The assumption, in its simplest form, was: enter Europe, lose the dark skin quickly, because the selective pressure for lighter skin would be immediate and strong.

What the ancient DNA evidence has consistently shown is that this happened much more slowly than anyone expected.

Cheddar Man lived roughly 10,000 years after the initial entry of modern humans into Europe.

His population — the Western Hunter-Gatherers, as researchers have named them — had been in Europe for approximately ten to fifteen thousand years before the time Cheddar Man was alive.

And yet the genetic analysis of Cheddar Man and his contemporaries shows that they retained dark pigmentation.