These early modern humans in Britain were part of a broader Upper Paleolithic population that spread across Europe from roughly 45,000 years ago, replacing the Neanderthals who had previously inhabited the continent.

Then came the Last Glacial Maximum — the coldest phase of the last Ice Age, centered around 20,000 to 25,000 years ago.

The ice sheets expanded dramatically.

Britain became largely or entirely uninhabitable.

The people who had been living there — the ancestors of the early Paleolithic Britons — either died out or moved south, joining the populations in southern France and the Iberian Peninsula that survived the glacial maximum in warmer refugia.

The population that recolonized Britain after the glacial maximum — the Western Hunter-Gatherers, of which Cheddar Man is the best-studied British representative — were not the same people as the pre-glacial Britons.