Can new clues solve mystery of Roanoke's Lost Colony?

It's the coldest case in American history.

The settlers who inhabited the 16th century North Carolina colony of Roanoke mysteriously disappeared centuries ago, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" and "Cro" carved into a fort's gatepost and a nearby tree.

Many conspiracy theories have been concocted as to what happened in 1590, a mere three years after the colonists arrived in North America, but none have proven fruitful. Until now. Technological advances and the discovery of a cover-up on an ancient map have let researchers unearth new clues that may help bring an end to the mystery of America's lost colony.

Researchers began reinvestigating the mysterious disappearance after they noticed two strange patches on a long-forgotten map of the area called "La Virginea Pars" drawn by the colony's governor John White. Researchers at the First Colony Foundation in Durham, N.C., believed the two patches might be covering up something revealing. 

The map was analyzed by scientists at the British Museum, who discovered a small red-and-blue symbol.

"Our best idea is that parts of [Sir Walter] Raleigh's exploration in North America were a state secret, and the map 'cover-up' was an effort to keep information from the public and from foreign agents," historian and principal investigator Eric Klingelhofer of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., told National Geographic, which partially funded the effort.

we get the oldest maps we can find—so we can get a historic sense of what was there and what's there now—and orient them,"

- Malcolm LeCompte, research associate at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina

Historians believe that the symbol may have been the location of a fort the settlers fled to, running from violence or disease.

"It's obvious that that's the only way they could have survived. No single Indian tribe or village could have supported them ... They were over a hundred people," Klingelhofer said.

The current theory is that the colonists fled 50 miles south to Hatteras Island, then known as Croatoan Island. Klingelhofer suggests they may have gone in a different direction.

He believes the settlers traveled west via the Albermarle Sound to the Chowan River where there might have been a protected inlet occupied by a friendly tribe.

"It's a very strategic place, right at the end of Albemarle Sound," he said. "You can go north up the Chowan River to Virginia or west to the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were big trading partners with other Native American tribes."

Once the researchers uncovered the secrets of the "La Virginea Pars" map, they scheduled a trip to visit the area along with the help of magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar (GPR).

"What we do is we get the oldest maps we can find—so we can get a historic sense of what was there and what's there now—and orient them," said research associate Malcolm LeCompte at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, who was responsible for the GPR.

He looked for similarities between the old map and the current topography. The researchers than used GPR, which sends radio waves into the ground and measures the echo of the signals that bounce off of objects underground.

LeCompte and his team found a previously undiscovered pattern that indicated the possibility of multiple wooden structures approximately 3 feet underground.

"I don't know if it's one or a group [of structures]," he said, adding that they "could be joined or they could be close together."

The mere presence of the buried structure indicates that there was a colonial presence in the area. However, while the new information has begun to give archaeologists a clearer view as to what might have happened to the Roanoke colony, there are still pieces to the puzzle that remain unfound. What's the next step in solving this age-old mystery? 

"We have to go in and dig some holes, I guess," Swindell said.

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Scientists seek to solve mystery of Piltdown Man

LONDON (AP) — It was an archaeological hoax that fooled scientists for decades. A century on, researchers are determined to find out who was responsible for Piltdown Man, the missing link that never was.

In December 1912, it was announced that a lawyer and amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson had made an astonishing discovery in a gravel pit in southern England — prehistoric remains, up to 1 million years old, that combined the skull of a human and the jaw of an ape.

Piltdown Man — named for the village where the remains were found — set the scientific world ablaze. It was hailed as the missing evolutionary link between apes and humans, and proof that humans' enlarged brains had evolved earlier than had been supposed.

It was 40 years before the find was definitively exposed as a hoax, and speculation about who did it rages to this day. Now scientists at London's Natural History Museum — whose predecessors trumpeted the Piltdown find and may be suspects in the fraud— are marking the 100th anniversary with a new push to settle the argument for good.

The goal, lead scientist Chris Stringer wrote in a comment piece published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is to find out "who did it and what drove them" — whether scientific ambition, humor or malice.

Stringer heads a team of 15 researchers — including experts in ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotope studies — examining the remains with the latest techniques and equipment and combing the museum's archives for overlooked evidence about the evidence unearthed at sites around Piltdown.

"Although Charles Dawson is the prime suspect, it's a complex story," Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, told The Associated Press. "The amount of material planted at two different sites makes some people — and that includes me — wonder whether there were at least two people involved."

Doubts grew about Piltdown Man's authenticity in the years after 1912, as more remains were found around the world that contradicted its evidence. In 1953, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Oxford University conducted tests that showed the find was a cleverly assembled fake, combining a human skull a few hundred years old with the jaw of an orangutan, stained to make it look ancient.

Ever since, speculation had swirled about possible perpetrators. Many people think the evidence points to Dawson, who died in 1916.

Other long-dead suspects identified by researchers include Arthur Smith Woodward, the museum's keeper of geology, who championed Dawson's discoveries and gave them vital scientific credibility. The finger has also been pointed at museum zoologist Martin Hinton; Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and even "Sherlock Holmes" author Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived near Piltdown.

Stringer said the key may lie in a later find nearby — a slab of elephant bone nicknamed the "cricket bat" — that seemed to back up the first Piltdown discovery. It was revealed as a clumsy fake, carved with a steel knife from a fossilized elephant femur.

One theory is that Hinton — skeptical but afraid to openly question Woodward, his boss at the museum — might have planted it thinking it would be spotted as a hoax and discredit the whole find. A trunk with Hinton's initials found in a loft at the museum a decade after his death in 1961 contained animal bones stained the same way as the Piltdown fossils.

Miles Russell, senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University, thinks the museum's work may shed new light on how the forgery was done. But he thinks there is little doubt Dawson was the perpetrator.

"He is the only person who is always on site every time a find is made," Russell said. "And when he died in 1916, Piltdown Man died with him."

Russell is author of the new book "The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed" — though he doubts speculation about the century-old fraud will stop.

"People love conspiracy theories," he said. "And this is one of the biggest scientific hoaxes of all time."

Whoever was behind it, the hoax delayed consensus on human origins, leading some scientists to question the authenticity of later finds because they did not fit with Piltdown Man.

Stringer said Piltdown Man stands as a warning to scientists always to be on their guard — especially when evidence seems to back up their theories.

"There was a huge gap in evidence and Piltdown at the time neatly filled that gap," he said. "It was what people expected to be found. In a sense you could say it was manufactured to fit the scientific agenda.

"That lesson of Piltdown is always worth learning — when something seems too good to be true, maybe it is."

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Online:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Piltdown Man at the Natural History Museum: www.nhm.ac.uk/piltdown

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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