10,000 YEAR OLD SKELETON SHOWS EUROPEANS WERE ONCE DARK SKINNED

As if we didn’t know already that the occasional nonsense spoken about racial differences is just that non-sense, an analysis of a 10,000 year old skeleton found over 100 years ago in a cave in the South West of the UK suggests that the inhabitants of that area ten millennia ago were at the very least “dark to black” in appearance.

The genome sequence of the fossilised skeleton was tested to give an idea of his appearance. Scientists from the Natural History Museum in London drilled a 2mm hole into the skull and used bone powder to conduct a DNA test.

‘CHEDDAR MAN’

‘Cheddar Man’ as the skeleton has been called, had blue eyes but a very dark brown skin, or even black complexion and dark or black curly hair.

The scientist believe that Cheddar Man’s ancestors had migrated from the Middle East from a population that had in turn, thousands of years before, migrated from Africa.

It is believed that Cheddar Man’s descendants developed as lighter coloured skin over the next few thousand years in order to absorb more sunlight which was needed to produce enough vitamin D.

10,000 years later the study believes that 10 percent of the UK’s population are linked to the population of the British Isles at that time.

It has often been said that we are all the same colour under the skin. It now seems that once upon a time we were all outwardly pretty much the same colour.

EAST AFRICA – CRADLE OF HUMANKIND

In 1974 parts of a skeleton from an early female hominid believed to be 3.2 million years old were found near the village of Hadar in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia.The discovery of ‘Lucy’, as the skeleton became known, suggested that Man developed from the East Africa region.

Since then the Tugen Hills and Lake Turkana areas of Western Kenya have produced many skeletons of ancient Man and the area is known as a “hot spot” for discoveries by paleontologists.