“Cheddar Man,” Britain’s oldest, nearly complete human skeleton, had dark skin, blue eyes and dark curly hair when he lived in what is now southwest England 10,000 years ago, scientists who read his DNA have discovered. Cheddar Man’s skin colour was described as “dark to black” by the scientific team which also included researchers from London’s Natural History Museum, where the skeleton is on display in the Human Evolution gallery. Three hundred generations later, around 10% of indigenous British ancestry can be linked to Cheddar Man’s people, scientists say. The model, which UCL and the Natural History Museum said rendered Cheddar Man’s face with unprecedented accuracy, shows a man with dark skin, high cheekbones, blue eyes and coarse black hair. Selina Brace, one of the Natural History Museum’s ancient DNA experts who took part in sequencing Cheddar Man’s genome, was quoted as saying the model was “really, really cool.”

Source: Dhaka Tribune February 07, 2018 13:18 UTC