Alex waves the printout slightly to keep the pages from curling.
“Professor Rivera, quick question before I head out. You mentioned today that ‘ancient Europeans were brown-skinned as recently as the Bronze Age.’ But… that doesn’t square with the Bell Beaker genomes from Britain, right? Olalde’s team found the light-skin alleles were already fixed by 2500 BCE.”
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The setting is a small lecture hall at a mid-sized liberal arts college, late afternoon on November 15, 2025, 10:36 PM EST. The room smells faintly of dry-erase markers and coffee. About 25 students are packing up after an Intro to European Prehistory class. One student, Alex, lingers at the podium, backpack half-zipped, holding a printout of the Olalde 2018 Nature paper.
Professor Rivera closes her laptop, a little distracted, if not a little disturbed. She's not accustomed to being challenged.
“Fixed in Britain, Alex, sure. But that’s a local replacement event. Continent-wide, the ancestral state was dark. Look at Cheddar Man—10,000 years old, British, dark to black skin. The steppe migrants didn’t arrive everywhere at once. Three thousand years ago, plenty of Europe still looked like him.”
But Alex isn't the least bit intimidated by the tenured professor's bifocals and stern look. He taps the printout against his palm, backpack half-zipped and sliding off one shoulder.
“But Cheddar Man is seven thousand years before the Bronze Age," he says. “And the steppe signal—SLC24A5, SLC45A2—is at 90–100 % frequency in every Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, and Unetice sample we have. Mathieson 2015 shows the frequency jump happens between the Neolithic and the Late Neolithic, not later.”
Professor Rivera is amazed at the young student's knowledge. What's more, she's even grateful that he's taken an interest.
Still, she smiles indulgently. She’s heard this before.
“You’re citing averages, Alex. Averages hide outliers. Southern Europe—think Iberia, the Balkans—those farmer populations kept more hunter-gatherer ancestry. WHG admixture means darker skin persists. We have modern Mediterranean people who are olive-to-brown; why wouldn’t their Bronze Age ancestors be the same?”
Alex shifts the printout to his other hand so he can zip his backpack the rest of the way.
“Because the aDNA doesn’t show it,” he answers. “The Remedello culture in Italy, 2900 BCE—light skin. The El Argar samples in Spain, 2200 BCE—light skin. Even the Sicilian Beaker individual has the derived alleles. The only dark-skinned Bronze Age Europeans are statistical ghosts—maybe 1–2 % frequency in fringe pockets.”
Professor Rivera leans on the podium, voice softening.
“You’re missing the point. ‘White’ is a modern category. Three thousand years ago, the range of phenotypes was broader. If I showed you a Bell Beaker guy next to Cheddar Man, you’d call one ‘brown’ and one ‘white.’ The gradient existed.”
Alex finally slings the backpack over his shoulder, printout now tucked under his arm.
“But the gradient shifted. The modal Bronze Age European—Britain to the Urals—carried two copies of the light-skin variants. That’s not ‘brown.’ That’s the same genotype as a modern Swede. The dark end of the gradient is the tail, not the mean.”
And modern Swedes are not brown! he wanted to shout, but kept his temper in check.
Professor Rivera glances at her watch.
“We’ll pick this up next week. Bring the pigmentation polygenic scores from Lazaridis 2022. You’ll see the confidence intervals overlap with ‘dark to intermediate’ in some regions.”
Alex heads for the door, printout flapping once as he turns, determined to get in the final word.
“Lazaridis 2022 confirms the steppe cohort is paler than the farmers, and the farmers were already paler than WHG. The overlap is noise, not signal. See you Tuesday.”
The door gives way to Alex's shoulder as he pushes his way into the hall. Professor Rivera peers over her bifocals.
“Kids and their SNPs, ” she mumbles, flipping off the projector.
Overview of the Cheddar Man Claim
The "Cheddar Man" refers to a 10,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton from Britain (circa 7100 BCE), whose DNA suggested dark to black skin, blue eyes, and dark hair. This has been extrapolated by some to claim that all ancient Europeans, including those 3,000 years ago (circa 1000 BCE, Bronze Age), were predominantly dark-skinned, implying little change until recent migrations. However, this is a misapplication: Cheddar Man predates the major population shifts that lightened European skin. Below are key arguments refuting the idea that Europeans 3,000 years ago were "largely dark-skinned due to Cheddar Man."
1. Chronological Mismatch: Cheddar Man Is 7,000 Years Too Early
• Cheddar Man lived ~10,000 years ago in the Mesolithic period, shortly after the Ice Age. By 3,000 years ago (Bronze Age), Europe had undergone massive demographic turnover via migrations of Indo-European steppe herders (Yamnaya culture) starting ~5,000–4,000 years ago.
• Genetic evidence from ancient DNA (aDNA) studies shows these migrants introduced lighter-skin alleles (e.g., SLC24A5, SLC45A2) that were already prevalent in Neolithic farmers from Anatolia and fully fixed in steppe populations.
• Substantiation:
• Reich Lab (Harvard) and Haak et al. (2015, *Nature*) analyzed >100 ancient European genomes: Dark skin was common in pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers (like Cheddar Man), but by the Bronze Age, >90% of Europeans carried two copies of the light-skin SLC24A5 variant.
• Olalde et al. (2018, *Nature*) on British Bell Beaker samples (~2500 BCE, close to 3,000 ya): Nearly all had light skin genotypes, replacing earlier Mesolithic types.
2. Genetic Evidence Shows Light Skin Predominated by the Bronze Age
• Key genes for light skin evolved separately:
• SLC24A5: Arose ~8,000–6,000 ya in the Near East/Anatolia; spread to Europe with Neolithic farmers ~7,000 ya.
• SLC45A2: Selected in northern Eurasia ~5,000 ya; dominant in Bronze Age steppe migrants.
• By 3,000 ya, these were near-universal in Europe due to natural selection (UV adaptation for vitamin D) and population replacement.
• Substantiation:
• Mathieson et al. (2015, *Nature*): Genome-wide aDNA from 230 ancient Eurasians. Frequency of light-skin alleles rose from ~0% in Mesolithic WHG (Western Hunter-Gatherers, like Cheddar) to ~50% in Early Neolithic, then ~100% by Late Neolithic/Bronze Age.
• Allentoft et al. (2015, *Nature*) on Corded Ware (steppe-derived, ~2900 BCE): All individuals predicted light-skinned.
• No Bronze Age European sample (post-3000 BCE) has been found with Cheddar-like dark skin without admixture exceptions (e.g., rare outliers in Iberia).
3. Population Replacement, Not Continuity
• Cheddar Man represents Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG), who contributed only ~10–20% ancestry to modern Britons/Europeans. The bulk comes from:
• Early European Farmers (EEF, ~40–60%): Light to intermediate skin.
• Steppe ancestry (Yamnaya/Afanasievo, ~20–50%): Fully light-kinned.
• In Britain specifically: Beaker culture (~2500 BCE) replaced ~90% of Neolithic farmer DNA with steppe-derived genes, bringing light skin en masse.
• Substantiation:
• Brace et al. (2019, *Nature Communications*) reconstructed Cheddar Man's appearance but noted his genotype was extinct in Britain by the Bronze Age.
• Patterson et al. (2022, *Nature*) on Iron Age/Roman Britain: Skin pigmentation scores indistinguishable from modern Europeans, with light skin fixed millennia earlier.
4. Archaeological and Phenotypic Corroboration
• Ancient art/depictions: Bronze Age Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Celts show pale skin in frescoes (e.g., Thera murals ~1600 BCE depict light-skinned figures).
• Mummies: Tarim Basin mummies (2000–1000 BCE, Indo-European Tocharians in Asia but related to European steppe groups) had fair skin, blond/red hair—genetically confirmed light-skinned.
• Modern analogs: Isolated groups with high WHG ancestry (e.g., Sardinians) still have light skin due to EEF dominance.
5. Misinterpretations of Cheddar Man Media Hype
• The 2018 Channel 4 documentary sensationalized Cheddar Man as "dark-skinned Briton," but scientists (e.g., lead researcher Susan Walsh) clarified predictions are probabilistic (~76% chance of dark skin) and irrelevant to later periods.
• Extrapolation to 3,000 ya ignores admixture models: Even if some dark-skinned lineages persisted locally, they were marginal (<5% frequency continent-wide).
In summary, while dark skin was ancestral in Paleolithic/Mesolithic Europe, by 3,000 years ago—after Neolithic and Bronze Age influxes—light skin was the overwhelming norm, driven by genetics and demography. Cheddar Man is a red herring for this era. For primary sources, see the cited Nature papers or databases like Allen Ancient DNA Resource.
- Olalde, I., et al. (2018). The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe. Nature, 555(7695), 190–196. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25738
- Mathieson, I., et al. (2015). Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature, 528(7583), 499–503. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16152
- Haak, W., et al. (2015). Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature, 522(7555), 207–211. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14317
- Allentoft, M. E., et al. (2015). Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia. Nature, 522(7555), 167–172. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14507
- Brace, S., et al. (2019). Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(5), 765–771. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0871-9
- Patterson, N., et al. (2022). Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Nature, 601(7894), 588–594. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04287-4
- Lazaridis, I., et al. (2022). The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe. Science, 377(6609), eabm4247. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abm4247
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