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Cheddar Man

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Skull of the 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 the Mesolithic, approximately 7150 BC, and it appears that he died a violent death. A large crater-like lesion just above the skull's right orbit suggests that the man may have also been suffering from a bone infection at the time. It is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton.

Excavated in 1903, the remains are kept by the Natural History Museum in London, currently on display in the new Human Evolution gallery.[1] 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. A hole in his skull suggests violence, and Gough's Cave was used for cannibalism, trophy display or secondary burial by pre-historic humans.[2] 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.[3][4] Sykes obtained DNA from the 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man's tooth and from a 12,000-year-old tooth found from the same cave.[5]

Bryan Sykes's 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 20 living residents of the village to that extracted from Cheddar Man’s molar. He found two people who shared the same mtDNA as Cheddar Man, because around 10% of Europeans belong to Haplogroup U5.[6] They, like anyone else carrying haplogroup U5 today, share an ancestor with Cheddar Man of many thousands of years ago through his maternal line.[7][8]

However, the Cheddar Man results have never been subjected to peer review in an academic journal. It has been suggested that the sequence was from contaminating modern DNA.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/galleries-and-museum-map/human-evolution.html
  2. ^ Bello, SM; Parfitt, SA; Stringer, CB (2011). "Earliest directly-dated human skull-cups". PLOS ONE. 6 (2): e17026. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017026. PMC 3040189. PMID 21359211.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  3. ^ Bramanti, B; Thomas, MG; Haak, W (October 2009). "Genetic discontinuity between local hunter-gatherers and central Europe's first farmers". Science. 326 (5949): 137–40. doi:10.1126/science.1176869. PMID 19729620.
  4. ^ Malmström, H; Gilbert, MT; Thomas, MG (November 2009). "Ancient DNA reveals lack of continuity between neolithic hunter-gatherers and contemporary Scandinavians". Current Biology. 19 (20): 1758–62. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.017. PMID 19781941.
  5. ^ Sykes, Brian, Blood of the Isles (Bantam, 2006) pages 5-12
  6. ^ Nuthall, Keith (9 March 1997). "There's no place like home, says 'son of Cheddar Man'". 1997. London: The Independent. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
  7. ^ SARAH LYALL, "Tracing Your Family Tree to Cheddar Man's Mum", New York Times, 24 Mar 1997, accessed 23 Mar 2010
  8. ^ Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, (Corgi 2002), chap. 12. ISBN 0-552-14876-8
  9. ^ Bandelt H-J, Yao, Y-G, Richards MB, Salas A. The brave new era of human genetic testing BioEssays 2016: 30: 1246–1251.
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