"Cheddar Man" is pretty famous because the nearly-full skeleton discovered in Cheddar Caves over 100 years ago is the oldest example of Homo Sapiens ever found in Britain. How old is he? Well just around 10,000 years. As part of the Cheddar Caves attraction there is a bloke who dress up in old skins and a wild wig (in my mind a cross between Fred Flintstone and a Monty Python character). Entertaining and importantly a fun reminder of the deep pre-history of this place.
But now we have more information due to very recent DNA testing, and to be revealed in a new documentary on Channel 4 on 18th February ("First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man"). Before I look at the big news story today as part of the fanfare for the documentary, it needs to be pointed out that DNA testing of the skeleton has already thrown up a fascinating fact. DNA from Cheddar Man was compared with local testing of residents. And amazingly there were two exact matches with two children in the village, and an almost exact match (just a single mutation away) with the history teacher in the local school. Indeed our children's history teacher. It cannot get much better than that for your teacher to be a direct descendent!
But the earlier idea of what Cheddar Man might have looked like is harder. Of course wearing animal skins, but what of skins, hair and eyes? Research for the new documentary was funded by the Natural History Museum in London, and from that they realise that far from the fair-skinned, brown-eyed, fair-haired examples of reconstruction to date, in fact the new and more precise reconstruction shows Cheddar man to have blue eyes, set in a very dark-skinned face and with dark curly hair. All very surprising but somehow wonderful.
I'd love to include a picture here but at the moment the images are very much copyrighted and as and when I can get a photo from the exhibit in the NHM I'll add it to this post. meanwhile you can see it, and learn a bit more on this good Guardian Online article.
But now we have more information due to very recent DNA testing, and to be revealed in a new documentary on Channel 4 on 18th February ("First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man"). Before I look at the big news story today as part of the fanfare for the documentary, it needs to be pointed out that DNA testing of the skeleton has already thrown up a fascinating fact. DNA from Cheddar Man was compared with local testing of residents. And amazingly there were two exact matches with two children in the village, and an almost exact match (just a single mutation away) with the history teacher in the local school. Indeed our children's history teacher. It cannot get much better than that for your teacher to be a direct descendent!
But the earlier idea of what Cheddar Man might have looked like is harder. Of course wearing animal skins, but what of skins, hair and eyes? Research for the new documentary was funded by the Natural History Museum in London, and from that they realise that far from the fair-skinned, brown-eyed, fair-haired examples of reconstruction to date, in fact the new and more precise reconstruction shows Cheddar man to have blue eyes, set in a very dark-skinned face and with dark curly hair. All very surprising but somehow wonderful.
I'd love to include a picture here but at the moment the images are very much copyrighted and as and when I can get a photo from the exhibit in the NHM I'll add it to this post. meanwhile you can see it, and learn a bit more on this good Guardian Online article.
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