History Puzzles Solved

I love history. I don’t credit most of this to history teachers in primary and secondary school, though. I only recall two of my high school history teachers, who were both outstanding. But overall it seems difficult to make history interesting to kids.

So interesting historical puzzles tend to stand out in the muddle of dates and names and places. For me, the story of the disappearing colony of Roanoke is one such mystery. And now, somebody claims to have solved it.

The solution is that the missing settlers simply moved in with the friendly local Indian tribe, the Croatoans. They intermarried, and both archaeological finds and some historical statements seem to lend credence to this idea. It’s a plausible theory, so plausible it seems strange it wasn’t really discussed more prior to this.