerous and too close in age to write off as coincidence. Perhaps the colonists survived, and together with the Croatoan tribe, went on to thrive in their adoptive land. But as strong a case as there appears to be that the Roanoke colonists relocated, it isn't a certainty. Could a drought have starved the colony? Is it possible that the group split up, with some relocating to Croatoan and others to Site X? For today, those questions remain.

But what we do know is that the disappearance of Roanoke couldn't stop the colonization of North America.

Soon after, Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the now United States. The same determination that drove the first colonists inspired their successors and continues to inspire researchers like Charles Ewen, Eric Dietz, and Scott Dawson. Thanks to them, it appears that one day soon we may know for sure what happened to the lost colony. One thing is certain, though. The bravery of Roanoke's settlers us that exploration always means risk, and that those who dare sometimes are lost but not forgotten.