Cheddar Man With The Blue Eyes

 Cheddar Man is a human male fossil 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.

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. 

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.

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.'

Tom. 'They had dark skin and most of them had pale colored eyes, either blue or green, and dark brown hair.'

 'CheddarMan 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.'

His skeleton was uncovered in 1903 during improvements to drainage for Gough's Cave, a popular tourist attraction.

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.

Excavated in 1903, Cheddar Man is Britain's oldest near-complete human skeleton. 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 adaption for lactase persistence into adulthood.