The Western Hunter-Gatherers like Cheddar Man — the Mesolithic people who inhabited Europe before the farmers arrived — were, as far as the ancient DNA evidence shows, predominantly dark-skinned.

They left their mark on modern Europeans: approximately ten percent of the ancestry of modern white British people can be traced to the Western Hunter-Gatherer population to which Cheddar Man belonged.

But they were replaced and diluted, not gradually lightened.

The Western Hunter-Gatherers: Who They Were

The group to which Cheddar Man belonged — the Western Hunter-Gatherers, abbreviated WHG in the ancient DNA literature — is now one of the best-characterized ancient human populations in the genetic record.

The term Western Hunter-Gatherer refers to the population of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who inhabited western and central Europe in the period roughly from 14,000 to 5,000 years before the present — from the end of the last Ice Age to the arrival of Neolithic farmers.