American archaeologists have turned back the hands of time.
Experts from the University of Massachusetts Boston announced on Tuesday that they have made new discoveries on the first Europeans to settle in America, the Boston Globe reported.
These were the 102 people later called the Pilgrims who set sail from England on the Mayflower in September 1620 in search of religious freedom. They landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts two months later.
The archaeologists said they have discovered what is believed to be part of the Pilgrims' original settlement.
The discovery is considered significant since previous efforts to pin down the exact location of the Pilgrims' first settlement where they held their first Thanksgiving yielded negative results.
The experts finally found what they were looking for after finding calf's bones, musket balls, 17th-century ceramics, and brownish soil where a wooden post would have stood.
These objects were found on Burial Hill, an area that includes a centuries-old cemetery that archaeologists had never dug before.
The discovery could fundamentally alter what is known about the everyday life of the Pilgrims, according to Kathryn Ness, curator of collections at Plimoth Plantation.
"Knowing where it is, and that there are pieces that have not been wiped out by construction, will absolutely change what we understand about that settlement," Ness said. "Archaeology helps support the historical record, but it also speaks to those who weren't writing — the illiterate, children, the animals."
Based from the discovery, the experts found out that the original Pilgrims and their earliest descendants raised domesticated cattle, unlike their Native American neighbours.
More than half of the English settlers died during their first winter in America due to poor nutrition and inadequate housing not suited for the land's harsh weather, according to History Channel.
What prompted these settlers to leave England were the repressive policies of King James I and his successor, Charles I, toward religious nonconformists, History says.
Many more settlers followed the original Pilgrims to the New World. The Puritan refugees traveled by boat to Plymouth and settled in Massachusetts. Boston later became the capital of Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later became the most populous and prosperous colony in America.
