In 1903, the remains of a 10,000-year-old man were discovered in the Cheddar Gorge of Somerset, England. Dubbed the “Cheddar Man,” it remains the oldest almost complete skeleton ever found in Britain. Over the years, research has shown that he stood around five-foot-five, he was well-fed and he likely died in his early 20s. Now, as Paul Rincon of the BBC reports, genome analysis has revealed that Cheddar Man had dark brown skin and blue eyes—a discovery that adds to a growing body of research indicating that the evolution of human skin color was far more complex than previously believed.
The genome analysis was conducted by researchers at London’s Natural History Museum, who extracted DNA from Cheddar man’s inner ear bone, located at the base of the skull. Experts at the University College of London then used the DNA information to create a facial reconstruction of Cheddar Man, rendering his dark complexion, deep brown hair, and light eyes in life-like detail. The research and remodeling process will be chronicled in an upcoming documentary, The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 year old man, which will air on the UK’s Channel 4.
As Hannah Devlin of the Guardian explains, Cheddar Man’s appearance has been the subject of considerable interest because he belonged to the first wave of migrants to establish a continuous human presence in Britain after around 11,700 years ago; before that, humans had temporarily settled in the region and cleared out during various ice ages. Around ten percent of people with white British ancestry are descended from this group of first settlers, and previous reconstructions of Cheddar Man have depicted him with pale skin and light hair.
But the new discovery suggests that light skin evolved in European populations much later than is commonly believed. “People define themselves by which country they’re from, and they assume that their ancestors were just like them,” Alfons Kennis, who worked on the reconstruction, tells New Scientist. “And then suddenly new research shows that we used to be a totally different people with a different genetic makeup.”