Posted on 05/15/2013 3:01:48 PM PDT by presidio9
The Jamestown settlement in Virginia, which officially was started on May 14, 1607, was one of the first European colonies to last in North America, and was historically significant for hosting the first parliamentary assembly in America.
But Jamestown barely survived, as recent headlines about the confirmation of cannibalism at the colony confirm. The adaption to the North American continent by the early Europeans was extremely problematic.
The success of tobacco as an early cash crop helped Jamestown weather the loss of most early colonists to disease, starvation, and attacks by the resident population of Native Americans.
A turning point in Jamestown’s fortunes was in 1619, when a General Assembly met at a church on July 30. Two representatives from 11 regions of the area debated the qualifications of membership and other matters for six days. A heat wave ended the session of what would be known as the House of Burgesses.
The session established a government that citizens could address to settle grievances and end legal disputes.
It was a huge step forward, since numerous European attempts to establish any foothold in North America had failed for almost a century.
Spain has tried to establish at least five colonial settlements in North America during the 16th century. It had established footholds in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Peru.
But Spanish efforts failed in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia, in short order.
The settlement of San Miguel de Gualdape in what is now Georgia or South Carolina was built in 1526 with the first use of African slaves in North America. It only lasted three months. The colonists dealt with same problems as the Jamestown residents,
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
You'll notice his lifetime brackets the discovery of America. All things considered Michelangelo's technical expertise was imbedded in his times ~ Leonardo da Vinci also lived in that era. He invented the nut and bolt (among other things).
Basically, if the Greeks and Romans could make statues as well as Michelangelo, they should have been able to build boats that were comparable to those of Columbus' time.
Alas, they didn't do it and showed no sign of doing it. In fact, a really good deep ocean-going boat didn't show up until the 800/900 period when the Goths established permanent relationships with the Sa'ami and adapted their boat hull design to the larger scale needed to travel to Iceland, then Greenland, which they did in short order.
That design had been around since the Greeks first visited the Sa'ami in Scandinavia (200 or 300 BC) but for some reason those intrepid explorers forgot to notice that clinker built boats were more resilient to deep ocean waves and conditions than their own light mediterranean style craft.
Think of it this way ~ we know the Europeans had to wait until the 900s to even see really great ocean going craft that could handle the Atlantic. It took, according to history, another 200 years to take advantage of that design on a large scale (voyages to Iceland). It took another couple of hundred years for that design's advantages to penetrate the Mediterranean mind ~ see Spain, France, Italy, Florence, Greece, etc.
It's not likely the Romans came up with this stuff independently back in 1 AD. However, some unmanned tempest tossed craft are known to have made it to the Americas ~ they've been found.
Hurricanes blew them there. Maybe someone survived. Most likely they didn't.
Santa Fe was established in 1598 ~ the year Spain pulled the last of its military garrisons out of the East Coast ~ although there were surveyors who arrived in that year.
The earliest settlers in the vicinity of Jamestown were Scandinavian or Breton (or both) surveyors working for Spain. Their earliest record in that area is 1598. Same guys were still hard at work at Spanish Hill PA as late as 1616. I can’t imagine them eating oysters since there had been an intense drought in Virginia (NY/PA line on the North, VA/NC line on the South) for a good 70 years ~ 17 more recent of those years having had no rainfall at all.
Wow! That is a long time. You beat my family by 49 years. Mine didn't arrive in America (Virginia) until 1647.
> My family settled in what is now Sandoval County in 1598.
Wow, that’s cool. Your people must have been checking the passports of my people.
We didn’t get here until 1607 on the Godspeed.
Challenge. Technological advancement is not linear. In fact, Roman technology was ahead of Renaissance Europe some areas and behind it in others.
There, 450 years of history in a single paragraph.
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Like to remind everybody, those failed settlements left their livestock behind. The cows, horses, chickens, dogs, rabbits and cats did well!
My family was on Godspeed II ;-).....Does your family still love in Virginia?
I can’t beat 1598 but Coligny was a relative ~ his family bought our relative’s home as a refuge from the Religious Wars. It is possible the Huguenots tried a settlement on Chesapeake Bay as well but no one has any idea what happened to it ~ or exactly where it was. However, when they began arriving in the 1600s the Brits gave them a more substantial site that’d been owned by Indians earlier. I suspect if we could find that site there’d be some amazing archaeological findings ~ regarding the FIRST settlers.
If they didn’t eat oysters it would have been because they didn’t want any. The Jamestown settlers first landed not far from Lynn Haven Bay in Virginia Beach.
This is an area near where the Chesapeake Bay flows into the Atlantic. I would guess that it would always be very close to sea level regardless of drought or not.
I forgot to mention that Diamond Jim Brady preferred Lynn Haven Oysters to any others.
The Don Juan de Onate exploration (for Spain) entered through El Paso in 1595.
Alas, the inshore water, and that includes the Tidewater James River, would be brackish so all seafood would tend to the salty side. With no local source of fresh water, they’d soon died ~ which, in fact, is what happened at Jamestown!
The California missions were supported from the Spanish in the Philippines ~ the journey from Mexico was too tough to be something to depend on. The mission museums have silk robes brought from Japan and China!
Point I made ~ the Greeks and Romans simply didn’t develop a good design for the Atlantic Ocean. They didn’t need to. They stuck around Mare Nostrum
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