Cheddar Man

The near-complete skeleton, an adult male who probably died in his early twenties, was discovered in 1903 by labourers digging a drainage ditch. No grave goods have been reliably associated with the skeleton. It is likely that Cheddar Man was moved to the cave after death as part of what may have been a Mesolithic funerary practice, although it is also possible that he simply died in situ. Cheddar Man has been directly radiocarbon dated on two separate occasions, giving calibrated dates of 8540–7990 BC and 8470–8230 BC. ==Morphology==

Cheddar Man was relatively short compared to modern Europeans, with an estimated stature of around , and weighing around . Proportionally, he is in most respects similar to modern Europeans, and may be described as 'cold-adapted', but with a high crural index (thigh-length–to–leg-length ratio) which is much higher than the modern European average and higher even than the modern sub-Saharan African average, and a high tibia-length–to–trunk-height ratio similar to modern North Africans. == Genetics ==

Cheddar Man belonged to the Mesolithic Western European hunter-gatherer (WHG) population. Around 4000 BC, they were replaced by Neolithic farmers who emigrated from the Continent. The Neolithic people had an average of 10% ancestry from Western hunger-gatherers, but almost all of this ancestry came from Continental populations, rather than Britain's original Mesolithic inhabitants. Nuclear DNA was extracted from the petrous part of the temporal bone by a team from the Natural History Museum in 2018. Around 85% of his ancestry can be modelled as coming from the c. 14,000–7,000-year-old Villabruna genetic cluster, a major component of Western Hunter Gatherers, with the remaining c. 15% deriving from the Goyet Q2 cave cluster associated with the Late Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian culture. He is not closely related to the earlier Magdalenian individuals found in the same cave, whose ancestry is entirely from the Goyet cluster. Phenotype Analysis of genetic markers, although limited by low sequencing coverage, suggests (based on their associations in modern populations whose phenotypes are known) that he most likely had intermediate (blue-green) eye colour, dark brown or black hair, and dark or dark-to-black skin, with no derived allele for lactase persistence. These features are typical of the Western European population of the time. Uniparental haplogroups Cheddar Man's Y-DNA belonged to an ancient sister branch of Haplogroup I2-L38 (). ==Controversy and common misconceptions==

Soon after the discovery of the skeleton, Cheddar Man became part of a discourse of British nationalism and cultural heritage, with an initially proposed age of 40,000–80,000 years. The specimen was heralded by some as the 'first Englishman'. a history teacher from a local school, both of whom belonged to mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U5, although this cannot demonstrate a direct connection between Cheddar Man and this individual, and many people with the same mtDNA haplogroup could probably be found even within the local area. The programme generated coverage in national and international media, which focused mainly on the supposed relationship between Cheddar Man and the local history teacher, and failed to emphasise that mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through the mother, and makes up only a small proportion of an individual's genome. In 2018, the publication of the genetics study by Brace et al. and subsequent facial reconstruction of a dark-skinned and blue-eyed Cheddar Man resulted in widespread media coverage. == See also ==