First modern Britons had ‘dark to black’ skin, scientists find

Wed, Feb 7, 2018 | By publisher


Foreign

DNA analysis suggests that the first modern Britons, who lived some 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin and blue eyes, scientists said on Wednesday.

The scientists from London’s Natural History Museum and University College London (UCL) analysed DNA from an almost complete Homo sapiens skeleton, known as Cheddar Man after it was found in a cave in Cheddar Gorge in south-western England in 1903.

“Cheddar Man was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer – fully modern human – with dark skin and blue eyes,” the scientists said, adding that he was about 166 centimetres tall and had probably died in his 20s.

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

“Pale skin is better at absorbing UV light and helps humans avoid vitamin D deficiency in climates with less sunlight,” he said.

The team found Cheddar Man had “genetic markers of skin pigmentation usually associated with sub-Saharan Africa,” adding that this was “consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe.”

“Cheddar Man subverts people’s expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go together,” Booth said.

“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.

“He reminds us that you can’t make assumptions about what people looked like in the past based on what people look like in the present.”

The scientists said their work on Cheddar Man was one of their most challenging human DNA projects, adding that “no British individual this old has ever had their genome sequenced.”

UCL geneticist Mark Thomas said Cheddar Man’s genetic profile “places him with several other Mesolithic-era Europeans from Spain, Hungary and Luxembourg who’s DNA has already been analysed.”

“These ‘Western hunter-gatherers’ migrated into Europe at the end of the last ice age, and the group included Cheddar Man’s ancestors,” Thomas said.

A model of Cheddar Man’s head was made for a Channel 4 documentary, “First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000-year-old-man,” to be broadcast on Feb. 18.

The Dutch model makers, Adrie and Alfons Kennis, used a hi-tech scanner to acquire the measurements for Cheddar Man’s full skull, adding flesh and facial features “based on the results of the scientific research.”

“I first studied Cheddar Man more than 40 years ago, but could never have believed that we would one day have his whole genome – the oldest British one to date,” said Chris Stringer, lead researcher in human origins at the Natural History Museum.

“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,” Stringer said. (dpa/NAN)

– Feb. 7, 2018 @ 19:30 GMT |

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