Thanksgiving: Early Colonists Ate Turkey... But Also Horses, Rats And Snakes, Archaeologists Say

Archaeologists looking into the diet of colonists at the first English settlement in the Americas have discovered that they enjoyed a Turkey dinner—but that hard times also forced them to eat horses, rats and venemous snakes.

Archaeologists at Historic Jamestowne, the site of the early James Fort settlement in what is now Virginia, have been sorting through animal bones found onsite to establish the diet of the colonists who once lived there, the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily reported.

In 2006, researchers unearthed a well dating from the early 17th century, and are now beginning to sort through its contents, including food waste dumped into it after the well fell out of use.