In 2023 there's going to be commercially backed manned mission to Mars. Applications are being accepted and evaluated for the one way trip. There are apparently five 'astronaut' characteristics the leaders of the mission are looking for: Resiliency, Adaptability, Curiosity, Ability to Trust, and Creativity/Resourcefulness.
In 1606 the Virginia Company was chartered by King James. This was a commercial venture by a group of English merchants and aristocrats to establish a colony in the New World. The purpose was to tap into the vast resources they were sure existed in the unexplored continent. 104 men made the four month journey in three small ships and established the Jamestown Colony. They chose a small almost island in the James River. It was connected with an isthmus to the mainland, and it was chosen because it would be easy to defend against the Spanish who didn't like anybody else from Europe horning in on the New World resources. This is the first English settlement in the United States. I was utterly struck today by the similarity of these two missions 400 years apart.
After our visit today, it was perfectly clear that you would have to exhibit the five astronaut traits PLUS have a boatload of luck to just survive. I wondered all day long who these men were. They signed up for a one way trip into the unknown just like their 21st century counterparts who want to go to Mars. I was struck by the list of occupations of the first Jamestown colonists. One was pretty hilarious in terms of 21st century hindsight - a jeweler to evaluate all the precious stones they hoped to find. There were also soldiers, explorers (specifically Captain John Smith), metallurgists, barrel makers, carpenters, farmers, leather workers, and laborers. When it became clear via Spanish gossip whispered in England, the colonists were marrying the native women, 90 English women arrived the fourth year of the colony. The women's survival was even more perilous: They faced childbirth in this bare subsistence environment.
The Company instructions to the colonists were to coexist with the natives since they hoped to trade with them for food and absorb local geographic knowledge. That detente attitude lasted for about two years. At that point relations deteriorated steadily due to the usual problems of two cultures rubbing up against one another. The real blow was the disastrous winter of 1609-10. It's called "the Starving Time" and has been documented by historians. The earliest colonists managed to arrive in the middle of the worst drought in 800 years. Not only did they not have enough stores for winter, but they were penned in the fort they had erected against Indian attacks by the very Indians they were fighting. Out of 500 colonists, only 60 survived that winter, and it's been proven they resorted to cannibalism to survive. Today, we saw the skeleton of a 14 year old girl whose body had been cannibalized. After eating her facial meat, cracking open her femurs for the marrow and opening her skull to eat the brain, she was dumped into an abandoned well. Her desecration proves the utter desperation of the few survivors.
The colony was on the point of extinction in the spring of 1610 when a strong willed governor arrived on a well-provisioned ship and saved the colony. This was the beginning of the end of the Powhatan Indians. They had used Jamestown and the surrounding lands on the James River as their summer home for about 10,000 years. Within 50 years of the arrival of the English, their numbers dwindled from 15,000 to 2,000.
As the 17th century unfolded, Jamestown became a jumping off place for new arrivals from England. It didn't take long for the word to spread there was unlimited land for the taking. Jamestown's political importance dwindled when the 'capital' of Virginia was moved up the peninsula to the new town of Williamsburg in 1698.
Jamestown's successful establishment proved there was value in the New World. Colonists experimented with several industries looking for the 'cash' crop. John Rolfe, a key early colonist, managed to grow a Caribbean strain of tobacco and ship it to England. Jackpot! Tobacco was a double edged sword: It gave the Virginia colony it's economic backbone and profitability, but it also established slavery in America as more and more of the profitable tobacco was planted. Tobacco is very labor intensive, and gradually over a 50 year time span, the labor was increasingly provided by slaves forcibly imported from Africa.
Jamestown languished as the centuries passed finally becoming only farm land. That was a stroke of luck because in the 1990's backed by private financing, archaeologists began excavating the site discovering a treasure trove just inches under the surface. They found the layout of the original fort, the first legislative building in the United States, a large church, and a huge trading house. They also found the detritus of the first colonists as well as their bodies.
It struck me how Jamestown is much more representative of who American's are than the pious bible toting Pilgrims. Jamestown was all about money, getting ahead, innovation, hard work, and taking a chance. What's more American than that? The proof? Well, over 250,00 people want to make that one way trip to Mars. I think those applicants would have been on the same wavelength as those Jamestown colonists 400 years ago.
If you want to see the pictures of this fascinating place where it all started, here they are:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115478608971584948192/albums/5921801456105992961?authkey=CPXEmOf37bymwgE
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