MANTEO, N.C. (AP) - Before the legendary Lost Colony vanished from North Carolina's coast, the first science center in the New World was established near that same spot. And it was headed by the first known Jewish person to arrive on the continent.
Archaeologists plan to return this fall to the site of the science center headed by Joachim Gans, an expert metallurgist who came to America in 1585 at the request of Sir Walter Raleigh. The state will honor Gans in a ceremony Friday in Manteo. Speakers will include the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.
The First Colony Foundation is sponsoring the excavation. Foundation President Phil Evans says the Gans story adds layers to the simpler tale of the Lost Colony, a collection of English settlers who had vanished mysteriously by 1590.
