Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption DNA shows early Brit had dark skin 
 
 A cutting-edge scientific analysis shows that a Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin and blue eyes. 
 
 Researchers from London's Natural History Museum extracted DNA from Cheddar Man, Britain's oldest complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903. 
 
 A University College London team analysed the genome, and the results were used for a facial reconstruction. 
 
 It underlines the fact that the lighter skin characteristic of modern Europeans is a relatively recent phenomenon. 
 
 No prehistoric Briton of this age had previously had their genome analysed. 
 
 As such, the analysis provides valuable new insights into the first people to resettle Britain after the last Ice Age. 
 
 The analysis of Cheddar Man's genome - the "blueprint" for a human, contained in the nuclei of our cells - will be published in a journal, and will also feature in the upcoming Channel 4 documentary The First Brit, Secrets Of The 10,000-year-old Man. 
 
 'Cheddar George' tweet on early Briton 
 
 Cheddar Man's remains had been unearthed 115 years ago in Gough's Cave, located in Somerset's Cheddar Gorge. Subsequent examination has shown that the man was short by today's standards - about 5ft 5in - and probably died in his early 20s. 
 
 Prof Chris Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, said: "I've been studying the skeleton of Cheddar Man for about 40 years 
 
 "So to come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like - and that striking combination of the hair, the face, the eye colour and that dark skin: something a few years ago we couldn't have imagined and yet that's what the scientific data show." 
 
 Image caption A replica of Cheddar Man's skeleton now lies in Gough's Cave 
 
 Fractures on the surface of the skull suggest he may even have met his demise in a violent manner. It's not known how he came to lie in the cave, but it's possible he was placed there by others in his tribe. 
 
 The Natural History Museum researchers extracted the DNA from part of the skull near the ear known as the petrous. At first, project scientists Prof Ian Barnes and Dr Selina Brace weren't sure if they'd get any DNA at all from the remains. 
 
 But they were in luck: not only was DNA preserved, but Cheddar Man has since yielded the highest coverage (a measure of the sequencing accuracy) for a genome from this period of European prehistory - known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age. 
 
 They teamed up with researchers at University College London (UCL) to analyse the results, including gene variants associated with hair, eye and skin colour. 
 
 Extra mature Cheddar 
 
 They found the Stone Age Briton had dark hair - with a small probability that it was curlier than average - blue eyes and skin that was probably dark brown or black in tone. 
 
 This combination might appear striking to us today, but it was a common appearance in western Europe during this period. 
 
 Steven Clarke, director of the Channel Four documentary, said: "I think we all know we live in times where we are unusually preoccupied with skin pigmentation." 
 
 Prof Mark Thomas, a geneticist from UCL, said: "It becomes a part of our understanding, I think that would be a much, much better thing. I think it would be good if people lodge it in their heads, and it becomes a little part of their knowledge." 
 
 Unsurprisingly, the findings have generated lots of interest on social media. 
 
 Cheddar Man's genome reveals he was closely related to other Mesolithic individuals - so-called Western Hunter-Gatherers - who have been analysed from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary. 
 
 Dutch artists Alfons and Adrie Kennis, specialists in palaeontological model-making, took the genetic findings and combined them with physical measurements from scans of the skull. The result was a strikingly lifelike reconstruction of a face from our distant past. 
 
 Pale skin probably arrived in Britain with a migration of people from the Middle East around 6,000 years ago. This population had pale skin and brown eyes and absorbed populations like the ones Cheddar Man belonged to. 
 
 Image caption Prof Chris Stringer had studied Cheddar Man for 40 years - but was struck by the Kennis brothers' reconstruction 
 
 No-one's entirely sure why pale skin evolved in these farmers, but their cereal-based diet was probably deficient in Vitamin D. This would have required agriculturalists to synthesise this essential nutrient in their skin using sunlight. 
 
 "There may be other factors that are causing lower skin pigmentation over time in the last 10,000 years. But that's the big explanation that most scientists turn to," said Prof Thomas. 
 
 Boom and bust 
 
 The genomic results also suggest Cheddar Man could not drink milk as an adult. This ability only spread much later, after the onset of the Bronze Age. 
 
 Present-day Europeans owe on average 10% of their ancestry to Mesolithic hunters like Cheddar Man. 
 
 Britain has been something of a boom-and-bust story for humans over the last million-or-so years. Modern humans were here as early as 40,000 years ago, but a period of extreme cold known as the Last Glacial Maximum drove them out some 10,000 years later. 
 
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 There's evidence from Gough's Cave that hunter-gatherers ventured back around 15,000 years ago, establishing a temporary presence when the climate briefly improved. However, they were soon sent packing by another cold snap. Cut marks on the bones suggest these people cannibalised their dead - perhaps as part of ritual practices. 
 
 Image copyright Channel 4 Image caption The actual skull of Cheddar Man is kept in the Natural History Museum, seen being handled here by Ian Barnes 
 
 Britain was once again settled 11,000 years ago; and has been inhabited ever since. Cheddar Man was part of this wave of migrants, who walked across a landmass called Doggerland that, in those days, connected Britain to mainland Europe. This makes him the oldest known Briton with a direct connection to people living here today. 
 
 This is not the first attempt to analyse DNA from the Cheddar Man. In the late 1990s, Oxford University geneticist Brian Sykes sequenced mitochondrial DNA from one of Cheddar Man's molars. 
 
 Mitochondrial DNA comes from the biological "batteries" within our cells and is passed down exclusively from a mother to her children. 
 
 Prof Sykes compared the ancient genetic information with DNA from 20 living residents of Cheddar village and found two matches - including history teacher Adrian Targett, who became closely connected with the discovery. The result is consistent with the approximately 10% of Europeans who share the same mitochondrial DNA type. 
 
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 The genome of Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, suggests that he had blue eyes, dark skin and dark curly hair 
 
 The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed. 
 
 The fossil, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset. Intense speculation has built up around Cheddar Man’s origins and appearance because he lived shortly after the first settlers crossed from continental Europe to Britain at the end of the last ice age. People of white British ancestry alive today are descendants of this population. 
 
 Combing human genome reveals roots of hair diversity Read more 
 
 It was initially assumed that Cheddar Man had pale skin and fair hair, but his DNA paints a different picture, strongly suggesting he had blue eyes, a very dark brown to black complexion and dark curly hair. 
 
 The discovery shows that the genes for lighter skin became widespread in European populations far later than originally thought – and that skin colour was not always a proxy for geographic origin in the way it is often seen to be today. 
 
 
 
 Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project, said: “It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at all.” 
 
 Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London and another member of the project’s team, agreed, saying the connection often drawn between Britishness and whiteness was “not an immutable truth. It has always changed and will change”. 
 
 The findings were revealed ahead of a Channel 4 documentary, which tracked the ancient DNA project at the Natural History Museum in London as well as creating a new forensic reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s head. 
 
 850,000-year-old human footprints found in Norfolk Read more 
 
 To perform the DNA analysis, museum scientists drilled a 2mm-diameter hole into the ancient skull to obtain a few milligrams of bone powder. From this, they were able to extract a full genome, which held clues about this ancient relative’s appearance and lifestyle. 
 
 The results pointed to a Middle Eastern origin for Cheddar Man, suggesting that his ancestors would have left Africa, moved into the Middle East and later headed west into Europe, before eventually crossing the ancient land bridge called Doggerland which connected Britain to continental Europe. Today, about 10% of white British ancestry can be linked to this ancient population. 
 
 The analysis also ruled out an ancestral link with individuals inhabiting Gough’s Cave 5,000 years earlier, who appear to have performed grisly cannibalistic rituals, including gnawing on human toes and fingers – possibly after boiling them – and drinking from polished skull cups. 
 
 Britain was periodically settled and then cleared during ice ages until the end of the last glacial period about 11,700 years ago, since when it has been continuously inhabited. 
 
 Until now, though, it hasn’t been clear whether each wave of migrants was seeded from the same population in mainland Europe; the latest results suggest this was not the case. 
 
 The team homed in on genes known to be linked to skin colour, hair colour and texture, and eye colour. For skin tone, there are a handful of genetic variants linked to reduced pigmentation, including some that are very widespread in European populations today. However, Cheddar Man had “ancestral” versions of all these genes, strongly suggesting he would have had “dark to black” skin tone, but combined with blue eyes. 
 
 Scientists believe that populations living in Europe became lighter-skinned over time because pale skin absorbs more sunlight, which is required to produce enough vitamin D. The latest findings suggest pale skin may have emerged later, possibly when the advent of farming meant people were obtaining less vitamin D though dietary sources like oily fish. 
 
 Cheddar Man would have lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, making sharp blades from flints for butchering animals, using antlers to whittle harpoons for spear fishing and carving bows and arrows.
– Think of a stereotypical Brit and you may imagine a pale cast member from Downton Abbey. A new study, however, shows early modern Brits from 10,000 years ago, who migrated from Europe over a land bridge into England, may not have been quite as pale as many of their Colin Firth-like contemporaries. The Guardian reports on DNA research out of University College London and the Natural History Museum that reveals "Cheddar Man," a Mesolithic skeleton found in Gough's Cave in 1903, had blue eyes, dark curly hair, and "dark to black" skin. The finding suggests that lighter-skinned Europeans evolved later than previously thought. "To come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like ... [is] something a few years ago we couldn't have imagined," one researcher tells the BBC. Scientists extracted his DNA by drilling a hole in his skull to draw out bone powder. They focused on genes tied to hair, eye, and skin color and found Cheddar Man didn't have the reduced-pigmentation gene those with lighter skin have today in many Euro populations. The researchers suspect a cereal-based diet back then may have lacked vitamin D, and so lighter skin tones may have evolved to draw in more sunlight for vitamin D, as individuals with more melanin aren't as efficient at producing vitamin D as their lighter-skinned counterparts. The upshot of the discovery, per the Guardian: "skin color was not always a proxy for geographic origin in the way it is often seen to be today." (All human eyes are actually brown.)