[Linda]

There is a professor in California of Croatian origin who maintains that there is documentation of a Croatian vessel shipwrecked on the Virginia coast a bit before the Jamestown settlement and that that is the likeliest explanation of the word “Croatan” left by the Jamestown survivors who disappeared. The Balkans lie at the juncture of Mediterranean, Germanic, Slavic and Semitic populations. So, if they did contribute to that “Melungeon” “gene pool” they would be throwing in quite a number of wild cards of mtDNA markers. [DNA research by Melungeon descendants has turned up quite a potpourri of these.] And just imagine the breadth of immunities! Traits like those would percolate through an otherwise precarious gene pool like wildfire.

For example, up until ca. 900 AD all the skulls in Croatian burials bore the characteristic round-headed shape of the Illyrians (the original inhabitants, relatively speaking). They disappeared in that century when the Slavs invaded. (The Slavs were fed up with being kidnapped to provide free labor for the Roman empire’s wheat plantation, that’s where the word ‘slave’ comes from.) After the invasion, that skull shape vanished, till over the next 500 years they eventually all reappeared. A handful of Illyrian women were absorbed by the invaders. That skull shape was/is a dominant trait. “The meek shall inherit” perhaps refers to the hidden strengths of populations repeatedly overrun and conquered.

My grandparents came from Croatia ca. the 1910’s. It is pretty eary how many folks I run across at NC/VA powwows who heavily resemble my Croatian cousins . . . Gee, it must be that skull shape!!

[Greywolf]

We don’t have to feel their skull do we, we can tell just by looking? Linda you know you wasted a good opportunity to use thousands of words to explain that. Thank you

[Linda]

After I wrote that bit above I read more about that Croatian professor. There actually is no solid documentation of such a shipwreck, just tantalizing possibilities, ships headed thataway never heard from again, that sort of thing, but the notion was quite popular in Croatia at one point, with a lot of ink devoted to the subject. Maybe someday we’ll know, either with advanced DNA, or the discovery of a shipwreck.

[Linda]

Here’s a link to Professor Eterovich’s book.

http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/lcolon.html

I was doing a little more googling on serbo-croatian-American professors and it looks like any of them dealing with history would be promoting this. As I said, Croatia has many legends on the subject, and its appears to be firmly believed over there. I still keep stumbling across people who look like cousins when I’m in Robeson county, also when I’m around Powhatan-related tribal descendants.

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