The specific trajectory of the rising seas relative to his lifetime is uncertain, but the broad context is that he lived at the end of the period of land connectivity and during the beginning of Britain’s existence as a geographically separate entity.

What The Cheddar Man Finding Means For The Study Of Race

The Cheddar Man finding has been invoked in discussions about race — specifically, about the assumption that light skin is somehow inherently or originally “European” — and the finding’s implications for those discussions deserve careful treatment.

The genetic finding is clear: the people who first established continuous habitation in Britain after the last Ice Age had dark pigmentation.

The modern association between European identity and light skin reflects genetics that were introduced into European populations primarily by the Neolithic and Bronze Age migrations, not characteristics that were present from the beginning of European occupation.