If you are American you have probably heard about “Cheddar Man” in Bryan Sykes’ Seven Daughters of Eve. If you don’t know, Cheddar Man is a Mesolithic individual from prehistoric Britain, dating to 9,150 years before the present. Sykes’ DNA analysis concluded that he was mtDNA haplogroup U5, which is found in ~10% of modern Europeans, and which ancient DNA has found to be overwhelmingly dominant among European hunter-gatherers. But for years there has been controversy as to whether this result was contamination (after all, if it’s found in ~10% of modern Europeans it wouldn’t be surprising if the DNA was contaminated).

Today that is a moot point. On February 18th Channel 4 in the UK will premier a documentary that seems to indicate genomic analysis of Cheddar Man’s remains have been performed, and he turns out to be exactly what we would have expected. That is, he’s a “Western Hunter-Gatherer” (WHG) with affinities to the remains from Belgium, Spain, and Central Europe. These WHG populations were themselves relatively recent arrivals in Pleistocene Europe, with connections to some populations in the Near East, and with unexplored minor genetic admixture from an East Asian population. Their total contribution to the ancestry of modern Europeans varies, with lower fractions in the south of the continent, and the highest in the northeast.

Overall, the consensus seems to be that in Western Europe the genuine descent from indigenous hunter-gatherers passed down through admixture with Neolithic farmers, and then the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups, is around ~10%. This is the number that shows up in the press write-ups. But, there are some researchers who contend it is far less than 10%, and that that fraction is misattribution due to early admixture with relatives of these hunter-gatherers as steppe and farmer peoples were expanding.

Phylogenetics aside, one of the major headline aspects of the Cheddar Man is that reconstructions are now of a very dark-skinned and blue-eyed individual. Some of the more sensationalist press is declaring that the “first Britons were black!” As far as the depiction goes, this is literally true. The reconstruction is of a black-skinned individual in the sense we’d describe black-skinned.

But on one level it is entirely expected that this is what Cheddar Man would look like. The hunter-gatherers of Mesolithic Western Europe were genetically homogenous. They seem to derive from a small founder population. And, on the pigmentation loci which make modern Europeans very distinctive vis-a-vis other populations, SLC24A5, SLC45A2 and HERC2-OCA2, they were quite different from anything we’ve encountered before. First, these peoples seem to have had a frequency for the genetic variants strongly implicated in blue eyes in modern Europeans close to what you find in the Baltic region. The overwhelming majority carried the derived variant, perhaps even in regions such as Spain, which today are mostly brown-eyed because of the frequency of the ancestral variant. Second, these European hunter-gatherers tended to lack the genetic variants at SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 correlated with lighter skin, which today in European is found at frequencies of ~100% and 95% to 80% respectively.

The reason that one of the scientists being interviewed stated that there was a “76 percent probability that Cheddar Man had blue eyes” is that they used something like IrisPlex. They put in the genetic variants and popped out a probability. The problem is that the training set here is modern groups, which may have a very different genetic architecture than ancient populations. Recent work on Africans and East Asians indicate that the focus on European populations when it comes to pigmentation genetics has left huge lacunae in our understanding of common variants which affect variation in outcome.

East Asians, for example, lack both the derived variants of SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 common in Europeans but are often quite light-skinned. A deeper analysis of the pigmentation architecture of WHG might lead us to conclude that they were an olive or light brown-skinned people. This is my suspicion because modern Arctic peoples are neither pale white nor dark brown, but of various shades of olive.

As far as blue eyes go, it is reasonable that these individuals had that eye color because that trait seems somewhat less polygenic than skin color. There are darker complected people with light eyes, from the famous “Afghan girl” to the first black American Miss America, Vanessa Williams. The homozygote of the derived HERC-OCA2 variant seems relatively penetrant. From what I recall the literature indicates many people with blue eyes are not homozygotes on this locus for the derived haplotypes, but those who are homozygotes for the derived haplotypes invariably have blue eyes.

Addendum: It isn’t clear in the press pieces, but it looks like they got a high coverage genome sequence out of Cheddar Man. They refer to sequencing, and, they seem to have hit all the major pigmentation loci. This indicates reasonable coverage of the genome.</s>Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption DNA 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.

A University College London team analysed the genome, and the results were used 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 caption A 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.

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 caption Prof 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 synthesise this essential nutrient in their skin using sunlight.

"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.

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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 copyright Channel 4 Image caption The 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.

Follow Paul on Twitter.</s>LONDON — He had dark skin, brown curly hair and blue eyes, DNA tests suggest, upending a common assumption that Britain’s indigenous populations were all pale skinned with fair features.

He is “Cheddar Man,” Britain’s oldest complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903 in Gough’s Cave near the village of Cheddar in Somerset, in southwest England. He lived about 10,000 years ago in the Mesolithic period, the middle part of the Stone Age.

Scientists have now reconstructed his features, demonstrating that he was part of a population of ancient Western Europeans that, scientists have shown in recent years, had dark skin. Research has shown that fair skin pigmentation — long considered a defining feature of Europe — only goes back less than 6,000 years.

The research was led by the Natural History Museum and University College London. A news release about the research was released Wednesday, but the study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.</s>(LONDON) — DNA from a 10,000-year-old skeleton found in an English cave suggests the oldest-known Briton had dark skin and blue eyes, researchers said Wednesday.Scientists from Britain’s Natural History Museum and University College London analyzed the genome of “Cheddar Man,” who was found in Cheddar Gorge in southwest England in 1903.Scientists led by museum DNA expert Ian Barnes drilled into the skull to extract DNA from bone powder. They say analysis indicates he had blue eyes, dark curly hair and “dark to black” skin pigmentation.

The researchers say the evidence suggests that Europeans’ pale skin tones developed much later than originally thought.

“Cheddar Man subverts people’s expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go together,” said Tom Booth, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum who worked on the project.

“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.”

It’s thought ancient humans living in northern regions may have developed pale skin because it absorbs more sunlight, which is needed to produce vitamin D.

Cheddar Man shares a genetic profile with several other Mesolithic-era individuals found in Spain, Hungary and Luxembourg whose DNA has already been analyzed. The group, known as Western Hunter-Gatherers, migrated to Europe from the Middle East after the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago.

Cheddar Man is the oldest complete skeleton found in Britain. Humans had lived in Britain off and on for thousands of years before his time, but they had been wiped out during periodic ice ages.

Cheddar Man would have been one of a tiny population of hunter-gatherers in Britain at the time. Scientists, who have been studying his skeleton for decades, say he appears to have had a healthy diet but died in his 20s, possibly through violence.

Dutch “paleo artists” Alfons and Adrie Kennis created a likeness of Cheddar Man based on the British scientists’ findings, showing a man with long curly hair, a short beard and striking blue eyes.

The research will be explored in a television documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 on Feb. 18.</s>“Cheddar Man”, Britain’s oldest, nearly complete human skeleton, had dark skin, blue eyes and dark curly hair when he lived in what is now southwest England 10,000 years ago, scientists who read his DNA have discovered.

The finding suggests that the lighter skin pigmentation now seen as typical of northern Europeans is far more recent than previously thought, according to researchers from University College London (UCL) who took part in the project.

"Cheddar Man’s" skin colour was described as “dark to black” by the scientific team which also included researchers from London’s Natural History Museum, where the skeleton is on display in the Human Evolution gallery.

The reconstruction of the stone age "Cheddar Man" is based on 3D scans of the skull and information from the man's unusually well-preserved DNA.

Cheddar Man was unearthed in 1903 in Gough’s Cave at Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, and has been the topic of constant mystery and intrigue. For over 100 years, scientists have tried to reveal "Cheddar Man’s" story, posing theories as to what he looked like, where he came from and what he can tell us about our earliest ancestors.

10% of Brits can be linked to 'Cheddar Man'

“To go beyond what the bones tell us and get a scientifically based picture of what he actually looked like is a remarkable, and from the results quite surprising achievement,” said Chris Stringer, the museum’s research leader in Human Origins.

Three hundred generations later, around 10 percent of indigenous British ancestry can be linked to Cheddar Man’s people, scientists say.

As part of a project commissioned by Britain’s Channel 4 television station for a documentary, experts from the Natural History Museum’s ancient DNA lab drilled a tiny hole into the skull in order to extract genetic information.

Then, a pair of Dutch artists who are experts in palaeontology model making, Alfons and Adrie Kennis, used a high-tech scanner to make a three-dimensional model of Cheddar Man’s head.

The model, which UCL and the Natural History Museum said rendered Cheddar Man’s face with unprecedented accuracy, shows a man with dark skin, high cheekbones, blue eyes and coarse black hair.

The full story will be shown on February 18, and is called "First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man".</s>The first modern Brits were black. New DNA analysis of the “Cheddar Man” fossil has revealed that he had “dark to black” skin and blue eyes, the Guardian reports. Cheddar Man would have lived about 10,000 years ago, a short time after human populations migrated from Europe to the British Isles at the end of the last Ice Age. Previous human populations had died out. This means a percentage of white Brits can trace their ancestry back to this man and that fair skin developed among this population much later than originally estimated.

Cheddar Man was first discovered more than a century ago in Somerset, England. Scientists originally thought that he had light-colored skin and hair. However, the recent DNA analysis shows that he only had light-colored eyes, which were blue. His hair was dark and curly along with his brown skin.

An archaeologist who worked on the project says that it illustrates that the “racial categories” that pervade our world today are relatively new social constructions. They “really are not applicable to the past at all,” said Tom Booth from the Natural History Museum. It also reinforces that geographical origin can’t be determined by external physical characteristics like the color of your skin, eyes, or the texture of your hair.

The DNA results were accompanied by a reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s face. The reconstruction includes the dark skin and blue eyes, but it also revealed that he had high cheekbones as well. This project is linked to a British documentary titled The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000-Year-Old Man, which chronicles the discovery of the truth behind Cheddar Man’s genetics.

As the Independent reports, the news that the earliest known Brit had dark skin isn’t going well with a lot of people. Some are questioning the validity of the findings and whether it might be part of some sort of racial agenda. British identity has been tied to whiteness for centuries, so this groundbreaking news is bound to ruffle some feathers.

According to the Independent, scientists made their discovery by examining the DNA they found in bone powder extracted from Cheddar Man’s skull. The 3D model was created by Alfons and Adrie Kennis, who are known for their realistic recreations of early humans and animals that are extinct.</s>The first modern Briton had dark skin and blue eyes, London scientists said on Wednesday, following groundbreaking DNA analysis of the remains of a man who lived 10,000 years ago.

Known as "Cheddar Man" after the area in southwest England where his skeleton was discovered in a cave in 1903, the ancient man has been brought to life through the first ever full DNA analysis of his remains.

In a joint project between Britain's Natural History Museum and University College London, scientists drilled a 2mm hole into the skull and extracted bone powder for analysis.

Their findings transformed the way they had previously seen Cheddar Man, who had been portrayed as having brown eyes and light skin in an earlier model.

"It is very surprising that a Brit 10,000 years ago could have that combination of very blue eyes but really dark skin," said the museum's Chris Stringer, who for the past decade has analysed the bones of people found in the cave.

The findings suggest that lighter pigmentation being a feature of populations of northern Europe is more recent than previously thought.

Cheddar Man's tribe migrated to Britain at the end of the last Ice Age and his DNA has been linked to individuals discovered in modern-day Spain, Hungary and Luxembourg.

Selina Brace, a researcher of ancient DNA at the museum, said the cave environment Cheddar Man was found in helped preserve his remains.

WATCH | Scientists find that the make up of earliest Briton was dark skin and blue eyes</s>Modern humans migrated to Britain around 45,000 years ago, and it had been assumed that paler skin had evolved shortly after.

But a human man that lived in Britain 10,000 years ago during the Mesolithic had dark to black skin, DNA analysis reveals - showing that reduced skin pigmentation arrived in the British Isles much later than we thought.

He's called the Cheddar Man, because his remains were found in 1903 in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset.

It was this cool, stable limestone cave environment that preserved the Cheddar Man's DNA for thousands of years - and he is the oldest British individual to have had his whole genome sequenced.

As well as the very dark skin, he also had blue eyes and dark curly hair, according to the DNA analysis conducted by researchers at University College London and the Natural History Museum in London - and, like all Europeans of the time, he was lactose intolerant.

Although Britain has been inhabited by a variety of human species for hundreds of thousands of years, the earliest evidence of modern humans is between 40,000 and 45,000 years old.

A previous attempt to reconstruct the face of the Cheddar Man. (Natural History Museum)

"Until recently it was always assumed that humans quickly adapted to have paler skin after entering Europe about 45,000 years ago," Natural History Museum researcher Tom Booth said.

"Pale skin is better at absorbing UV light and helps humans avoid vitamin D deficiency in climates with less sunlight."

Although the Cheddar Man has the genetic markers of skin pigmentation usually found in sub-Saharan Africa, the result is consistent with other Mesolithic human remains found throughout Europe.

"He is just one person, but also indicative of the population of Europe at the time," Booth said.

"They had dark skin and most of them had pale coloured eyes, either blue or green, and dark brown hair."

To obtain DNA from ancient remains, the best place to look are the densest bones available. These are more likely to have protected the DNA inside - leg bones or teeth are often good bets, but it turns out the best place is the inner ear.

The densest bone in the human body is the petrous part of the temporal bones at the sides of the skull, and it was this that the team drilled into to extract a sample. They made a tiny hole just 2 millimetres in diameter.

The team then subjected the extract to shotgun sequencing, which involves defining millions of tiny fragments of the genome and mapping them against the modern human genome.

This allowed the team to compare markers for physical traits, and determine what the Cheddar Man could have looked like.

Once that information had been confirmed, palaeontological reconstruction experts reconstructed his face.

Cheddar Man was about 166 centimetres (5'5") tall, and died in his 20s. There is damage to his skull that could indicate an accidental or violent death, although it could also have been damaged during excavation.

Unusually, he was buried alone - other burials from the time were usually communal - his body covered with sediment in the cave. But whether he was covered purposefully or the sediment built up over time is, again, unknown.

We know from other archaeological research that he was a hunter-gatherer, and during his life he would have eaten seeds, nuts, red deer, wild aurochs, and freshwater fish.

Around 10 percent of the British population shares DNA with the Mesolithic population to which the Cheddar Man belonged, but they aren't direct descendents.

Instead, experts believe that those Mesolithic Europeans were replaced by a new population of farmers that migrated into Britain at a later time.

A documentary describing the research, First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man, is due to air on UK's Channel 4 next week.</s>The first modern Briton had dark skin and blue eyes, London scientists said on Wednesday, following groundbreaking DNA analysis of the remains of a man who lived 10,000 years ago.

Known as "Cheddar Man" after the area in southwest England where his skeleton was discovered in a cave in 1903, the ancient man has been brought to life through the first ever full DNA analysis of his remains.

In a joint project between Britain's Natural History Museum and University College London, scientists drilled a 2mm hole into the skull and extracted bone powder for analysis.

Their findings transformed the way they had previously seen Cheddar Man, who had been portrayed as having brown eyes and light skin in an earlier model.

"It is very surprising that a Brit 10,000 years ago could have that combination of very blue eyes but really dark skin," said the museum's Chris Stringer, who for the past decade has analysed the bones of people found in the cave.

The findings suggest that lighter pigmentation being a feature of populations of northern Europe is more recent than previously thought.

Cheddar Man's tribe migrated to Britain at the end of the last Ice Age and his DNA has been linked to individuals discovered in modern-day Spain, Hungary and Luxembourg.

Selina Brace, a researcher of ancient DNA at the museum, said the cave environment Cheddar Man was found in helped preserve his remains.

"In the cave, you have a really nice, cool, dry, constant environment, and that basically prevents the DNA from breaking down," she said.

A bust of Cheddar Man, complete with shoulder-length dark hair and short facial hair, was created using 3D printing.

It took close to three months to build the model, with its makers using a high-tech scanner which had been designed for the International Space Station.

Alfons Kennis, who made the bust with his brother Adrie, said the DNA findings were "revolutionary".

"It's a story all about migrations throughout history," he told Channel 4 in a documentary to be aired on February 18.

"It maybe gets rid of the idea that you have to look a certain way to be from somewhere. We are all immigrants," he added.</s>For the first time, it's possible to take a look at the face of a man who lived more than 10,000 years ago.

The modern Briton - who had dark skin, blue eyes and black curly hair - has been reconstructed using groundbreaking DNA research.

Nicknamed Cheddar Man, the young man's skeleton was found in 1903 in Gough's Cave in Somerset.

But while initial reconstructions portrayed him with light skin and brown eyes, the full DNA analysis has shown him to have "dark to black skin".

Research by the Natural History Museum and University College London (UCL) suggests that the light skin tone associated with northern European ancestry actually developed later in evolution.

A "Western Hunter-Gatherer" hailing from Spain, Hungary and Luxembourg, one in ten British people today will share Cheddar Man's genes.

His ancestors had originally migrated to Europe from the Middle East.

His arrival marked the start of continuous population in Britain, with previous populations having been wiped out before him.

The oldest complete skeleton in Britain, the fact he was found in a cave - which was a cool, dry and consistent environment - helped preserve his remains.

Research suggests he had a good diet and died in his twenties.

DNA data used to rebuild his face was extracted by drilling a 2mm hole through the skull's inner ear bone.

"Paleo artists" - twins Alfons and Adrie Kennis - then spent three months building a 3D model using a high-tech scanner.

Calling the DNA findings "revolutionary", Alfons Kennis said: "People will be surprised...and maybe it gets rid of the idea that you have to look a certain way to be from somewhere. We are all immigrants."

A Channel 4 documentary following the reconstruction of Cheddar Man - The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000-Year-Old Man - airs on Sunday 18 February.
Without peer-review publication researchers at London's Natural History Museum state that the DNA extracted from "Cheddar Man" reveals that early inhabitants of Great Britain had blue eyes and dark skin. The name "Cheddar Man" was given to a fossil of a human man that lived thousands of years ago, which was discovered in 1903. Some scientists in the field state that the sample may have been contaminated with modern DNA weakening the results.