A team of researchers believes they may have cracked one of America's most enduring legends: Where did the settlers of the Roanoke Colony go?
The Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, was the first permanent English settlement in the United States. A group of over 100 colonists settled on North Carolina's Roanoke Island in 1587, led by Sir Walter Raleigh.
John White, the governor of the colony, returned to England for supplies in 1587. When he came back to Roanoke Island in August 1590, he found the settlement mysteriously abandoned – and all the colonists, including his daughter Eleanor Dare and his granddaughter Virginia Dare, gone.
One of the only clues remaining at the site was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a palisade. It either referred to Croatoan Island, which is now called Hatteras Island, or the Croatoan Indians.
The mystery has haunted Americans and Brits for the past four centuries, with several investigations launched into the matter. Whether the colonists were killed by Native Americans, starved to death or left for greener pastures has eluded historians.
But new research suggests the colonists' fate may not have been tragic after all.
Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at Royal Agricultural University in England, spoke with Fox News Digital about his findings.
For the past decade, the British researcher has worked with the Croatoan Archaeological Society's Scott Dawson to uncover the mystery. Horton said they've uncovered proof the colonists assimilated into Croatoan society, thanks to a trash heap. (See the video at the top of this article.)
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"We're looking at the middens — that's the rubbish heaps — of the Native Americans living on Hatteras Island, because we deduced that they would have very rapidly been assimilated into the Native American population," Horton said.
The smoking gun at the site? Hammerscale, which are tiny, flaky bits of iron that come from forging iron.
Horton said it's definitive proof of iron-working on Hatteras Island, which could have only been done by English colonists.
"The key significance of hammerscale … is that it's evidence of iron-working, of forging, at that moment," he said.
"Hammerscale is what comes off a blacksmith's forge."
Horton added, "This is metal that has to be raised to a relatively high temperature … which, of course, [requires] technology that Native Americans at this period did not have."
Hammerscale shows that the English "must have been working" in this Native American community, according to the expert.
But what if the hammerscale came longer after the Roanoke Colony was abandoned? Horton said that's unlikely.
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"We found it stratified … underneath layers that we know date to the late 16th or early 17th century," he said. "So we know that this dates to the period when the lost colonists would have come to Hatteras Island."
"It's a combination of both its archaeological position but also the fact that it's evidence of people actually using an English technology."
At the site, archaeologists also found guns, nautical fittings, small cannonballs, an engraved slate and a stylus, in addition to wine glasses and beads – which all paint a vivid picture of life on Hatteras Island in the 17th century.
When asked if the colonists could have been killed in a later war, Horton said they survived among the Croatoans and successfully assimilated.
"We have one little snippet of historical evidence from the 1700s, which describes people with blue or gray eyes who could remember people who used to be able to read from books," he said. "Also, they said there was this ghost ship that was sent out by a man called Raleigh."
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Horton added, "We think that they assimilated into the Native American community and their descendants, their sons, their granddaughters, their grandsons carried on living on Hatteras Island until the early 18th century."
When asked if he's officially solved the mystery, Horton said that though the archaeological evidence is definitive, the legend will probably still endure.
"Have we solved the mystery? Well, you know, it's pretty good evidence, but there's always more work to be done," he said.
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Horton added, "And people love mysteries. They hate resolving things one way or the other. So I'm sure that the mystery will continue, you know, whatever the scientific evidence says."
Fox News Digital's Brooke Curto contributed to this report.
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