KINGSPORT (Tennessee) July 1: Might the Melungeon people of the US Appalachian mountains be descendants of Moorish and Turkish sailors who escaped the Lost Colony of Roanoke? Or are their ancestors Portuguese settlers, Indian gypsies or one of the Lost Tribes of Israel?

Historians remain confounded by the mystery of these olive- and copper-skinned people who have lived in isolated pockets across Appalachia over the past several centuries.

A just-completed genetic study of some of their 15,000 to 50,000 modern-day descendants failed to find the ethnic smoking gun to explain their origins.

Melungeons were first documented in the late 18th century here in the mountains of east Tennessee, and in neighbouring Virginia and North Carolina — but where they came from and how they got there has remained a mystery. Some believe Elvis Presley and actress Ava Gardner had Melungeon blood.

Those who study the Melungeons have put forward various theories, some that seem to have less to do with shared ethnicity than they do with shared burdens.

“The Melungeon identity is based on a shared culture of people who have had to deal with prejudices of one kind or another over skin colour,” said Brent Kennedy, author of “The Melungeons: Resurrection of a Proud People.”

“It is a term for a group who are not white but who refused to be classified as black,” said Mike Nassau, a 62-year-old retired librarian from Gainesville, Florida, whose great-grandmother was Melungeon.

One thing that is certain is they were distinctive from their white neighbours in appearance, making them frequent targets of prejudice and discrimination that may have pushed many to settle in Appalachia’s isolated ridges and ravines.

SHARED APPEARANCE, NOT CULTURE: Early Melungeons’ skin colour ranged from black to copper-coloured, their straight hair often jet-black, their eyes blue or hazel, and some shared a trait of growing extra fingers.

Culturally they resembled their neighbours, except for a funerary tradition of building a small shelter over graves. Some oral histories of the Melungeons trace their origins to Portugal, while other theories connect them to the Lost Tribes of Israel, the Spanish conquistadors, or Mediterranean slaves who fled into the Appalachians during US colonial times.

More recent research has bolstered their possible ties to the Mediterranean or the Middle East.

Many Melungeons practised Christianity and described themselves as “Portyghee,” which gave credence to their supposed Portuguese ties. But to confuse ethnologists, many spoke Elizabethan English, and the term Melungeon may refer to a French word for melange, or mixture.

“Melungeon” also sounds exactly like an Arabic word meaning “cursed soul,” a self-deprecating term for one who feels abandoned by god. It was also used by 16th century Ottoman Turks and by “Conversos,” Jews and Moors who converted to Christianity around the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Most intriguing, perhaps, is a possible link to Britain’s Lost Colony of Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast.

In 1586, Sir Francis Drake liberated hundreds of Turkish and Moorish sailors from the Spanish and left them with the colony. The colonists later disappeared without trace, with one theory supposing the sailors fled into the mountains.

DNA FAILS TO SOLVE PUZZLE: In an attempt to trace the Melungeons’ genetic origins, molecular biologist Kevin Jones took DNA samples from 130 descendants and compared their mitochondrial DNA, which passes intact through maternal lines, to a gene databank.

Jones’ results, presented at an annual meeting of Melungeon descendants and researchers last month, found a complex ancestry that included European, Asian, Indian, African and Native American blood.

“There is nothing truly definitive about this study,” Jones admitted. Current Melungeons are so racially mixed that it will be difficult to identify their origins, he said.

“As far as I can tell, Melungeons are a self-defining population, and not a genetically distinct population,” said Jones. “Melungeon identity is cultural. That is very real and important, not reflected by any genetic basis, but it is still something to be quite proud of.”—Reuters