Earlier Mesolithic specimens from Britain had yielded partial genetic information — enough to say something about their ancestry but not enough to characterize them fully.

Cheddar Man’s exceptional preservation provided the material for the first whole-genome sequencing of a Mesolithic Briton, setting a new standard for what could be known about the deep human past of the British Isles.

Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, who had studied Cheddar Man for more than forty years and had first excavated at Gough’s Cave thirty years before the 2018 study, put it directly: “I first studied ‘Cheddar Man’ more than 40 years ago, but could never have believed that we would one day have his whole genome — the oldest British one to date!”

The whole-genome data provided not just the pigmentation characteristics that attracted the most media attention but a full picture of Cheddar Man’s genetic ancestry — his relationship to other ancient European populations, to populations outside Europe, and to modern British people.