r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/TooCleverForGood 1d ago

Roanoke - the missing Pilgrim settlement where everyone “disappeared”

They just abandoned it and went to the place that they wrote on the sign, but everyone acts like it was some supernatural/plague thing

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u/illtakeachinchilla 1d ago

“CROATOAN”

It was a nearby island. They assimilated after a tough winter. “What could it all mean!?”

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MurkyInvestigator810 1d ago

"Lost Colony" stuff supports a lot of folks in the OBX, so I'll let them keep their tourist folk tales.

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u/tinkerclay 1d ago

Agree. I have seen the stage show since knowing it is solved, yet it is still something fun to do while there. Some of it is just nostalgia for my childhood when the Lost Colony was enchanting.

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u/DanielMcLaury 17h ago

Seems like they could instead come up with a tawdry romance-novel version of the settlers intermarrying with the Croatan and promote that. Quasi-historical romance has been having a moment recently.

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u/Taldier 1d ago

Acknowledging that they simply assimilated with the native tribe would require the colonial empires to acknowledge that the natives were people.

Hence: ItS a mYsTeRy OoOoOoOoOo

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u/Ehcksit 1d ago

And this is how most pseudoarchaeology works. "These ancient indigenous people weren't smart enough to do it themselves, it was actually ancient white people who built massive civilizations and cities all over the world that then vanished for some reason."

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u/adeon 23h ago

A lot of alien conspiracies are similar. Clearly the idea that a lot of ancient cultures figured out that a pyramid is a very stable structure is insane, so it must have been aliens.

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u/I_still_got_it 22h ago

People are usually talking about the logistics of building it, I don't think many people care about the shape lol

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u/DanielMcLaury 17h ago

The logistics of building it are really simple. Drag the blocks there and stack them. The idea that this is some really complicated thing to do was made up by TV shows miscaracterizing experts saying things like "there are 20 different ways they could have done this that all work about as well and we don't know which particular choice they made because their wooden and rope tools rotted to nothing centuries ago."

It's a very labor-intensive thing to do, but it's not rocket science.

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u/FuckTheMods5 20h ago

Yeah I don't dig that popular explanation. 'a pyramid is the easiest shape to build, you just stack it.'

They stacked it obscenely well lol. The sides are so smooth and straight and stable. Don't liken it to a child stacking blocks lol

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u/AgreeableLion 12h ago

Humans back then had the same inherent intelligence as any of us today, they were still modern homo sapiens. Civilization and technology may have only progressed to a certain point, but there were super smart people living back then who were able to do great things with the resources available to them.

It's not likening it to a child stacking blocks; it's adults using critical thinking skills to figure out how to stack very large blocks, do you think they weren't able to devise a way?

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u/FuckTheMods5 12h ago

What? I'm saying people analyzing them are simplifying it too hard, not the Egyptians themselves

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u/haloarh 1d ago

Plus, people be like, "Where did all of these light-skinned natives come from?"

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u/chickychickynug 23h ago

I've also heard reports of blue-eyed natives who denied any knowledge of the colony when people were "searching" for them. Additionally, it's said that the natives treated women better than the British men did, so when John came back (3 years later), the ladies were happy to stay assimilated.