Back to the Mesolithic Age calendar
Cheddar Man is not some lunch time cheese snack made in the shape of a human being but he does give us a tasty look at how the first people who
came back to England might have looked.
In south west England there is a place called Cheddar and, yes, that is how the cheese got its name. However the Ice Age also had an effect in that
area as, when the ice and glaciers retreated, it had carved out a massive valley or gorge, now cleverly known as Cheddar Gorge, and several caves in the rocks.
In 1903, while digging out a new drainage system for one such cave, people found a skeleton. It turned out that the skeleton belonged to a man who lived about
10,000 years ago, was 1.66 metres tall and died in his twenties. I find it amazing the experts can find all this out from a load of bones.
They also discovered he was lactose intolerant, which means he couldn't drink milk. His diet would have been seeds and nuts (gathered) and the
meat of deer, aurochs which were the larger ancestors of the cows we have today, and fish (hunted).
However, the most interesting thing was when a group of very clever scientists tried to recreate Cheddar Man. I don't know if you know but all of us,
including owls, have something called DNA. This isn't a science website and I failed my science exam so there is no chance I will tell you what it is. However it
can tell experts, who passed their science exams, almost everything about us. They were able to find Cheddar Man's DNA and, hey presto, they made a model of how he
may have looked.
They believe he had dark skin and blue or green eyes, something very rare today. Here's the model they made
It's unlikely you are related to Cheddar Man as most experts think our ancestors are more likely the farmers who came to Britain a bit later.
If you think you might be because you seem a bit cheesy, change your socks. There that's better.
Forward to 6200BC
