Carbon dating results give weight to “lost” colony evidence

WAVY ^ | June 3, 2026 | Nick Broadway

[Dr. Franklin]

A layer in the ground, dating back to the late 1500s, showed potential evidence of European blacksmithing in a Native American community. Carbon dating technology is now solidifying these finds as evidence that the “Lost Colony” was not really lost.

Many of us were taught the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island as kids. In short, the story ends with European voyagers traveling to Roanoke Island to check on colonists, finding an apparently cryptic message in a tree that said, “Croatoan.”

“That’s why it’s so insane when they push this narrative of, no one knows what Croatoan means,” Dawson said. “It’s like, you got Croatoan dudes on the ship with you.”

“I just can’t believe they’ve gotten away with it for this long,” he added.

Buxton native and owner of Lost Colony Museum and Gifts, Dawson is working alongside renowned University of Bristol archaeologist, Mark Horton. They keep finding things pointing to the possibility of this “lost colony” actually moving to modern-day Hatteras Island, living with the natives.

Since our previous coverage, digs uncovered a dress hook made of gun metal, a red brass item implying there were women colonists there. Dawson said this brass is not native to North America.

They are gradually sending finds to California for carbon dating, a scientific process which determines the age of organic material. It is costly and takes time. Their items are in line with the many items submitted by other researchers around the country.

“We got the carbon dates on, finally, four of them,” Dawson said. “Dinger, dinger, dinger, dinger. All of them were from the 1580s, so there’s no need to do that expensive test again.”

They just got carbon dating results from a fascinating find, some may call a smoking gun. In Dawson’s words, it is “one of the dopest things ever.”

He is talking about a musket ball found inside of a deer jaw bone.

“They have an armor piercing round, which is an iron core with lead around it,” Dawson explained.

With organic material surrounding this musketball, they carbon dated the deer it was lodged in.

“The iron that was inside, when it oxidized, it kind of Chia Petted out and captured the lead, so you can’t see it,” Dawson said. “You can’t carbon date a musketball, but you can carbon date a deer.”

[Jan_Sobieski]

Wait…everyone is taught indigenous Americans were ALL peaceful and it was a utopia here before whites came. The natives could never do such atrocities! /s

[Dr. Franklin]

Wait…everyone is taught indigenous Americans were ALL peaceful and it was a utopia here before whites came. The natives could never do such atrocities!

Virginia Dare the first English child born in the New World on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587 and baptized there, according to the Dare Stone was murdered along with other colonists including her father in 1591. Her mother was Eleanor White Dare, the daughter of the colony's governor, John White, who presumably by the initials "EWD" on the Dare Stone, carved that account. I've seen several shows on the History Channel about archeological digs in the area looking for clues. On one show they determined that the Dare Stone was of the same kind of rock found in the copper pits in the area, being more evidence that the surviving settlers were working for the natives collecting copper.

[texanyankee]

For later

[Dr. Franklin]

could have moved to Hatteras Island like you said and then spread diseases to the natives there that had no immunity to them, resulting in everyone dying.

The group may have split up with some going to Hatteras Island with the Croatan, and others moving camp to the shores of the Chowan River. If the account on the Dare Stone is accurate, 24 of the settlers died of disease and others died from war with the natives. The colonists both spread disease to the natives, leading to the natives to blame them for angering the spirits and killing them, while themselves dying of diseases caught from the natives.