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 adaption for lactase persistence into adulthood.
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.
Cheddar Man has been directly radiocarbon dated on two separate occasions, giving calibrated dates of 8540âÂÂ7990 BC and 8470âÂÂ8230 BC.
Cheddar Man was relatively short compared to modern Europeans, with an estimated stature of around , and weighing around . Proportionally, he is in most respects similar to modern Europeans, and may be described as 'cold-adapted', but with a high crural index (thigh-lengthâÂÂtoâÂÂleg-length ratio) which is much higher than the modern European average and higher even than the modern sub-Saharan African average, and a high tibia-lengthâÂÂtoâÂÂtrunk-height ratio similar to modern North Africans.
Cheddar Man belonged to the Mesolithic Western European hunter-gatherer (WHG) population. 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 hunger-gatherers, but almost all of this ancestry came from Continental populations, rather than Britain's original Mesolithic inhabitants. The Neolithic farmers were in turn replaced by Bronze Age people associated with the Bell Beaker culture from the Continent. WHG ancestry ultimately originated in or near the Middle East. Their ancestors left Africa, moved into the Middle East and later headed west into Europe, before eventually traversing Doggerland, a land bridge which connected Britain to continental Europe.
Nuclear DNA was extracted from the petrous part of the temporal bone by a team from the Natural History Museum in 2018. Around 85% of his ancestry can be modelled as coming from the c. 14,000âÂÂ7,000-year-old Villabruna genetic cluster, a major component 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.
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. Unlike Farming populations outside the Tropics, who became lighter-skinned over time because they do not get enough vitamin D from their diet, western hunter-gatherers retained their dark skin because they got enough vitamin D from foods such as oily fish. The later immigrations of Early European Farmers and Bell Beaker groups introduced traits of brown eyes, lactose tolerance, and light skin to western Europe.
Cheddar Man's Y-DNA belonged to an ancient sister branch of Haplogroup I2-L38 (). The subclade is still extant in males of the modern British Isles and across other parts of Europe. The mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man was assigned to haplogroup U5b1 by a Natural History Museum study in 2018 using next generation sequencing. Some 65% of western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had haplogroup ; today it is widely distributed, at lower frequencies, across western Eurasia and northern Africa. In 1996, Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford first sequenced the mitochondrial DNA from one of Cheddar Man's molars as using PCR testing. The difference between the older result and the 2018 Natural History Museum result was attributed to the use of older PCR technology and possible contamination.
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 40,000âÂÂ80,000 years. The specimen was heralded by some as the 'first Englishman'.
The analysis of Cheddar Man's mitochondrial DNA by Bryan Sykes in 1996 was broadcast on a regional television programme in the UK, Once Upon a Time in the West. The programme emphasised the connection between Cheddar Man and Adrian Targett, 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. This coverage again described Cheddar Man as the "first Brit" (despite older remains of modern humans being known from Great Britain). Public discourse surrounding the reconstruction of Cheddar Man heavily revolved around the themes of immigration, national identity, race, and Brexit. Some saw Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as a helpful counter to anti-immigration arguments, while others claimed it to be fake news or a piece of left-wing propaganda.