A reconstruction of Cheddar ManTOM BARNES/CHANNEL 4Cheddar Man, the oldest complete human skeleton yet found in Britain, has yielded new secrets, Britain’s Channel 4 announced today (February 7). In a documentary to be released later this month, filmmakers detail a project by scientists at London’s Natural History Museum and University College London to extract and analyze DNA from the skeleton, which was found in a southwest England cave in 1903. The researchers say Cheddar Man, a member of a group thought to be ancestors of today’s white Britons, had blue eyes, dark skin, and curly black hair.
“It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at all,” Natural History Museum archaeologist Tom Booth tells The Guardian.
“For me, it’s not just the skin colour that’s interesting, it’s that combination of features that make him look not like anyone that you’d see today,” the museum’s Ian Barnes tells New Scientist. “Not just dark skin and blue eyes, because you can get that combination, but also the face shape. So all of this combines together and make him just not the same as people you see around today.”
Humans are thought to have lived in what is now Britain as early as 40,000 ...
