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Cheddar Man: DNA shows early Briton

had dark skin


By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website
 7 February 2018
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Media captionDNA shows early Brit had dark skin

A cutting-edge scientific analysis shows that a Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin
and blue eyes.

Researchers from London's Natural History Museum extracted DNA from Cheddar Man, Britain's oldest
complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903.

University College London researchers then used the subsequent genome analysis for a facial
reconstruction.

It underlines the fact that the lighter skin characteristic of modern Europeans is a relatively recent
phenomenon.

No prehistoric Briton of this age had previously had their genome analysed.
As such, the analysis provides valuable new insights into the first people to resettle Britain after the last
Ice Age.

The analysis of Cheddar Man's genome - the "blueprint" for a human, contained in the nuclei of our cells
- will be published in a journal, and will also feature in the upcoming Channel 4 documentary The First
Brit, Secrets Of The 10,000-year-old Man.
'Cheddar George' tweet on early Briton

Cheddar Man's remains had been unearthed 115 years ago in Gough's Cave, located in Somerset's
Cheddar Gorge. Subsequent examination has shown that the man was short by today's standards - about
5ft 5in - and probably died in his early 20s.

Prof Chris Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, said: "I've been studying the
skeleton of Cheddar Man for about 40 years

"So to come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like - and that striking combination of the
hair, the face, the eye colour and that dark skin: something a few years ago we couldn't have imagined
and yet that's what the scientific data show."

Image captionA replica of Cheddar Man's skeleton now lies in Gough's Cave
Fractures on the surface of the skull suggest he may even have met his demise in a violent manner. It's
not known how he came to lie in the cave, but it's possible he was placed there by others in his tribe.

The Natural History Museum researchers extracted the DNA from part of the skull near the ear known as
the petrous. At first, project scientists Prof Ian Barnes and Dr Selina Brace weren't sure if they'd get any
DNA at all from the remains.

But they were in luck: not only was DNA preserved, but Cheddar Man has since yielded the highest
coverage (a measure of the sequencing accuracy) for a genome from this period of European prehistory -
known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.

They teamed up with researchers at University College London (UCL) to analyse the results, including
gene variants associated with hair, eye and skin colour.

Extra mature Cheddar


They found the Stone Age Briton had dark hair - with a small probability that it was curlier than average
- blue eyes and skin that was probably dark brown or black in tone.

This combination might appear striking to us today, but it was a common appearance in western Europe
during this period.

Steven Clarke, director of the Channel Four documentary, said: "I think we all know we live in times
where we are unusually preoccupied with skin pigmentation."

Prof Mark Thomas, a geneticist from UCL, said: "It becomes a part of our understanding, I think that
would be a much, much better thing. I think it would be good if people lodge it in their heads, and it
becomes a little part of their knowledge."

Unsurprisingly, the findings have generated lots of interest on social media.


Skip Twitter post by @RantyHighwayman

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If they don't call this Cheddar Man "George", I'm not playing any more.
2:36 AM - Feb 7, 2018

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Cheddar Man's genome reveals he was closely related to other Mesolithic individuals - so-called
Western Hunter-Gatherers - who have been analysed from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary.

Dutch artists Alfons and Adrie Kennis, specialists in palaeontological model-making, took the genetic
findings and combined them with physical measurements from scans of the skull. The result was a
strikingly lifelike reconstruction of a face from our distant past.

Pale skin probably arrived in Britain with a migration of people from the Middle East around 6,000
years ago. This population had pale skin and brown eyes and absorbed populations like the ones Cheddar
Man belonged to.

Image captionProf Chris Stringer had studied Cheddar Man for 40 years - but was struck by the Kennis
brothers' reconstruction

No-one's entirely sure why pale skin evolved in these farmers, but their cereal-based diet was probably
deficient in Vitamin D. This would have required agriculturalists to absorb this essential nutrient from
sunlight through their skin.
"There may be other factors that are causing lower skin pigmentation over time in the last 10,000 years.
But that's the big explanation that most scientists turn to," said Prof Thomas.

Boom and bust


The genomic results also suggest Cheddar Man could not drink milk as an adult. This ability only spread
much later, after the onset of the Bronze Age.

Present-day Europeans owe on average 10% of their ancestry to Mesolithic hunters like Cheddar Man.

Britain has been something of a boom-and-bust story for humans over the last million-or-so years.
Modern humans were here as early as 40,000 years ago, but a period of extreme cold known as the Last
Glacial Maximum drove them out some 10,000 years later.

There's evidence from Gough's Cave that hunter-gatherers ventured back around 15,000 years ago,
establishing a temporary presence when the climate briefly improved. However, they were soon sent
packing by another cold snap. Cut marks on the bones suggest these people cannibalised their dead -
perhaps as part of ritual practices.
Image copyrightCHANNEL 4Image captionThe actual skull of Cheddar Man is kept in the Natural
History Museum, seen being handled here by Ian Barnes

Britain was once again settled 11,000 years ago; and has been inhabited ever since. Cheddar Man was
part of this wave of migrants, who walked across a landmass called Doggerland that, in those days,
connected Britain to mainland Europe. This makes him the oldest known Briton with a direct connection
to people living here today.

This is not the first attempt to analyse DNA from the Cheddar Man. In the late 1990s, Oxford University
geneticist Brian Sykes sequenced mitochondrial DNA from one of Cheddar Man's molars.

Mitochondrial DNA comes from the biological "batteries" within our cells and is passed down
exclusively from a mother to her children.

Prof Sykes compared the ancient genetic information with DNA from 20 living residents of Cheddar
village and found two matches - including history teacher Adrian Targett, who became closely
connected with the discovery. The result is consistent with the approximately 10% of Europeans who
share the same mitochondrial DNA type.

Gene study shows human


skin tone has varied for
900,000 years

Courtesy of the Tishkoff lab

By Colin Barras
Skin tone has varied greatly among humans for at least the last 900,000 years. So concludes an
analysis of the genetic variants associated with skin pigmentation in people from several
regions of Africa. The latest findings suggest that some particularly dark skin tones evolved
relatively recently from paler genetic variants, underlining how deeply flawed the racist
concept of people with whiter skin being “more advanced” really is.
Nicholas Crawford and Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
recruited around 1500 ethnically and genetically diverse volunteers living in Ethiopia, Tanzania
and Botswana for their study. Each person agreed to provide a DNA sample and have their skin
pigmentation measured (pictured above).
Read more: Early Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark skin and blue eyes
The combined data allowed the team to find eight sites in the human genome that are
particularly associated with the level of skin pigmentation. Together, these sites account for
about 30 per cent of the variation they found in skin pigmentation among the volunteers.
For each of the eight sites of variation, there existed a genetic variant associated with paler
skin, and a variant linked to darker skin. Seven of the paler skin variants emerged at least
270,000 years ago. Four of these arose more than 900,000 years ago.

Plenty of variation
The latest thinking is that Homo sapiens emerged in Africa about 300,000 years ago. The new
findings mean that relatively pale skin tone variants predate the appearance of our species and
have been retained in some parts of Africa ever since.
This might surprise some geneticists, says Tishkoff. Previous studies of a skin pigmentation
gene called MC1R had led many geneticists to think that dark skin colour – which is thought to
protect against UV damage – is a fixed and consistent trait in all people of African descent.
“They thought [MC1R] shows that there has been selection for dark skin in Africa and therefore
there’s no variation,” says Tishkoff.
But in retrospect, it’s obvious that the story of skin pigmentation in sub-Saharan Africa is more
complicated than that, as there is huge variation in skin colour across the continent today. The
San hunter-gatherer populations of southern Africa often have lightly pigmented skin, and
belong to one of the most ancient branches of the Homo sapiens family tree.
“I think the most interesting observation is that some ancestral light skin alleles are shared
between the San and archaic hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans,” says Carles
Lalueza-Fox at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. “This suggests a
shared, common ancestry for this trait before the split of these three hominin lineages.”
Of the darker-skin gene variants, three appear to have evolved from less pigmented variants.
This means that some people with particularly dark skin – such as the Nilo-Saharan pastoralists
of East Africa – gained the trait relatively recently, from paler-skinned ancestors. “People have
thought it was just light skin that has been evolving,” says Tishkoff. “I think dark skin
continues to evolve as well.”

No single “African race”


Research into the genetics of skin tone and other traits has a significance beyond understanding
our species’ evolutionary history. “There are racists who want to associate skin pigmentation
with intellectual traits or traits dealing with moral behaviour,” says Nina Jablonski at
Pennsylvania State University.
But there is no justification for white supremacist arguments that people of European descent
with typically paler skin are inherently superior or more evolved. “We see these variants
associated with whiter skin actually came from Africa,” says Tishkoff.
“There is no homogeneous ‘African race’,” says Tishkoff. In fact, recent surveys of the views
of physical anthropologists suggest that most of them flatly reject the idea that humans can be
divided into biological races at all.

Study identifies genes responsible for


diversity of human skin colors
October 12, 2017, University of Pennsylvania

Mursi woman of Nilo-Saharan ancestry. Nilo-Saharan pastoralist populations possess


some of the darkest skin in Africa. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found
mutations associated with both light and dark pigmentation in a …more

Human populations feature a broad palette of skin tones. But until now, few genes
have been shown to contribute to normal variation in skin color, and these had
primarily been discovered through studies of European populations.
Now, a study of diverse African groups led by University of Pennsylvania
geneticists has identified new genetic variants associated with skin pigmentation.
The findings help explain the vast range of skin color on the African continent, shed
light on human evolution and inform an understanding of the genetic risk factors for
conditions such as skin cancer.
"We have identified new genetic variants that contribute to the genetic basis of one
of the most strikingly variable traits in modern humans," said Sarah Tishkoff, a
Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and the David and Lyn Silfen University
Professor in Genetics and Biology with appointments in the Perelman School of
Medicine and School of Arts and Sciences. "When people think of skin color in
Africa most would think of darker skin, but we show that within Africa there is a
huge amount of variation, ranging from skin as light as some Asians to the darkest
skin on a global level and everything in between. We identify genetic variants
affecting these traits and show that mutations influencing light and dark skin have
been around for a long time, since before the origin of modern humans."
The findings are published in the journal Science. Tishkoff, senior author,
collaborated with first author and lab member Nicholas Crawford, a postdoctoral
fellow, and a multi-institutional, international team.
Tishkoff has long studied the genetics of African populations, looking at traits such
as height, lactose tolerance, bitter-taste sensitivity and high-altitude adaptation.
Skin color emerged as a trait of interest from her experience working on the
continent and seeing the diversity present across groups.
"Skin color is a classic variable trait in humans, and it's thought to be adaptive,"
Tishkoff said. "Analysis of the genetic basis of variation in skin color sheds light on
how adaptive traits evolve, including those that play a role in disease risk."
Both light and dark skin pigmentations confer benefits: Darker skin, for example, is
believed to help prevent some of the negative impacts of ultraviolet light exposure,
while lighter skin is better able to promote synthesis of vitamin D in regions with
low ultraviolet light exposure.
To objectively capture the range of skin pigmentation in Africa, Tishkoff and
colleagues used a color meter to measure the light reflectance of the skin of more
than 2,000 Africans from ethnically and genetically diverse populations. They took
the measurement from the inner arm, when sun exposure is minimal. The
measurements can be used to infer levels of the skin pigment melanin. They
obtained a range of measurements; the darkest skin was observed in Nilo-Saharan
pastoralist populations in eastern Africa, and the lightest skin was observed in San
hunter-gatherer populations in southern Africa.
The researchers obtained genetic information from nearly 1,600 people, examining
more than 4 million single nucleotide polymorphisms across the genome, places
where the DNA code may differ by one "letter." From this dataset the researchers
were able to do a genome-wide association study and found four key areas of the
genome where variation closely correlated with skin color differences.
In a first-of-its-kind study, University of Pennsylvania researchers studied the genetics behind skin
pigmentation of diverse African populations, finding new genetic variants associated with skin
color. Here, senior research scientist …more

The region with the strongest associations was in and around the SLC24A5 gene,
one variant of which is known to play a role in light skin color in European and
some southern Asian populations and is believed to have arisen more than 30,000
years ago. This variant was common in populations in Ethiopia and Tanzania that
were known to have ancestry from southeast Asia and the Middle East, suggesting
it was carried into Africa from those regions and, based on its frequency, may have
been positively selected.
Another region, which contains the MFSD12 gene, had the second strongest
association to skin pigmentation. This gene is expressed at low levels in
depigmented skin in individuals with vitiligo, a condition where the skin loses
pigment in some areas.
"I still rememeber the 'ah ha!' moment when we saw this gene was associated with
vitiligo," said Crawford. "That's when we knew we'd found something new and
exciting."
The team found that mutations in and around this gene that were associated with
dark pigmentation were present at high frequencies in populations of Nilo-Saharan
ancestry, who tend to have very dark skin, as well as across sub-Saharan
populations, except the San, who tend to have lighter skin. They also identified
these variants, as well as others associated with dark skin pigmentation, in South
Asian Indian and Australo-Melanesian populations, who tend to have the darkest
skin coloration outside of Africa.
"The origin of traits such as hair texture, skin color and stature, which are shared
between some indigenous populations in Melanesia and Australia and some sub-
Saharan Africans, has long been a mystery." Tishkoff said. "Some have argued it's
because of convergent evolution, that they independently evolved these mutations,
but our study finds that, at genes associated with skin color, they have the identical
variants associated with dark skin as Africans.
"Our data are consistent with a proposed early migration event of modern humans
out of Africa along the southern coast of Asia and into Australo-Melanesia and a
secondary migration event into other regions. However, it is also possible that
there was a single African source population that contained genetic variants
associated with both light and dark skin and that the variants associated with dark
pigmentation were maintained only in South Asians and Australo-Melanesians and
lost in other Eurasians due to natural selection."
Also of interest was that genetic variants at MFSD12, OCA2,
and HERC2 associated with light skin pigmentation were at highest frequency in
the African San population, which has the oldest genetic lineages in the world, as
well as in Europeans.
MFSD12 is highly expressed in melanocytes, the cells that produce melanin. To
verify the gene's role in contributing to skin pigmentation, the researchers blocked
expression of the gene in cells in culture and found an increase in production of
eumelanin, the pigment type responsible for black and brown skin, hair and eye
color. Knocking out the gene in zebrafish caused a loss of cells that produce yellow
pigment. And in mice, knocking out the gene changed the color of their coat from
agouti, caused by hairs with a red and yellow pigment, to a uniform gray by
eliminating production of pheomelanin, a type of pigment also found in humans.
"Apart from one study showing that MFSD12 was associated with vitiligo lesions,
we didn't know much else about it," said Crawford, "so these functional assays
were really crucial."
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Alessia Ranciaro and Simon Thompson. Credit: Alessia Ranciaro and Simon Thompson/University
of Pennsylvania

"We went beyond most genome-wide association studies to do functional assays,"


Tishkoff said, "and found that knocking out MFSD12 dramatically impacted the
pigmentation of fish and mice. It's pointing to this being a very conserved trait
across species.
"We don't know exactly why, but blocking this gene causes a loss of pheomelanin
production and an increase in eumelanin production," Tishkoff added. "We also
showed that Africans have a lower level of MFSD12 expression, which makes
sense, as low levels of the gene means more eumelanin production."
A collaborator on the work, Michael Marks, a professor in the departments of
Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and of Physiology at Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia and at Penn Medicine, demonstrated that the MFSD12 gene
influences eumelanin pigmentation in a novel manner. Unlike other pigmentation
genes, which are expressed mainly in melanosomes, the organelle where melanin
is produced, MFSD12 is expressed in lysosomes, a distinct organelle from the
melanosomes that produce eumelanin.
"Our results suggest there must be some kind of as-yet-uncharacterized form of
cross-talk between lysosomes and the melanosomes that make eumelanins,"
Marks said. "Figuring out how this works might provide new ideas for ways to
manipulate skin pigmentation for therapeutic means.
"In addition," Marks said, "the fact that loss of MFSD12 expression had opposite
effects on the two types of melanins, increasing eumelanin production while
suppressing pheomelanin, suggests that melanosomes that make pheomelanins
might be more related to lysosomes than those that make eumelanin."
Additional associations with skin color were found in the OCA2 and HERC2 genes,
which have been linked with skin, eye and hair color variation in Europeans,
though the mutations identified are novel. Mutations in OCA2 also cause a form of
albinism that is more common in Africans than in other populations. The
researchers observed genetic variants in a neighboring gene, HERC2, which
regulates the expression of OCA2. Within OCA2, they identified a variant common
in Europeans and San that is associated with a shorter version of the protein, with
an altered function. They observed a signal of balancing selection of OCA2,
meaning that two different versions of the gene have been maintained, in this case
for more than 600,000 years.
"What this tells us," Tishkoff said, "is there is likely some selective force
maintaining these two alleles. It is likely that this gene is playing a role in other
aspects of human physiology which are important."
A final genetic region the researchers found to be associated with skin
pigmentation included genes that play a role in ultraviolet light response and
melanoma risk. The top candidate gene in the region is DDB1, involved in repairing
DNA after exposure to UV light.
"Africans don't get melanoma very often," Tishkoff said. "The variants near these
genes are highest in populations who live in areas of the highest ultraviolet light
intensity, so it makes sense that they may be playing a role in UV protection."
A Ju/‘hoansi individual of the San who was not part of the study. Credit: Alessia Ranciaro

The mutations identified by the team play a role in regulating expression of DDB1
and other nearby genes.
"Though we don't yet know the mechanism by which DDB1 is impacting
pigmentation, it is of interest to note that this gene, which is highly conserved
across species, also plays a role in pigmentation in plants such as tomatoes," said
Tishkoff.
The team saw evidence that this region of the genome has been a strong target of
natural selection outside of Africa; mutations associated with light skin color swept
to nearly 100 percent frequency in non-Africans, one of few examples of a
"selective sweep" in all Eurasians; the age of the selective sweep was estimated to
be around 60,000 to 80,000 years old, around the time of migration of modern
humans out of Africa.
One additional takeaway from this work is a broader picture of the evolution of skin
color in humans. Most of the genetic variants associated with light and dark
pigmentation from the study appear to have originated more than 300,000 years
ago, and some emerged roughly 1 million years ago, well before the emergence of
modern humans. The older version of these variants in many cases was the one
associated with lighter skin, suggesting that perhaps the ancestral state of humans
was moderately pigmented rather than darkly pigmented skin.
"If you were to shave a chimp, it has light pigmentation," Tishkoff said, "so it makes
sense that skin color in the ancestors of modern humans could have been
relatively light. It is likely that when we lost the hair covering our bodies and moved
from forests to the open savannah, we needed darker skin. Mutations influencing
both light and dark skin have continued to evolve in humans, even within the past
few thousand years."
Tishkoff noted that the work underscores the diversity of African populations and
the lack of support for biological notions of race.
"Many of the genes and new genetic variants we identified to be associated with
skin color may never have been found outside of Africa, because they are not as
highly variable," Tishkoff said. "There is so much diversity in Africa that's not often
appreciated. There's no such thing as an African race. We show that skin color is
extremely variable on the African continent and that it is still evolving. Further, in
most cases the genetic variants associated with light skin arose in Africa."
Explore further: More traits associated with your Neandertal DNA
More information: N.G. Crawford el al., "Loci associated with skin pigmentation
identified in African
populations," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/lookup/ …
1126/science.aan8433

Cheddar Man: DNA shows early Briton


had dark skin
By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website
 7 February 2018
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Media captionDNA shows early Brit had dark skin

A cutting-edge scientific analysis shows that a Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin
and blue eyes.

Researchers from London's Natural History Museum extracted DNA from Cheddar Man, Britain's oldest
complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903.

University College London researchers then used the subsequent genome analysis for a facial
reconstruction.

It underlines the fact that the lighter skin characteristic of modern Europeans is a relatively recent
phenomenon.

No prehistoric Briton of this age had previously had their genome analysed.

As such, the analysis provides valuable new insights into the first people to resettle Britain after the last
Ice Age.

The analysis of Cheddar Man's genome - the "blueprint" for a human, contained in the nuclei of our cells
- will be published in a journal, and will also feature in the upcoming Channel 4 documentary The First
Brit, Secrets Of The 10,000-year-old Man.
'Cheddar George' tweet on early Briton
Cheddar Man's remains had been unearthed 115 years ago in Gough's Cave, located in Somerset's
Cheddar Gorge. Subsequent examination has shown that the man was short by today's standards - about
5ft 5in - and probably died in his early 20s.

Prof Chris Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, said: "I've been studying the
skeleton of Cheddar Man for about 40 years

"So to come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like - and that striking combination of the
hair, the face, the eye colour and that dark skin: something a few years ago we couldn't have imagined
and yet that's what the scientific data show."

Image captionA replica of Cheddar Man's skeleton now lies in Gough's Cave

Fractures on the surface of the skull suggest he may even have met his demise in a violent manner. It's
not known how he came to lie in the cave, but it's possible he was placed there by others in his tribe.

The Natural History Museum researchers extracted the DNA from part of the skull near the ear known as
the petrous. At first, project scientists Prof Ian Barnes and Dr Selina Brace weren't sure if they'd get any
DNA at all from the remains.
But they were in luck: not only was DNA preserved, but Cheddar Man has since yielded the highest
coverage (a measure of the sequencing accuracy) for a genome from this period of European prehistory -
known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.

They teamed up with researchers at University College London (UCL) to analyse the results, including
gene variants associated with hair, eye and skin colour.

Extra mature Cheddar


They found the Stone Age Briton had dark hair - with a small probability that it was curlier than average
- blue eyes and skin that was probably dark brown or black in tone.

This combination might appear striking to us today, but it was a common appearance in western Europe
during this period.

Steven Clarke, director of the Channel Four documentary, said: "I think we all know we live in times
where we are unusually preoccupied with skin pigmentation."

Prof Mark Thomas, a geneticist from UCL, said: "It becomes a part of our understanding, I think that
would be a much, much better thing. I think it would be good if people lodge it in their heads, and it
becomes a little part of their knowledge."

Unsurprisingly, the findings have generated lots of interest on social media.


Skip Twitter post by @RantyHighwayman

The Ranty Highwayman@RantyHighwayman


If they don't call this Cheddar Man "George", I'm not playing any more.
2:36 AM - Feb 7, 2018

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17 people are talking about this

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Cheddar Man's genome reveals he was closely related to other Mesolithic individuals - so-called
Western Hunter-Gatherers - who have been analysed from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary.
Dutch artists Alfons and Adrie Kennis, specialists in palaeontological model-making, took the genetic
findings and combined them with physical measurements from scans of the skull. The result was a
strikingly lifelike reconstruction of a face from our distant past.

Pale skin probably arrived in Britain with a migration of people from the Middle East around 6,000
years ago. This population had pale skin and brown eyes and absorbed populations like the ones Cheddar
Man belonged to.

Image captionProf Chris Stringer had studied Cheddar Man for 40 years - but was struck by the Kennis
brothers' reconstruction

No-one's entirely sure why pale skin evolved in these farmers, but their cereal-based diet was probably
deficient in Vitamin D. This would have required agriculturalists to absorb this essential nutrient from
sunlight through their skin.

"There may be other factors that are causing lower skin pigmentation over time in the last 10,000 years.
But that's the big explanation that most scientists turn to," said Prof Thomas.
Boom and bust
The genomic results also suggest Cheddar Man could not drink milk as an adult. This ability only spread
much later, after the onset of the Bronze Age.

Present-day Europeans owe on average 10% of their ancestry to Mesolithic hunters like Cheddar Man.

Britain has been something of a boom-and-bust story for humans over the last million-or-so years.
Modern humans were here as early as 40,000 years ago, but a period of extreme cold known as the Last
Glacial Maximum drove them out some 10,000 years later.

There's evidence from Gough's Cave that hunter-gatherers ventured back around 15,000 years ago,
establishing a temporary presence when the climate briefly improved. However, they were soon sent
packing by another cold snap. Cut marks on the bones suggest these people cannibalised their dead -
perhaps as part of ritual practices.
Image copyrightCHANNEL 4Image captionThe actual skull of Cheddar Man is kept in the Natural
History Museum, seen being handled here by Ian Barnes

Britain was once again settled 11,000 years ago; and has been inhabited ever since. Cheddar Man was
part of this wave of migrants, who walked across a landmass called Doggerland that, in those days,
connected Britain to mainland Europe. This makes him the oldest known Briton with a direct connection
to people living here today.

This is not the first attempt to analyse DNA from the Cheddar Man. In the late 1990s, Oxford University
geneticist Brian Sykes sequenced mitochondrial DNA from one of Cheddar Man's molars.

Mitochondrial DNA comes from the biological "batteries" within our cells and is passed down
exclusively from a mother to her children.

Prof Sykes compared the ancient genetic information with DNA from 20 living residents of Cheddar
village and found two matches - including history teacher Adrian Targett, who became closely
connected with the discovery. The result is consistent with the approximately 10% of Europeans who
share the same mitochondrial DNA type.
HUMAN EVOLUTION

Cheddar Man: Mesolithic


Britain's blue-eyed boy
By Kerry Lotzof
First published 7 February 2018

Ancient DNA from Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 at


Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, has helped Museum scientists paint a
portrait of one of the oldest modern humans in Britain.

Cheddar Man lived around 10,000 years ago and is the oldest almost complete
skeleton of our species, Homo sapiens, ever found in Britain.

New research into ancient DNA extracted from the skeleton has helped scientists
to build a portrait of Cheddar Man and his life in Mesolithic Britain.

The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that some of the earliest modern human
inhabitants of Britain may not have looked the way you might expect.
Dr Tom Booth is a postdoctoral researcher working closely with the Museum's
human remains collection to investigate human adaptation to changing
environments.

'Until recently it was always assumed that humans quickly adapted to have paler
skin after entering Europe about 45,000 years ago,' says Tom. 'Pale skin is better
at absorbing UV light and helps humans avoid vitamin D deficiency in climates
with less sunlight.'

However, Cheddar Man has the genetic markers of skin pigmentation usually
associated with sub-Saharan Africa.

This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains


discovered throughout Europe.

The model of Cheddar Man rendered by Kennis & Kennis Reconstructions will
feature in the Channel 4 television documentary The First Brit: Secrets of the
10,000 Year Old Man © Tom Barnes/Channel 4
'He is just one person, but also indicative of the population of Europe at the time,'
says Tom. 'They had dark skin and most of them had pale colored eyes, either
blue or green, and dark brown hair.'

'Cheddar Man subverts people's expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go


together,' he adds.

'It seems that pale eyes entered Europe long before pale skin or blond hair, which
didn't come along until after the arrival of farming.'

'He reminds us that you can't make assumptions about what people looked like in
the past based on what people look like in the present, and that the pairings of
features we are used to seeing today aren't something that's fixed.'

Who was Cheddar Man?


Cheddar Man was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer (fully modern human) with dark
skin and blue eyes. He was about 166 centimetres tall and died in his twenties.

His skeleton was uncovered in 1903 during improvements to drainage for


Gough's Cave, a popular tourist attraction.

When he was first found, there were claims that Cheddar Man was the long-
sought earliest Englishman, with exaggerated dates of 40,000-80,000 years. But
subsequent radiocarbon dating from the 1970s onwards suggests he lived around
10,000 years ago.
Reassembled skeleton of Cheddar Man
His skeleton shows a narrow pelvis shape, usually found in women. It's uncertain
whether a hole in his forehead was from an infection or from damage at the time
of excavation.

Like all humans across Europe at the time, Cheddar Man was lactose intolerant
and was unable to digest milk as an adult.

At the time Cheddar Man was alive, Britain was attached to continental Europe
and the landscape was becoming densely forested.

'Cheddar Man belonged to a group of people who were mainly hunter gatherers,'
says Tom. 'They were hunting game as well as gathering seeds and nuts and
living quite complex lives.'

In addition to seeds and nuts, his diet would have consisted of red deer, aurochs
(large wild cattle) along with some freshwater fish.
Herds of aurochs were once abundant during warm periods. Extinct since the
seventeenth century, their descendants are domestic cattle bred for meat and
milk.

Cultural life in Mesolithic Britain


While Cheddar Man was not found with any recorded animal or cultural remains,
other Mesolithic sites offer clues about his diet and the kind of cultural life he
may have been part of.

Star Carr was a Mesolithic settlement in North Yorkshire that predates Cheddar
Man by around 1,000 years.

There, archaeologists uncovered red deer skull-caps (which may have been worn
as headdresses), semiprecious stones including amber, hematite and pyrite and an
engraved shale pendant known as the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain.
While impossible to say for certain, similar kinds of objects may have been
familiar to Cheddar Man.

An unusual cave burial


Most of the Mesolithic human remains that date to this period were discovered in
caves and there is a strong tradition of cave burial in the region.

'About a mile up the road from where Cheddar Man was found, there is another
cave known as Aveline's Hole which is one of the biggest Mesolithic cemeteries
in Britain. Archaeologists found the remains of about 50 individuals, all
deposited over a short period of 100-200 years,' says Tom.

Conservator Effie Verveniotou examining the oldest nearly complete modern


human skeleton ever found in Britain before it went on display in the Museum's
Human Evolution gallery.
Cheddar Man's case is quite unusual because at a time when communal burials
were common, he was found buried alone.

'He was recovered from sediment but it wasn't clear whether he had been buried
or just covered in sediment over time by natural mineral deposits in the cave,'
says Tom.

'So he could have been special, or he may just have curled up and died there.'

According to several Victorian accounts, a large quantity of bones, teeth of


extinct animals, flint knives and bone instruments were, unfortunately,
wheelbarrowed out from the site and discarded. Some must have been from
earlier occupations of the cave but it is possible some would have held additional
clues about the life of Cheddar Man and other humans who once lived in the
region.

A fresh take on ancient DNA


Coaxing data from ancient DNA can be painstaking work. Dr Selina
Brace specialises in ancient DNA at the Museum and worked closely on Cheddar
Man.

'Ancient DNA doesn't necessarily mean that the specimen you're working with is
thousands of years old,' Selina explains. 'It just means that the DNA is degraded.'

As soon as an organism dies, DNA begins to break down. Temperature and


humidity also make a big difference to the quality of data that it's possible to
extract.

The consistently cool conditions of Gough's Cave and layers of natural mineral
deposits both helped preserve Cheddar Man's DNA.
Excavations at Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge.
Selina explains the process used to obtain Cheddar Man's DNA:

'To extract ancient DNA from a human or animal what you're looking for is a
dense bone which might have protected the DNA inside it as much as possible.'

'We used to use leg bones or teeth as the thick bones and enamel keep DNA quite
intact, but in the last two years we've shifted to using the petrous, or inner ear
bone, which is the densest bone in the human body,' she says.

'However it isn't a golden egg,' cautions Selina. 'You can still fail to retrieve
useful DNA. But if the body was deposited in a good environment, where there
was a cool and constant temperature then the petrous bone is a good place to find
useful ancient DNA.'
The skull of Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton of a human found in
Britain
After extracting the DNA Selina and the team used next-generation shotgun
sequencing, which involves defining millions of fragments of DNA distributed
randomly across the genome, to create a library of Cheddar Man's DNA and map
what they found against a modern human genome.

'We had a lot of genetic data but you have to kind of know what you're looking
for,' says Tom. 'I had taken a recreational DNA test that looked specifically at
physical traits, and they had helpfully listed the markers they use to come up with
their assessments.'

'We were able to send that list of markers to our own bioinformatics lab to help
us develop a portrait of Cheddar Man.'
Reconstructing Cheddar Man
The model of Cheddar Man was made by Kennis & Kennis Reconstructions who
specialise in palaeontological reconstructions.

The artists took measurements of the skeleton, scanned the skull and 3D printed a
base for their model.

'Of course facial reconstruction is part art and part science,' Tom says 'but there
are some standards of how thick the tissue is in different regions of people's faces
so they can use those conventions to develop the morphology of the face.'

Human Evolution

How to find this gallery


 in the Red Zone
 nearest entrance: Exhibition Road (step-free)
 Museum map PDF (835KB)
Useful links
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Facilities and access

Eat, drink and shop

Meet your ancient relatives, trace the


origins and evolution of our species, and
explore what makes us human.
Embark on a seven-million-year journey, from the first hominins to the last
surviving human species: us.

Investigate what defines a hominin and how much we modern humans have in
common with other human species, as well as what sets us apart.

Along the way you will discover the changes in physical characteristics, diet,
lifestyles and environments that have shaped modern humans.
'It's fantastic to see such extremely good reproductions of important new fossil discoveries
like Ardi and Homo floresiensis, as well as the latest groundbreaking research into the
ancient human occupation of Britain, embedded in this gallery.' - Dr Alice Roberts

Star specimens and exhibits


 3.5-million-year-old Laetoli canine, the oldest hominin fossil in the
Museum's collection
 Gibraltar 1 skull, the first adult Neanderthal skull ever found
 skull and hand casts of the recently discovered human species, Homo
naledi
 scientifically accurate life-size Neanderthal and early Homo
sapiens models
 420,000-year-old Clacton spear, the oldest preserved wooden spear in the
world
 Cheddar Man skeleton and fascinating insights into the cultural practices
of early modern humans in Britain, including a human skull shaped into a
cup

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