Was first Briton white after all?

Scientist casts doubt on DNA evidence

CLAIMS that the ‘ first Briton’ was black or darkskinned could be wrong, a scientist said yesterday.

Last month, researchers claimed they had accurately reconstructed the face of ‘Cheddar Man’ based on his DNA – and sensationally revealed he had black skin and blue eyes.

Scientists in a Channel 4 documentary announced that there was a 76 per cent chance his skin was ‘dark to black’.

But now, a geneticist who helped reconstruct the man’s face says he may not have been black at all.

Professor Susan Walsh, from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, says we simply don’t know his skin colour.

While her computer model found being black is his ‘probable profile’, she says DNA testing is not advanced enough to be certain.

The 10,000-year-old human skeleton – the oldest ever found in the UK – was unearthed in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, in 1903.

A team of experts, including Professor The reconstructed Cheddar Man Walsh, recently created a computer model that tries to predict a person’s skin pigmentation, hair and eye colour, using their genes. The test focused on 36 points of comparison in 16 genes, all linked to skin colour.

Professor Walsh and her colleagues analysed genes from more than 1,400 people from Europe, the United States, Africa and Papua New Guinea. Part of this data was used to train their model on how to recognise skin colour by looking for links with the 36 genetic markers.

The rest of the data was used to test how well the model could predict skin colour from DNA alone. It came up with ‘black’ or ‘dark black’ skin for Cheddar Man.

Professor Walsh said the tests can’t prove his skin colour and that his DNA may have degraded over the past 10,000 years.

She told New Scientist magazine: ‘It’s not a simple statement of “this person was dark- skinned” … it is his most probable profile, based on current research.’

The team of scientists announced in February that the earliest Briton would be considered black if he lived today. The findings suggested the first inhabitants of the British Isles developed white skin later than previously thought.

The Natural History Museum and Channel 4 unveiled the reconstruction of the Cheddar Man, which was made for a documentary, The First Brit: Secrets Of The 10,000 Year Old Man.