Cheddar man and Mesolithic Europeans

Cheddar man was typical of Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers. His physical features and way of life resembled others who lived in Western and Central Europe from 14,000 to 6000 years ago. Geneticists call his race the Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG). The Mesolithic is characterised as the warm period following the ice-age. In this video I visit Cheddar gorge and the very cave in which Cheddar man was found. I look at some late stone age hunting tools such as microliths and I even describe what the Mesolithic religion was like based on the scarce evidence we have, from the caves of El Cogul to the Shigir idol of Russia. The main WHG samples I look at are Loschbour man, Cheddar man, La Brana man and Villabrunna man.

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Music in order:|
Theme = Wolcensmen - Sunne
Bark sound productions - Eld
Quincas Moreira - Dawn of Man
Stark Von Oben - Winter Soulstice
Ormgård - Sjálfsforn
Geographer - Jay sweeps

Loschbour man 3D animation by CNRA (Centre National de Recherche Archéologique in Luxembourg and Nic Herber (AnubisPictures) Luxembourg.

Sources:

The genetic history of Ice Age Europe

Survival of Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula

Population dynamics and socio-spatial organization of the Aurignacian: Scalable quantitative demographic data for western and central Europe

Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans

Carvings on Mesolithic idol were made with beaver jaw tool
Mesolithic Art
Star Carr pendant

Mesolithic And Neolithic, Of Cheddar And Bread

Ancient DNA reveals how wheat came to prehistoric Britain

[adamrawn]

The fact that Cheddar Mans corpse was rotting away and lying as bones in his cave for the rest of the Mesolithic seems to go against cave dwelling. Surely there were not tonnes of decent caves to choose from, and I find it hard to believe that the rest of the clan would just carry on while Uncle Grog rotted in the corner.

[digrychdiwrawen]

Studying ancient Europe is very important and extremely underestimated, so your channel is incredibly valuable. Good luck to you. Moyo pochtenie.

[IIVVBlues]

I've always thought it a rather peculiar assumption that most "cavemen" lived in caves. There do not appear to be enough caves to accommodate estimated populations. As you point out, just because the remains we have found are in caves, protected from erosion, does not necessarily mean that they lived there. I think it more likely that very few lived in the caves and that those sites were more of gathering places and places for rituals.

Genetics has added a wholly new perspective on understanding the ancients. I am amazed at how we can extract DNA from such ancient samples. A very interesting video.

[matthewb]

Seeing you almost stumble over yourself and your words out of PURE excitement and joy of genetic history is just so beautiful and humbling, man. Great work

[usedxx]

Interesting that that mesolithic cave painting already depicted men with short hair and women with distinct clothing.

[jewelcitizen]

Fascinating presentation that’s clearly taken no shortage of time, effort and of course, talent.
Very impressive...

[erikseavey]

A tree without it's roots will wither away.

[jasondaniel]

I am 70-years old. During my time in school and college, we did not have access to the depth of historical knowledge available today. I enjoyed this presentation. Somehow, I just am not grasping the concept of haplogroups. I know I am missing some important historical connections, so I am working at a better understanding of haplogrouping.

[Thulesmann]

Best part of video is at 16:55: "Sorry, they weren't Kangz" - HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Thank you for that, Thomas! THANK YOU!!!

[Treeman]

Very good nice to see interest in our ancestors

[RikoJAmado]

It seems to have taken several million years for Cheddar Man to mature, but he seems to have aged well.

[Thulesmann]

The scientists later admitted that they can't really determine the skin color of Cheddar Man. From the New Scientist journal of 21 February 2018:

A Briton who lived 10, 000 years ago had dark brown skin and blue eyes. At least, that’s what dozens of news stories published this month – including our own – stated as fact. But one of the geneticists who performed the research says the conclusion is less certain, and according to others we are not even close to knowing the skin colour of any ancient human.

The skeleton of Cheddar Man was discovered in 1903 in a cave in south-east England where it had lain for 10, 000 years.

Until a few weeks ago, he had always been depicted with pale skin. This makes some sense, given that people living at northern latitudes often have paler skins. The explanation may be that it allows more of the weak northerly sunlight into their skin, so they can make enough vitamin D. And it seems our species reached Europe 30, 000 years before Cheddar Man lived, so his ancestors would have had plenty of time to evolve paler skins.

But the new DNA analysis suggests that Cheddar Man may have had dark skin. Most news stories said his skin was “dark to black”.

Giveaway genes

To show this, researchers including Susan Walsh at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis read Cheddar Man’s DNA. Walsh had helped develop a model that attempts to predict someone’s eye, hair and skin pigmentation solely from their DNA, and the team applied this model to Cheddar Man.

The most recent version of the model was published in May 2017. It focuses on 36 spots in 16 genes, all linked to skin colour.

To test it, Walsh and her colleagues took genetic data from over 1400 people, mainly from Europe and the US but also some from Africa and Papua New Guinea. The team used part of the data to “train” their model on how skin colour and the 36 DNA markers are linked. They then used the rest of the data to test how well the model could predict skin colour from DNA alone. The model correctly identified who had “light” skin or “dark-black” skin, with a small margin of error.

When Walsh and her colleagues applied the model to Cheddar Man, they concluded his skin colour fell between “dark” and “dark to black”.

Not so sure

The research was first announced by press release, to coincide with the release of a TV documentary. It has now been posted to a preprint server.

Walsh stresses that the study doesn’t conclusively demonstrate Cheddar Man had dark to black skin. We cannot place such confidence in the DNA analysis, she says. For one thing, Cheddar Man’s DNA has degraded over the last 10, 000 years.

“It’s not a simple statement of ‘this person was dark-skinned’, ” says Walsh. “It is his most probable profile, based on current research.”

In fact, we are not ready to predict the skin colour of prehistoric people just from their genes, says Brenna Henn at Stony Brook University, New York. That’s because the genetics of skin pigmentation turn out to be more complex than thought.

Too many genes

In November 2017, Henn and her colleagues published a paper exploring the genetics of skin pigmentation in populations indigenous to southern Africa – where skin colour varies more than many people appreciate. Just weeks before, a group led by Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia had published a paper on the genetics of skin pigmentation in people from eastern and southern Africa.

“The conclusions were really the same, ” says Henn. “Known skin pigmentation genes, discovered primarily in East Asian and European populations, don’t explain the variation in skin pigmentation in African populations. The idea that there are really only about 15 genes underlying skin pigmentation isn’t correct.”

It now seems likely that many other genes affect skin colour. We don’t know how.

If we are still learning about the link between genes and skin pigmentation in living populations, we can’t yet predict the skin colour of prehistoric people, says Henn.

This debate may seem of little practical importance – although the idea that Cheddar Man was dark-skinned generated enormous public interest. However, we need to know the limitations of this sort of genetic technology.

Police could one day plug DNA from a crime scene into one of these models to determine what a suspect looks like. Walsh’s model might succeed at this in the US, says Henn, because it was trained on DNA from people with similar ancestry to North Americans. But it may well fail elsewhere.

Henn’s team has tested an older model that aimed to predict skin colour from DNA. When they put it to work among southern African populations, “it literally predicted that people with the darkest skins would have the lightest skin”

[nahorsman]

I love your videos. I am both U5a1 and I2a1, so have always been fascinated by the WHG. Great video.

[ThomasMegabezemboy]

12:34
Is this actual footage from the mesolithic?

[geoffreystuttle]

"Hi kids, it's me, CheddarMan! I'm here to tell you that cheese is a wholesome snack that is high in calcium for your growing bones and protein to make you big and strong."
kids: "Yay.... Thanks, CheddarMan!"

[dharmawarrior]

Bugger. I thought we were all Africans. There goes my slavery compensation application idea.

[barryoconnor]

"They weren't kangz, sorry" 😂

[MrJeffcoley]

16:50 “They weren’t black people. They weren’t kangz .”

LOL

[TheoEvian]

White and Black are words of our age, a lot of things happened in between and the ideas about race have changed many times as different groups interacted with other groups. We shouldn't get stuck into the idea that somebody with darker skin (and how dark that is of course really hard to judge) is in some way "African" or "Black", those ideas didn't exist back then and the divisions that we use are actually fairly recent (not last thursday tho, but they have changed over the centuries). Of course calling Cheddar man "Black" is a political choice the same way as calling Germans "the Aryan race", both are anachronisms and both should be brought into context.

But on the other hand, you guys shouldn't get stuck up on the idea that your connection to these ancient peoples is that strong, a lot of funky shit happened in the history and it is many thousand years after all, don't fetishise the haplogroups as some people might be fetishising the phenotypes.

[kevinelruler]

Some of your audience may not like this, but I would love to see videos like this about other parts of the world. Say, the Americas or the Indian subcontinent. Never hurts to branch out a bit.
Cheers!