Old bones reveal that colonists brought donkeys to the New World

For centuries, the story of Old World animals in New World colonies has relied heavily on ship manifests and settlers’ journals. Those documents say early English colonists brought horses to Jamestown, Virginia. What they don’t mention are donkeys.

A new study changes that narrative. A zooarchaeological analysis of centuries-old animal remains from Jamestown offers the first solid evidence that colonists ferried donkeys across the Atlantic – and put them to work.

John Krigbaum, an anthropologist at the University of Florida, is the senior author of the research paper.

“We have no written records of donkeys,” said Krigbaum. “Yet the bones tell a different story.” In other words, archives are invaluable, but the ground keeps its own ledger.

Donkey bones reveal the past

The team – led by William Taylor from the University of Colorado Boulder, with collaborators from Florida and Québec – pulled off a lot with a small collection of fragile remains.

Initial tests linked the donkey bones to Jamestown’s infamous “Starving Time,” the winter of 1609–1610, when shortages and conflict pushed the colony to the brink.

Radiocarbon dating later confirmed the timing, tying the assemblage to the settlement’s earliest, most precarious years. From there, the researchers treated the bones as a historical archive. Microscopic wear revealed bridling, a clear sign these equids were put to work.

Ancient DNA identified both horse and donkey remains. Geochemical analysis of tooth enamel revealed stable-isotope signatures that function like travel stamps.

These chemical markers preserve clues to where the animals came from and what kinds of landscapes they occupied before arriving in Virginia. Each line of evidence helped fill gaps the documents left open.

Donkey origins beyond Britain

One surprise came from the donkey’s chemical and genetic fingerprints. Rather than pointing back to Britain, the data suggested origins in Iberia or West Africa.

The isotope profile also aligned with conditions in Trinidad and Tobago – plausible waypoints along transatlantic routes of the era. In other words, colonial animal husbandry wasn’t a simple “loaded in England, unloaded in Virginia” affair.

Animals could be acquired, traded, and rerouted along the journey, complicating the story of how domesticated species spread with Europeans.

That matters because donkeys were valued precisely where terrain was rough and labor was short: they’re sure-footed, hardy, and economical to keep.

Even if the manifests are silent, the economic logic of a fledgling colony makes their presence unsurprising. The Jamestown donkey shows that this logic played out on the ground.

Hunger in Jamestown

The bones record a harrowing chapter as well. Tool marks and breakage patterns showed that adult horses – and at least one donkey – were not just worked; they were eaten. Elements were split and boiled, even down to cracking teeth for nutrient-rich pulp.

That grim end matches written accounts of Jamestown’s winter of starvation, when relations with nearby Indigenous communities had broken down and colonists turned to their animals – and in the bleakest cases, their dead – to survive.

For zooarchaeologists, those signatures are unmistakable: spiral fractures from fresh-bone breakage, pot polish from prolonged boiling, and patterned disarticulation that points to butchery rather than scavenging.

Together, they transform abstract narratives about “hard winters” into specific acts of desperation visible on the fossilized record.

Rewriting colonial history

These findings do more than add a donkey to the passenger list. They show how quickly European domestic animals were integrated into colonial life as labor, transport, and, under duress, food. They also help explain how equids later proliferated across the continent and established feral populations.

By marrying archaeology, ancient DNA, and isotope geochemistry, the study demonstrates how animal bones can illuminate migration pathways, trade networks, and crisis responses that written records overlook.

The work also highlights the messy, global nature of early colonial supply chains. An equid’s genome and enamel chemistry can capture a journey spanning continents and islands, revealing the web of contacts – Spanish, English, West African, Caribbean – that underpinned “English” Jamestown.

It’s a reminder that colonial North America was entangled from the start in a wider Atlantic world.

Inside the discovery

A strength of the study is its triangulation. Radiocarbon dating anchors the bones in time. Microwear and skeletal stress point to use as working animals. Ancient DNA confirms species identity. Isotope chemistry constrains possible homelands and transit.

Each method has limits, but together they produce a coherent picture: horses and donkeys were present early, employed as labor, and, in crisis, consumed.

Just as important is what the assemblage says about absence. If donkeys can disappear from the paperwork yet show up in the dirt, what else have we missed by relying on ledgers alone?

The Jamestown results invite a more skeptical reading of colonial inventories. They also call for greater willingness to let the archaeological record revise the story.

From Jamestown to the wider Americas

The team’s next steps point to a broader comparative project. They plan to examine horse remains from Puerto Real, a 16th-century Spanish settlement in the Caribbean.

The goal is to see how equid management differed under Spanish rule and how animals moved through the region’s early colonial networks.

Side by side, Spanish Caribbean and English Virginia could reveal different strategies. Yet both may have led to a similar outcome – equids taking root in the Americas and reshaping landscapes, economies, and warfare.

Those comparative lenses matter because the legacy of these introductions is everywhere – from the later rise of mustangs on the plains to the enduring role of donkeys as work animals in rural communities.

Tracing their earliest footsteps is not just antiquarian curiosity; it’s part of understanding how human–animal partnerships have structured American history from its first colonial decades.

Donkey bones that remember

In the end, the Jamestown assemblage is a story of absence and presence: what the ledgers left out and what the bones remembered: Donkeys were there.

They worked. And when survival demanded it, they were consumed – a stark, unvarnished reminder of how early colonial lives were lived on the edge.

Thanks to a few well-preserved fragments and a suite of modern tools, those lives – and the animals that sustained them – speak again, a little louder and a lot more clearly.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

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