The earliest Britons were black-skinned, with dark curly hair and possibly blue eyes, new analysis of a 10,000-year-old Somerset skeleton has revealed.
Scientists at the Natural History Museum have used pioneering genetic sequencing and facial reconstruction techniques to prove that the first hunter-gatherers successfully to inhabit Britain were far darker in complexion than previously thought.
The groundbreaking discovery was made in a “stroke of luck” after archeologists found scraps of DNA in the ear of the Mesolithic “Cheddar Man”, the oldest complete skeleton ever found in the UK and one of the museum’s most treasured specimens.
They then cross-referenced the genomes of modern inhabitants of Cheddar, near Gough’s Cave in the Cheddar Gorge where the remains were discovered in 1903, as well as other fossils from across Europe.
The results show, contrary to popular belief, that the founding generations of Britons owed more in appearance to Paleolithic Africans, from whom all humans descend.
Scientists said they show that commonly understood racial categories are historically only “recent constructions”.
Up to nine previous colonisations of Britain, via the now flooded European landbridge known as Doggerland, had been wiped out due to harsh temperatures.
But the roughly 12,000 humans in Britain at the time of Cheddar Ma thrived and their DNA now comprises roughly 10 per cent of the genetic make-up of most white people currently living in the UK.
They lived mainly in tents made from animal skins and preyed on animals like deer andboar using hunting dogs and bows and arrows.
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