DNA results in for first modern Britons

In a fascinating development the full DNA results are in for the 10,000 year old body that was found in Gough's Cave in the Cheddar Gorge in England - and the results were not what anyone was expecting... Link to the story here.
A bit of context here - the first settlers actually came to Britain about 20,000 years ago, but were forced away or died off due to the advance of the glaciers in the last Ice Age. The next wave of settlers came around 10,000 years ago via the various land bridges that connected Britain to Europe due to low sea levels, such as Doggerland.
According to the DNA results the body in the cave had blue eyes, brown hair and dark to black skin, which has surprised some researchers. The full results should be quite fascinating when published.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

Thanks for posting. My non-scientific opinion thinks that makes sense. I have read else where skin pigment phenotype's are a rather late breaking development.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

It is absolutely no surprise to me.

If people arrived here from elsewhere, it stands to reason that they were not then, as we are now.

Fascinating. Perhaps not surprising as we know the early humans in Europe had dark skin.

Interesting how relatively quickly living in the northern climates evolved out dark skin and replaced it with light skin eh.


(At a side note, I'm glad the other very racist thread on this topic got closed.)

a reply to: Painterz

It IS interesting how rapidly that adaptation to the local environment, began to tell in the physical appearance of the people living here!

Going from such a deep tone, to the one which is found in what we refer to as native Britons in this era (although that description is savagely misleading, as any genetic and ancestry study you could perform on someone from the British Isles will show), is a big tonal shift of course, likely having to do with trying to deal with the generally cloudier conditions here, than may have been the norm where our ancestors hailed from. Light skin absorbs more vitamin D from sunlight, than does darker skin, and being plunged into the colder and cloudier climate of Britain was likely a systemic shock for the first arrivals, putting at risk their bone density (because of the importance of Vit D uptake with regard to processing and utilising calcium in the bones), and general health. The lighter skin coming along will have helped with that a great deal, and it may have been so pressing that the genetic shift was accelerated purely by way of how serious the chemical need was in the bodies of those ancestors who first came here!

Absolutely fascinating stuff.

I do think the combination of blue eyes and dark skin would be quite striking.

God only knows what the rest of the proto Europeans thought of our ancestors.

I don't think this discovery needs to be weaponised as some sort of multicultural thing though, which is one of the angles that article is pushing.

originally posted by: Painterz
Fascinating. Perhaps not surprising as we know the early humans in Europe had dark skin.

Interesting how relatively quickly living in the northern climates evolved out dark skin and replaced it with light skin eh.


(At a side note, I'm glad the other very racist thread on this topic got closed.)

I am reading this.

It was not because it was racist.

You are not looking properly. Look here:

www.smithsonianmag.com...

The First People to Settle Across North America’s Arctic Regions Were Isolated for 4,000 Years New research shows that the first humans in the Arctic lived there for nearly 4,000 years

Previous research has indicated that there were three waves of migration from Asia to the New World; this new study adds a fourth. The first humans are thought to have crossed over the Bering Strait more than 15,000 years ago; this new wave of Paleo-Eskimos, which brought the first people to spread across the northern reaches of Alaska, Canada and Greenland, would have come after the first two waves, but before the Neo-Eskimo or Thule made the journey between continents.

What sunlight do they have in the arctic then?. They were ISOLATED there. Are they black?

I have been as dark as "cheesy" man before. My hair is course like his, but I am not black. Black people generally have very brown eyes. It is rare to have blue.

It is very unfair of you to smear me like this. It is a low down punch. It is something I would not do.

So, guys, what you got to say to the fact that before the Brit guy there were people in the arctic where there is little sunlight a lot of the year. Were they black? Does it follow that pigment relates to Sun? They were up in the arctic 5000 years may be before Cheddar Man.

Yes, it does, obviously. If you put a so called "white" guy in Africa for many thousands of years there will be changes because evolution and adaptation respond to environment. The ones who are best suited to the environment will keep on flourishing and natural selection will insure the survival of the strongest able to deal with the climate.

In Britain the pigment is already lightening through the generations because of less sunlight. Cheddar guy is closer the original homo sapiens than us. He does not look Nigerian to me, though.

My post was no racist. It was criticizing liberal weaponizing of archaeology. It was not to do with the discovery. It was a critique of the MSM using archaeology as a social enginering tool and propaganda boosting a certain narrative.

That scruffy looking model may well be a big lie illusion, an exaggeration.

I am glad the thread got closed because it was getting ugly. It was meant as a critique. Stop being so nasty, smearing me like that. What you got to say to that?

Lol, you are being had by "cheesy" model man. Up to you. I am not being had by this. I know better than this.

We have ben around for a million years or more. Do you think there was no such thing as blonde hair before Cheddar Guy? I bet there was.

This is nursery anrchaeology and it should be better presented than it has been.

a reply to: SprocketUK

What do you mean by an angle, exactly?

This evidence clearly shows that some of the first people to ever come here to live, were not "White" (which is a non existent skin tone, by the way), but darkly complected, that our ancestors are not as some thought they were, but instead are precisely the opposite, which SHOULD offer some people an opportunity to reassess their thinking on some subjects.

Put another way, if evidence of this nature is not of a sort which makes a person think twice about their fallacious misconceptions about race, skin colour and the like, then that shows that those holding these fallacious opinions, are doing so out of spite and ignorance, rather than actually having a valid point to make.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I think its just something that ought not make a bit of difference.
I know there is dissent on ATS with regards to the whole "Out Of Africa" hypothesis, but it's a pretty reasonable one as far as I am concerned.


I just think that using this (Like people tried to do with the existence of North African, Roman Auxiliary forces a couple of years ago) in some sort of attempt to say "We are all the same and should have open borders" is every bit as daft as trying to pretend that Aryans are a "Master Race" Its irrelevant in a cultural context as the vast majority of our genetic heritage is an utter mish mash of all sorts.


I guess I just find it tiresome that something as interesting as this has to have all this baggage attached to it.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

“It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions,” said Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project.

Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London and another member of the project’s team, agreed with Booth and called into question the link between Britishness and whiteness. >that people who feel British should have white skin, through time is not at all something that is an immutable truth,”

“The historical perspective that you get just tells you that things change, things are in flux, and what may seem as a cemented truth that people who feel British should have white skin, through time is not at all something that is an immutable truth.

>“It has always changed and will change.

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.

We probably also share 10 per cent of our genetic makeup with Clown Fish, in the case of those responsible for this disinformation and those endorsing it probably more.

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg
The first settlers actually came to Britain about 20,000 years ago, but were forced away or died off due to the advance of the glaciers in the last Ice Age. The next wave of settlers came around 10,000 years ago

FYI

Some of the earliest recorded inhabitants of the UK were found in Plymouth, Devon, Dated at approx 140,000 ya

CAThp

originally posted by: Sigrun
a reply to: AngryCymraeg

“It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions,” said Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project.

Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London and another member of the project’s team, agreed with Booth and called into question the link between Britishness and whiteness. >that people who feel British should have white skin, through time is not at all something that is an immutable truth,”

“The historical perspective that you get just tells you that things change, things are in flux, and what may seem as a cemented truth that people who feel British should have white skin, through time is not at all something that is an immutable truth.

>“It has always changed and will change.

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.

We probably also share 10 per cent of our genetic makeup with Clown Fish, in the case of those responsible for this disinformation and those endorsing it probably more.

I'm sorry - 'disinformation'?? So you're saying that the DNA evidence is wrong are you?

a reply to: TrueBrit

He was not the first person.

From the good old Guardian's own lips:

www.theguardian.com...

First humans arrived in Britain 250,000 years earlier than thought Archaeologists digging on a Norfolk beach found stone tools that show the first humans were living in Britain much earlier than previously thought Ian Sample, science correspondent @iansample Wed 7 Jul 2010 18.04 BST First published on Wed 7 Jul 2010 18.04 BST This article is 7 years old Shares 495 Comments 131

Did their skin stay dark in Northern climate britain for like over 900,000 years? Or may be did setllers, races, people come and go even thousands of times throughout the 900, 000 years approx before modern original you been had African ancestor gets the scruffy play dough let's make a model kids treatment?

The stone tools were unearthed from sediments that are thought to have been laid down either 840,000 or 950,000 years ago, making them the oldest human artefacts ever found in Britain.

I know you find me difficult and avoid me and that's a shame, but I wil pick you up on your errors still in the hope that people will not be so easily had. You do not know your subject properly.

People settled Britain a VERY LONG TIME indeed before "cheesy" you been had man. He is a one off from just a very short time ago. He is of a certain settler type at a certain time. People come and go. They always have. I told you even in medieval times raiders came to Cornwall from Northern Africa and took women away. It is not clear cut like you think. Nothing about thi earth is so "black and white". Surely you see how nature does its thing.

We do not know for certain if the first homo sapiens were black. It may be that they got darker as they moved into the heat and lighter as they moved away from it. We have had over a million years to get darker and lighter. A Moroccon is nowhere near as dark as a Gambian.

It is never that simple. They were wrong to do a front page spread so contentiously like this. If they present it in such an awful unscientific way then it is obvious it will be moshed by the audience accordingly.

Well, the DNA analysis only "Strongly Suggests", but done not Confirm as 100% correct.

Certainly there are not too many modern native Africans with natural Blue eyes......so that may cut them out of the question.

As Africans are another great Ape of that continent, other apes are also found with light colour and fair skin......Chimpanzee and Bonobos can have fair or dark skin, Baboons are fair light skinned, Some primates have bright red or Pink skin, Orangatangs are orangey and fairish........Other than orangs of Asia, Primates and Apes live in the same environment as do African humans......so skin colour must have some other determinate, as other than Albinos, Africans are Black, or very dark brown.

We know Neanderthals were not black skinned, were "probably" fair skinned, had red hair, fair hair and blue/green eyes.....and Neanderthals predate this skeleton by 300,000+ years.

Perhaps this fellow was a traveller or trader from the south?....its not impossible.

Wasn't there some human footprints on some sedimentary rock near a beach last year in Britain, that scientists claim were up to 900,000 years old? As in Possibly HomoErectus, but not sure...??

I can tell you all, with personal experience, that the indigenous Native Australian peoples skin colour varies from dark black, to chocolate brown, and as children, can have hair colour from blonde, Sandy, reddish tinge to dark brown, and all with dark eyes.
And Australian natives have been here anywhere up to 100,000 years or so, and have NOT turned, white as suggested native Britons "may have" in this article.....
And there are areas of snow and very cold here, And there was an Ice Age in Australia over the past 100,000 years....yet the peoples still did not turn white, or have blue eyes....so there goes that idea. (though they may have had a lightened skin tone in these areas compared to their desert cousins)

And as we know, Australian Natives are Not Africans, they are a totally different peoples.

Much more to the story of Man, than this recent article could hope to uncover.....which is just another tiny speculative theory proposed.

a reply to: SprocketUK

I see what you are saying.

The scientific discovery is interesting enough alone, without all the trunk space added to it by modern interpretations of the issues it touches.

You know me well enough by now SproketUK, to know that in an ideal world, I would be all over this sort of thing, purely from a fascination perspective, as I am, as you know, a man of science and discovery myself.

But I am also a realist, and I am not living in an age where it is yet unnecessary to accept the trunk space that comes on this particular carriage.

a reply to: Revolution9

(Pinches bridge of nose and sighs deeply)
You're missing the point. Previous inhabitants of Britain were forced South and away from the land because of ice sheets and the overall Ice Age that made this land periodically uninhabitable. Yes, there were previous settlers. But they did not stay. The man discovered in Gough's Cave was from the people who arrived and thrived because we entered an Interglacial period. They stayed, adapted and some of us share their genes.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I understand completely. I just feel the yawn factor rising when people mix politics with science and archaeology in the way the Guardian was so very careful to.

Nothing surprising to me we have always been a Mongrel nation a mix of all sorts we are.

a reply to: Revolution9

I do not find you difficult Revolution9.

I find you to be in significant error more than half the time, and that is frustrating, but I do not find you, as a person difficult. You can only be as complex as anyone else is, and I have an awful lot of experience with the complexities of others, so its no bother to me.

You correctly state that there were settlers before the period in which this individual was found. However, none of those settlers stayed. They left, either driven off or killed off by changes in climate and therefore availability of food, coupled with very serious weather events for which they were unprepared.

This individual is not part of that failed inhabitation, but a person from the period in which the longest continuous inhabitation of the British Isles, was in its infancy. It is from people such as this, that we must learn all that we can, in order to better understand our origins, because plainly, our origins do not lay with those who left here, but those who stayed. It is safe to say, that this individual did not make it out, so has more to tell us about our history than those who ran from the ice ages and the like.

a reply to: Revolution9

Well said. Very well said.