Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, left, and Jamestown archaeologist William Kelso unveil the reconstruction from the remains of "Jane," a 17th-century teenager from Jamestown who researchers believe may have been the victim of cannibalism at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. 
 
 May 1, 2013 Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, left, and Jamestown archaeologist William Kelso unveil the reconstruction from the remains of "Jane," a 17th-century teenager from Jamestown who researchers believe may have been the victim of cannibalism at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Linda Davidson/The Washington Post 
 
 Researchers create a reconstruction from remains of a 14-year-old girl of the Jamestown colony who may have been a victim of cannibalism. 
 
 Researchers create a reconstruction from remains of a 14-year-old girl of the Jamestown colony that may have been a victim of cannibalism. 
 
 Researchers create a reconstruction from remains of a 14-year-old girl of the Jamestown colony that may have been a victim of cannibalism. 
 
 The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the body was rolled over, was more effective. One cut split the skull all the way to the base. 
 
 “The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution. 
 
 In the meantime, someone — perhaps with more experience — was working on a leg. The tibia bone is broken with a single blow, as one might do in butchering a cow. 
 
 That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism to survive. 
 
 That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists. 
 
 This 14-year old girl was eaten. She has been reconstructed after archaeologists found her bones in Jamestown, Virginia. Her remains show that she died during the “starving time” period and bare the telltale signs of cannibalism. (The Fold/The Washington Post) 
 
 The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver and a knife. 
 
 “Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” said Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both archaeological and forensic. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh. But it’s very strong evidence.” 
 
 James Horn, head of research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and a historian on the colony, said the discovery “adds a significant confirmation to what was reported to have occurred at Jamestown.” Further, it’s the only physical evidence of cannibalism of Europeans in any New World colony, although, as with Jamestown, there are written accounts of the practice in others. 
 
 “I tend to be sparing in the use of words like ‘unique.’ But I think this is one of those finds that literally is,” Horn said. 
 
 About 300 people inhabited the fort in November 1609. By spring, there were only 60. The girl, most likely a maidservant but possibly the daughter of a colonist, was one of the casualties. 
 
 Her bones were unearthed last August as part of the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project begun in 1994. About 18 inches of fill remain in the cellar, so it’s possible more of her skeleton will be found. Enough of her skull exists, however, to imagine what she might have looked like, using CT scanning, computer graphics, sculpture materials and demographic data. 
 
 The bones, the reconstruction of her head and the story were presented Wednesday at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The remains will be displayed at the Archaearium, the museum at the Jamestown fort archaeological site, starting this weekend. A warning sign at the room’s entrance notes that human remains are on view. There are no depictions of bodies being butchered, cooked or consumed. 
 
 The starving time nearly ended the colony, which was riven by internal dissent, under attack by Powhatan Indians and short of food almost from its founding in 1607. A resupply fleet of nine vessels had left Plymouth, England, on June 2, 1609. Aboard, including crew, were 500 people, of which perhaps three dozen were women and girls. The fleet was struck by a hurricane on July 23, 1609. One ship sank. The flagship, Sea Venture, wrecked on Bermuda. Most of the passengers and crew escaped to the island, an event that became the kernel of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Among the survivors was the colony’s incoming lieutenant governor, Thomas Gates. (The marooned fashioned two boats from the wreck’s remains and miraculously sailed into Jamestown the next May.) 
 
 The seven other ships, scattered and damaged, sailed on. Six arrived in mid-August, with the girl, whom the researchers have named “Jane,” almost certainly on one of them. The seventh ship arrived in October. 
 
 The new arrivals — about 300 people — proved to be as much a drain on the colony as a relief. 
 
 The ships’ crews hoarded provisions. The summer corn crop was enough to feed only about 50 people for a year. The colony’s military leader, Capt. John Smith, sent two groups of colonists upstream and downstream to fend for themselves. He was badly wounded in what was probably an assassination attempt and in October sailed home with the ships. By then, people were already going hungry. 
 
 The girl’s bones were found mixed with those of a horse, dogs and squirrels — testament to the extreme food sources the colonists turned to that winter. They were part of the trash collected in a fort-wide cleanup and dumped in the cellar before the arrival of the colony’s governor, Lord De La Warr, the following June. 
 
 The cause of her death isn’t known. The tentative cuts to the front of the skull and the deeper ones to the back are close together — evidence that she was dead, not squirming, when they were made. The temporal bone was pried off to reach the brain. There are dozens of cuts to the jaw, suggesting that muscle was stripped from it. 
 
 Could the marks have been left by animals? 
 
 “Not a chance,” Owsley said. “I deal with this all the time. Not a chance.” In fact, he says with confidence that the dissector or dissectors were right-handed. 
 
 Chemical analysis of the bone reveals an enriched “nitrogen profile,” evidence of lots of protein in the girl’s diet. That, in turn, suggests she was a member of a high-born family or at least lived in such a household for much of her life. 
 
 She wouldn’t have gone to Jamestown alone. Whoever accompanied her was probably dead by the time she became food for the starving. “If she’d had a family to protect her — after death as well as before — this probably wouldn’t have happened,” Horn said. 
 
 Learning who she was will be difficult. Complete passenger lists for the voyages don’t exist. Research into the Virginia Company’s sponsors in Plymouth might reveal a family with a girl born in 1595 or 1596 who went to America. There may be extractable DNA in the bone fragments, but at this point, there are no descendants to compare it with. 
 
 Even the appearance that Owsley and his collaborator, Kari Bruwelheide, gave the girl is to some extent guesswork. 
 
 They used the thickness of facial tissue seen among girls in contemporary southern England to gauge Jane’s. They gave her consensus hair — light brown — not the red or blond of other latitudes and regions. They also chose not to depict her as she undoubtedly was before death — gaunt and emaciated. 
 
 “But I didn’t make her look like a healthy, plump teenager either,” Owsley said. “I’m putting her in her circumstances.” 
 
 Those include dirt on her face and a thousand-yard stare, but not, alas, her name. ||||| CLOSE Scientists say they've found archaeological evidence to support rumors they previously were skeptical of: that starving colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, turned to cannibalism to survive. (May 1) AP 
 
 Marks of butchery evident on teen's remains discovered at the site. 
 
 This August 2012 photo shows four shallow chops to an incomplete skull excavated in Jamestown, Va., by William Kelso of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. (Photo: Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian) Story Highlights During the 'starving time,' only 60 of 300 colonists survived 
 
 Researchers: Skull shows signs of cannibalization 
 
 Final blow split the cranium open 
 
 WASHINGTON -- Jamestown's colonists resorted to cannibalism during the "starving time" winter of 1609-10, archaeologists confirmed Wednesday. 
 
 In a briefing at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, archaeologist Doug Owsley presented the reconstructed skull of a 14-year-old English girl, named "Jane" by the researchers, discovered at the site of the fort and bearing the marks of butchery. 
 
 "The skull was split in half, most likely with a lightweight ax or quite possibly, a cleaver," Owsley said at the briefing. Cut marks crisscrossing the skull and jaw of the girl indicate her flesh, tongue and brains were removed from the skull, Owsley said. Those were traditional cuts for animal butchery of the time, "all parts of the cuisine of the 17th century," he said. 
 
 Jamestown was founded in 1607 by English colonists. The starving time was a period two years later in which 80% of the colonists died. Besieged by Powhatan Indians in their wooden fort, the settlers had been joined by new colonists late that summer, among them women and children, whose main supply ship had disappeared in a storm, leaving them without food. Only 60 of 300 people survived the winter. 
 
 "They were so emaciated when they were rescued that they were described as resembling skeletons," says historian James Horn of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, who spoke at the briefing. Records kept by the colony's governor, George Percy, make clear references to cannibalism during the winter, Horn says. "The English would have only resorted to cannibalism under the most severe circumstances," he added. 
 
 VIDEO: Cannibalism at Jamestown confirmed 
 
 Owsley reported on the forensic analysis of 17th century human remains and a reconstruction of her appearance made by forensic scientists. The remains had been excavated by Jamestown archaeologists led by William Kelso of the Jamestown Recovery Project in 2012 as part of a 20-year excavation of the James Fort site. "We don't believe Jane was a lone case," Kelso said. 
 
 This April 2013 photo shows a forensic facial reconstruction produced by StudioEIS of Brooklyn, N.Y., in consultation with William Kelso of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. (Photo: Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian) 
 
 "This is amazingly interesting, but it also confirms stories of cannibalism from the settlers themselves," says Charles Mann, author of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. "Things were indeed terrible during those early years," Mann says, by email. 
 
 While not all colonial-era historians agreed that cannibalism took place at Jamestown, most modern ones generally credited the accounts (one man was executed for eating his wife) as reliable. Horn and Owsley argued the butchery marks on Jane provide stronger evidence for the practice. "No one can say with authoritative certainty exactly why this young lady was cut up, but given the context, it looks like butcher's marks," Owsley said. 
 
 In the briefing, he identified a number of features on the skull and a shin bone that indicated that Jane was cannibalized. Four shallow chops to the forehead were attempted in a first, failed attempt to open the skull. The back of the head was then split open. The final blow split the cranium open. 
 
 "The person doing this was not a very good, or experienced butcher," Owsley said. Chop marks on the shin bone resemble more conventional butchers' marks seen on animal bones from the time, indicating that more than one person may have been involved in cannibalizing the girl. She was doubtless one of the newly arrived settlers, though still not definitively identified. An exhibition devoted to the discovery will open this Friday at the Historic Jamestowne site, and her reconstructed face will be displayed at the Smithsonian museum. 
 
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– Scientists say they have the first physical evidence of a grisly truth from Jamestown: Colonists in the brutal winter of 1609 resorted to cannibalism, reports USA Today. Anthropologists studying the partial remains of a teenage girl—including her skull, jaw, and leg bone—say they bear the unmistakable marks of a cleaver and knife, reports the Washington Post. She had been, for lack of a better word, butchered. “Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” says one of the Smithsonian scientists who worked on the project. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh, but it’s very strong evidence.” It's not clear whether the girl was a servant or perhaps the daughter of a colonist, or whether she was killed to be eaten or eaten after she died. Forensic scientists have re-created her face, though she will likely remain forever unidentified.