Cheddar Man

Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to approximately 7150 BC, and it appears that he died a violent death. It is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton.

Excavated in 1903, the remains are kept by the Natural History Museum in London, but are not currently on display. A replica of the skeleton is exhibited in the "Cheddar Man and the Cannibals" museum in Cheddar village.

The death of Cheddar Man remains a mystery. There is no scientific evidence to suggest how he died, although a hole in his skull suggests violence. Speculation based on scientifically investigated known ritual or warfare practices which existed during this early period is inconclusive.

Mitochondrial DNA testing

In 1996, Bryan Sykes of Oxford University first sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man, with DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man's molars. Cheddar Man was determined to have belonged to Haplogroup U5, a branch of mitochondrial haplogroup U, which has also been found in other Mesolithic human remains.^[1] Sykes got DNA from the 9,000 year old Cheddar Man's tooth, and from a 12,000 year old Cheddar tooth from the same cave.^[2]

Bryan Sykes' research into Cheddar Man was filmed as he performed it in 1997. As a means of connecting Cheddar Man to the living residents of Cheddar village, he compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) taken from twenty living residents of the village to that extracted from Cheddar Man’s molar. It produced two exact matches and one match with a single mutation. The two exact matches were schoolchildren, and their names were not released. The close match was a history teacher named Adrian Targett. They, like anyone else carrying haplogroup U5 today, share a common ancestor many thousands of years ago with Cheddar Man through his maternal line.^{[3] [4]}

Sykes argued that this modern connection to Cheddar Man (who died at least three thousand years before agriculture began in Britain) makes credible the theory that modern-day Britons are not all descended from Middle Eastern migratory farmers who entered Britain about 10,000 years ago. Instead, modern Britons (and Europeans generally) are descended from ancient European Palaeolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherer tribes, who adopted farming much later.^{[5] [6]}

References

1. ^ B. Bramanti et al, Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe’s First Farmers, Science, vol. 326. no. 5949 (October 2009), pp. 137-140; H. Malmstrom et al, Ancient DNA Reveals Lack of Continuity between Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers and Contemporary Scandinavians, Current Biology, vol. 19 (Nov 2009), pp. 1–5.
2. ^ Sykes, Brian, Blood of the Isles (Bantam, 2006) pages 5-12
3. ^ SARAH LYALL, "Tracing Your Family Tree to Cheddar Man's Mum", New York Times, 24 Mar 1997, accessed 23 Mar 2010
4. ^ Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, (Corgi 2002), chap. 12.
5. ^ Sykes, Brian, The Seven Daughters of Eve, (Corgi 2002), chap. 12.
6. ^ Sykes, Brian Blood of the Isles (Bantam, 2006) pages 10-11