DNA Analysis of Britain's 10,000-Yr-Old Complete Skeleton Reveals First Modern Britons Had 'Dark to Black' Skin

In findings that knocked the wind out of long-held assumptions about early British inhabitants, DNA analysis of Britain's oldest complete skeleton proved the first modern Britons who lived about 10,000 years ago had "dark to black" skin, according to BBC. The ancient skeleton, known as Cheddar Man, was discovered in 1903 in Somerset's Gough's Cave and gave scientists a glimpse into Britain's prehistoric past.

Researchers from the Natural History Museum and University College London extracted DNA by drilling a tiny 2 mm hole in the ancient skull. "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," said Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum, who worked on the project, according to The Guardian.

The analysis painted this ancient Briton in vivid detail: a hunter-gatherer with blue eyes, dark curly hair, and a complexion that was "dark to black." This combination of features—though startling to the modern observer—was common in Western Europe during this period. Cheddar Man's ancestors had migrated out of Africa via the Middle East, eventually crossing Doggerland, the ancient land bridge connecting Britain to continental Europe, stated BBC.

Professor Chris Stringer, who studied the skeleton for four decades, was astonished with the reconstruction. "To come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like - and that striking combination of the hair, the face, the eye color, and that dark skin: something a few years ago we couldn't have imagined and yet that's what the scientific data show," he said, stated BBC.

These findings represented a surprise to many because genes that confer light skin only began to spread through European populations much later than scientists assumed. Pale skin, scientists now propose, evolved in farming populations of Europe about 6,000 years ago, possibly as an adaptation to help the skin synthesize vitamin D from the sun more efficiently.

Cheddar Man lived as a skilled hunter-gatherer, fashioning sharp flint blades for butchering animals and making harpoons out of antlers for spearfishing. He stood about 5'4" tall and died in his early twenties, although it is not specified how. Genetic research revealed he was lactose intolerant and, thus, unable to digest milk, much as other pre-farming populations around the world. The implications for British ancestry are profound: about 10% of white British ancestry can be traced back to this ancient population, according to BBC.

Modern assumptions linking skin color to national identity should, therefore, be questioned. It's "not an immutable truth," Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London, said about the association commonly drawn between Britishness and whiteness, as per The Guardian. "It has always changed and will change." The remarkable preservation of Cheddar Man's remains in the Gough's Cave has opened new avenues for scientific investigation. As Booth noted, "Because he's so well preserved, we'll be able to get more and more data from Cheddar Man all the time," as per The Washington Post.