soil. the fabric of our existence today discovered by overturning one stone at a time. to make that discovery and really have an idea of what these folks went through. what kind of thoughts come up for you? we do sort of get this connection with these a guys. wewe see everything they ate. we see their ceramics, their glass, we is see all the things they left behind. and what comes together is a more complete picture of what life was really like here at the fort. you have the feeling that a without them that america wouldn t be what it is today? yeah. without thehe sacrifices of the early colonists here at jamestown, jamestown were to have collapsed, the world would have been a completely, completely different place. i don t think you or i would be standing here today. those first bold steps taken by the earliest ancestors, a far cry from p where the nation is today. so manyy americans still work hard every day to make this the land of the free.
past. dr. kelso is now the director of research at the jamestown rediscovery project. a group that for the last three decades has uncovered the mystery off jamestown a and the men who landed on these shores more than 400 years ago. the archeological dig essentially recreates jamestown as it was in the early 1600s. bring us back to the very first people who arrived here. in 1607. who were they? why did they come? there were 104 that made it to d jamestown, to be settlers,o bere actually living here. they thought this was a land of gold and silver. they really believed that. they would soon learn their very existencece in the new wor faced many threats. and instead of the land of gold and silver, it was the land of disease, starvation and death. most were dying of hunger. it took them five months to get here instead of five weeks, like
its more emotion. i d not want to be here on halloween. our travels take to us one final spectacular room where immigrants from different countries speaking different languages waited to learn their fate. most made it through to mainland america. some didn t. and the american dream remained just that, an image rather than a reality. you have to see this. this is so beautiful. you could be in one of the beds here being treated and you would be able to look out your window and you d be able to see the statue of liberty. i can t imagine that it mist be like to be here, you re so close, to being able to be free, and whatever that would mean for you, but you were detained and this is what you looked at. our final stop in the journey across america is where it began. jamestown, virginia, where
cranium.m. and we alsowb found a tibia, yo shin bone. and these belonged to a young engli english woman about 14 years of age when sheof died. we saw the same markings on her bone that we had seen on the dog and the horse, which were evidence of processing. she was without a doubt eaten. the struggles of jamestown were verytr real there were som glimmers of hope in this newly forminged society. obviously the first seven years in this settlementy tremendously difficult and there was a b lot of death. but what about new life? what about children? there were women and men here, they started families, didn t they? there were children here pretty early on. and some of them made it to adulthood. and the colony survives. the men who fought, the stories of families that formed, now unearthed by piecing together treasures under the
you re looking at the brick facade in front of the oven this is the hollow cavity that will go back further. even though this was a kitchen where someone could be working around 1608, by 1609, 1610, it s not used as a kitchen any more? over 200 colonists die here in jamestown alone during that winter and only about 60 survive. settlers made incredible sacrifices to stay alive. forced to eat theirta dogs, the horses, and worse. so it s your belief that now we know that it was such a desperate time that they had to resort to cannibalism do survive? exactly. this iso not a ritual this is survival cannibalism. these guys had no other choice. we do know without a shadow of i doubt that cannibalism took place at jamestown that winter. how do you know that? we know from a layer of soil we found at this level, we found a mandible, which is a jaw bone. we found a fragmented skull or