Two of the most ferocious droughts of the millennium may have triggered the mass starvation at America's first English settlement at Jamestown and also sealed the fate of the 120 inhabitants of the "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island, whose disappearance 20 years earlier remains one of the most enduring mysteries of the colonial period.

New research reported Thursday appears to confirm the existence of the back-to-back famines, shedding new light on the extraordinary hardships faced by early colonists as they struggled to gain a foothold in the New World.

"It wasn't just a drought, it was an amazing drought," said Dennis Blanton, director of the Center for Archaeological Research at the College of William and Mary, who used tree rings to reconstruct …show more content…
Sir Walter Raleigh, the founder of North America's aborted first English settlement, left his fellow colonists behind that year to sail to England for fresh supplies. His return three years later found no trace of the settlers, including young Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. The sole, tantalizing clue about their whereabouts was a single word, "Croatoan," which was found carved into a tree near the abandoned …show more content…
The period from 1609 to 1610 is known historically as "the starving time," a calamity that Blanton says that appears likely to have been caused by a prolonged famine. The dry spell lasted from 1606, the year before Jamestown was founded, until 1612, and ranks as the worst seven-year drought in 770 years, the report says.

The scant historical record from the time refers to shortages of food and potable water in the colony. Jamestown's most famous resident, Capt. John Smith, wrote of local Indians refusing to share food with the struggling colonists because of concerns about their own food supply. But until now there was little direct evidence of the profoundly grim conditions facing both the colonists and the Powhatan Indians who initially aided the settlers.

"The Roanoke and Jamestown colonies have both been criticized for poor planning, poor support, and for a startling indifference to their own subsistence," wrote Blanton and co-author David Stahle, a University of Arkansas climatologist, in their report. "But tree-ring reconstruction indicates that even the best planned and supported colony would have been supremely challenged by the climactic