Multiple other ancient individuals from the same period, found at sites across Europe — in Spain, Hungary, Luxembourg, and elsewhere — had shown the same combination in earlier ancient DNA analyses.

Cheddar Man was not an outlier; he was representative of his time and of his population.

The reason this combination existed — and why it looks strange to contemporary eyes — is a story about when light skin pigmentation evolved in Europeans, and the answer to that story is different from what had been assumed.

Why Skin Color Changed: The Key Insight

For many decades before the ancient DNA revolution, the prevailing assumption among scientists was that modern humans who entered Europe from Africa roughly 40,000 to 45,000 years ago had relatively quickly developed lighter skin pigmentation as an adaptation to the lower ultraviolet radiation environment of northern latitudes.