Who Were the Hunter-Gatherers of Britain After the Last Ice Age?
Channel: Celtic History Decoded
Date: 2023-05-14

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Who Were the Hunter-Gatherers of Britain After the Last Ice Age?

Who were the hunter gatherers of Britain after the last ice age? Vast sheets of ice covered most of Britain and Ireland during the last ice age. Around 12,000 years ago after the Younger Dryas period, this ice melted for good, as the climate warmed. Over the millennia, ancient hunter gatherers moved back into Britain, but who were these people?

This is Cheddar Man, who lived around 10,000 years ago and is the oldest almost complete skeleton of our species, Homo sapiens, ever found in Britain. He was found in the early 1900s in Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, a limestone gorge in Somerset, England, close to the village of cheddar. It seems that during the Mesolithic period, caves played an important burial role in society, and probably had a spiritual significance to many.  

One interesting aspect of Cheddar Man is  that he has the genetic markers of skin pigmentation usually associated with sub-Saharan Africa, with this being consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe. It seems that much of the population at that time in Europe had dark skin and most of them had pale colored eyes, either blue or green, and dark brown hair. It seems that pale eyes entered Europe long before pale skin or blond hair, which didn't come along until after the arrival of farming.

For reference, the culture of farming is thought to have arrived in Britain around 6,000 years ago, marking the beginning of the Neolithic period (New Stone Age). But back to Cheddar man. He was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer (fully modern human), and was around 166 centimetres tall (or 5ft 5’). He died in his twenties.

He does have a hole in his forehead, perhaps due to an infection or it may be damage from the excavation. Ironically, considering he gets his name from the village of Cheddar, where Cheddar cheese also gets it’s name, he was lactose intolerant and was unable to digest milk as an adult, which apparently was common for all humans across Europe at the time. Cheddar man’s diet would have consisted of seeds and nuts, as well as game.

Modern-day British people share approximately 10% of their genetic ancestry with the European population to which Cheddar Man belonged to, but they aren't direct descendants. Current thinking is that the Mesolithic population that Cheddar Man belonged to was mostly replaced by the farmers that migrated into Britain later on.

Star Carr is an important Mesolithic settlement in North Yorkshire that predates Cheddar Man by around 1,000 years. 

Hunter gatherers of ancient Britain. 

Sources:

Archaeologists shed light on the lives of Stone Age hunter-gatherers in Britain https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/stone-age-hunter-gatherers-in-britain/ 

Neolithic Britain: where did the first farmers come from? https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/april/neolithic-britain-where-did-the-first-farmers-come-from.html 

Cheddar Man: Mesolithic Britain's blue-eyed boy - https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html 

National History Museum, The making of an island - https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-making-of-an-island.html 

Creative Commons:

Werner Ustorf https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cheddar_Man,_National_History_Museum,_London.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
 
Emőke Dénes, DenesFeri https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Em_-_Cheddar_Man_-_2.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en 

Rwendland https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gough%27s_Cave,_Alladdin%27s_Cave.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 

Jonathan Cardy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Star_Carr_headdress_cropped.JPG Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en 

Jonathan Cardy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Star_Carr_spear_tips_01.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en 

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Hunter gatherers Britain documentary