Cheddar Man

Cheddar Man is a human male skeleton found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The skeletal remains date to around the mid-to-late 9th millennium BC, corresponding to the Mesolithic period, and it appears that he died a violent death. A large crater-like lesion just above the skull's right orbit suggests that the man may have also been suffering from a bone infection.

Excavated in 1903, Cheddar Man is the oldest near-complete human skeleton found in Great Britain. The remains are kept by London's Natural History Museum, in the Human Evolution gallery.

Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the Western European hunter-gatherer population at the time, with a most likely phenotype of blue-green eyes, dark brown or black hair, and dark or dark-to-black skin, with no genetic adaptation for lactase persistence into adulthood.

Archaeological context The near-complete skeleton, an adult male who probably died in his early twenties, was discovered in 1903 by labourers digging a drainage ditch. No grave goods have been reliably associated with the skeleton. It is likely that Cheddar Man was moved to the cave after death as part of what may have been a Mesolithic funerary practice, although it is also possible that he simply died in situ.

Genetics

Cheddar Man belonged to the Western hunter-gatherer (WHG) population that dominated most of Western Europe during the Mesolithic. Around 4000 BC, they were replaced by Neolithic farmers who emigrated from the Continent. The Neolithic people had an average of 10% ancestry from Western hunter-gatherers, but almost all of this ancestry came from Continental populations, rather than Britain's original Mesolithic inhabitants. Around 85% of his ancestry can be modelled as coming from the Late Upper Paleolithic Villabruna genetic cluster, which forms the great majority of ancestry of Western Hunter Gatherers, with the remaining c. 15% deriving from the Goyet Q2 cave cluster associated with the Late Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian culture. He is not closely related to the earlier Magdalenian individuals found in the same cave, whose ancestry is entirely from the Goyet cluster.

Phenotype

Analysis of genetic markers, although limited by low sequencing coverage, suggests (based on their associations in modern populations whose phenotypes are known) that he most likely had intermediate (blue-green) eye colour, dark brown or black hair, and dark or dark-to-black skin, with no derived allele for lactase persistence. These features are typical of the Western European population of the time. The later immigrations of Early European Farmers and Bell Beaker groups introduced traits of brown eyes, lactose tolerance, and light skin to western Europe.

Uniparental haplogroups Cheddar Man's Y-DNA belongs to I-S2524*, a descendant subclade of haplogroup I2a.

Controversy and common misconceptions Soon after the discovery of the skeleton, Cheddar Man became part of a discourse of British nationalism and cultural heritage, with an initially proposed age of 40,000–80,000 years. The specimen was heralded by some as the 'first Englishman'. a history teacher from a local school, both of whom belonged to mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U5, although this cannot demonstrate a direct connection between Cheddar Man and this individual, and many people with the same mtDNA haplogroup could probably be found even within the local area. The programme generated coverage in national and international media, which focused mainly on the supposed relationship between Cheddar Man and the local history teacher, and failed to emphasise that mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through the mother, and makes up only a small proportion of an individual's genome.

In 2018, the publication of the genetics study by Brace et al. and subsequent facial reconstruction of a dark-skinned and blue-eyed Cheddar Man resulted in widespread media coverage.