Witty put up a link to newspaper article about Cheddar Man’s DNA earlier. I still haven’t found a peer-reviewed paper on Cheddar Man being dark skinned and blue eyed, but the Natural History Museum claims the story as its own, so I’d imagine the science is reasonably robust.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html

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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.

New 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.

This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe.

From the same article:

Are you related to Cheddar Man?

Modern-day British people share approximately 10% of their genetic ancestry with the European population to which Cheddar Man belonged, but they aren’t direct descendants.

Current thinking is that the Mesolithic population that Cheddar Man belonged to was mostly replaced by the farmers that migrated into Britain later.

Michael V said:

Witty put up a link to newspaper article about Cheddar Man’s DNA earlier. I still haven’t found a peer-reviewed paper on Cheddar Man being dark skinned and blue eyed, but the Natural History Museum claims the story as its own, so I’d imagine the science is reasonably robust.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

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.

New 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.

This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe.

The more I look at this the weirder it gets. First published April 1st?

The first strange thing is that modern Britons are descended from North Africans not sub-saharan Africans. The second strange thing is that sub-saharan Africans don’t have blue eyes. Mollwollfumble thinks blue eyes tend to result from interbreeding between melanin-deficient pale skin blue eyes and darker skin brown eyes types.

The third, an open question not answered in the above, is which sub-saharan African because there are huge differences in racial types between for example the Hutu and Tutsi. For more on race in sub-saharan Africa see https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/tag/race/ and of course wikipedia.

According to some reports, Cheddar man had good teeth, that’d rule him out as being an ancestor of the British people…

poikilotherm said:

According to some reports, Cheddar man had good teeth, that’d rule him out as being an ancestor of the British people…

Daresay his diet was different.

The teeth in the skull of king Richard found in a car park were in remarkable condition.
I’d say most pre sugar age teeth were in good shape.
The aborigines had PSAT and then after the British invasion they were given sugar and alcohol that knocked them around pretty badly.