Original subtitles

Narrator: How far back can you trace your genetic heritage?

Few of us can go back more than two or three generations.

But one man could expose more about humankind

than ever before.

His story may have ended 10,000 years ago

before Britain became an island,

but his remains are unearthing amazing new discoveries.

Certainly, I think people are in for a bit of a shock.

Narrator: In one of the most ambitious ancient human DNA projects ever,

a team of scientists will come face to face

with Britain’s oldest complete skeleton...

We're not just conjuring this up out of nowhere.

We really do have scientific data.

Narrator: ...Analyze his unique genetic makeup...

Be nice to find where his closest relatives are.

Narrator: ...And reveal some undeniable truths

about the man's past and how his genetics live on today.

1, 2, 3.1, 2, 3.

London's natural history museum contains exhibits

from a vast range of specimens.

Home to life and earth science,

the museum is comprised of a staggering 80 million items

within five major collections...

Botany, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology, and zoology.

But this specimen is among the most precious.

It's the oldest complete skeleton of a human body

ever found in Britain.

Today, he's more commonly known as cheddar man.

It's very unusual to find any material, really,

from this time period,

so to find a complete skeleton like cheddar man

is actually quite amazing.

Narrator: Cheddar man's remains were unearthed over 115 years ago

in Gough's cave, located in cheddar gorge, somerset.

At the time, nothing like it had ever been found

in Britain before,

and it caused a media sensation.

I had no idea how old it was.

There were discussions of how primitive it might be...

That it might be some very primitive human.

But of course, it was a modern human,

and we now know that it's about 10,000 years old.

Narrator: The story of cheddar man can be traced

back to the end of the last ice age.

Like the rest of the world,

Europe was warming, and ice caps were melting,

raising sea levels.

About 8,000 years ago,

the last land connection between Britain and Europe,

called Doggerland, was inundated.

Britain became an island, and a few thousand people

who were roaming its forests for food were isolated.

Cheddar man's tribe was among them.

These hunter-gatherers became the founders of Britain.

Cheddar man was a member of a population of nomadic hunters.

His tribe thrived during the middle stone age,

also known as the Mesolithic age,

and eventually they settled near the spectacular cheddar gorge.

At three miles long and nearly 395 feet deep,

it would have been just as dramatic a feature

on the landscape as it is today.

So we think cheddar gorge would have been a good place

for humans to live at that time because first of all,

there were good water supplies there.

Those water supplies also would have attracted game

to to drink from those water supplies.

You would have a slightly more sheltered environment.

So this would have been a good place to explore a variety of resources.

Narrator: In 1993, workmen digging a drainage trench

at the bottom of the gorge in Gough's cave

unearthed the skeletal remains of cheddar man.

Fossil experts dated his bones to nearly 10,000 years ago,

and although paleontologists have yet to determine

the cause of death,

some have speculated that cheddar man was brought to

and later buried in the cave by members of his tribe.

We don't actually know if the cheddar people

were living in those caves.

I mean, obviously his body is in there,

but we don't have evidence of occupation.

People have speculated

that people were putting their dead into these caves.

So they became sort of sacred tombs, if you like,

where the ancestors were.

And it's possible that cheddar man

was put into Gough's cave in that way.

His skeletal remains indicate

that he was small in stature...

Around five feet, five inches tall,

and weighed approximately 140 pounds.

Paleontologists determined that he was in his early 20s

when he died.

He also had very healthy teeth,

which suggests he had a good diet.

Yet for such an important specimen,

we knew surprisingly little about cheddar man.

That is, until now.

Currently, a cutting-edge scientific project is underway

at the natural history museum in London.

A team of scientists is performing

the first comprehensive DNA analysis of cheddar man,

using a scientific method called genetic sequencing.

The technology for doing DNA sequencing

has changed absolutely massively in the last 10 years.

Until about the beginning of 2007, 2008,

we were using a technology that been around

for maybe 20 years or so, and that was very good,

it was very efficient, and we knew we were doing.

But the amount of DNA sequence we could generate was very low.

Now I can do the work in one day

that would have taken maybe two or three years,

to have generated.

Narrator: No prehistoric Briton of cheddar man's age

has ever had their genome analyzed.

Through this analysis, the team hopes to determine

the blueprint for this human being.

Barnes: I think that's what's fantastic here,

is that chance to build up a complete picture

about one famous individual,

one famous person who died 10,000 years ago.

Narrator: First, the team needs to examine the skeleton

to determine how to extract his DNA.

Dr. Brace: When you first come, looking at a skeleton

and trying to work out

where you might want to drill into that skeleton

to get some bone powder for DNA analysis,

you're looking at the best type of bone that you can get.

Typically, our favorite bone of choice, as it were,

is the petrous bone.

It's a bit of the inner-ear bone...

Extends into the skull, inside the skull.

If I'm gonna drill through it,

I'd want to go up in there.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I think, actually...

I think that looks like it's gonna be accessible.

Narrator: But extracting data from ancient DNA can be painstaking work.

The reason that we sample from that one piece of bone

is that the amount of human DNA

compared to the amount of bacterial DNA that we find

is much better for that bone than it is

for all the other bones in the body.

And it's a rather specialized operation.

Dr. Brace: What we have to remember is that,

as soon as any organism dies, the DNA begins to break down

and becomes more and more fragmented.

And it becomes increasingly harder and harder for us

to get that DNA

and to pull it out and to make sense of that DNA.

Narrator: DNA can survive in bones and teeth

for extraordinary lengths of time,

given the right environmental conditions.

Luckily, cheddar man's DNA was well preserved in Gough's cave.

The consistently cool conditions in the cave

and layers of natural mineral deposits

make it an ideal environment.

I'd be really happy to try that.

If everyone's happy, then I would be.

Okay.

To extract the DNA,

Dr. Brace brings the sample to the museum's DNA lab,

where more than 350 scientists will analyze the specimen

using specialized testing equipment.

One of the major problems with working with ancient DNA

is that of contamination from modern DNA.

We have to be completely covered from head to toe.

We wear special suits 'cause we are, in fact,

like a walking bit of contaminant,

a walking bit of modern DNA.

Narrator: For over 100 years,

scientists have only been able to theorize

about what cheddar man looked like and where he came from.

So the stakes couldn't be higher for the team.

It's something that no one's done before.

It's just gonna be really exciting.

I have to admit, it's also a little bit terrifying...

The idea of putting a drill into such an iconic skeleton.

Narrator: But if successful, the results could provide

conclusive, groundbreaking scientific data

about the ancestry of the British people.

This is probably the one shot that we have of recovering DNA

from this specimen.

The pressure's on.

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: For over a century, the story of cheddar man

has been a topic of constant mystery.

Based on expert research analysis,

scientists have posed theories about what he looked like,

where he came from,

and what he can tell us about our earliest ancestors.

One idea was that cheddar man belonged to the last tribe

of hunter-gatherers,

before humans developed farming and metalworking.

But they were both creative and inventive.

They made sharp blades called microliths from flint,

creating tools and knives for cutting.

They carved harpoons from antlers for spear fishing.

And they were among the first humans

to create a vital new weapon,

the bow and arrow.

Mesolithic expert Dr. Rick Shulting

has studied cheddar man's remains

and their ancestral connection to modern humans extensively.

Dr. Shulting: So they would have been hunting things like red deer,

aurochs, which are a very large form of wild cattle,

wild boar,

and collecting hazelnuts, berries

that would be available seasonally.

They probably had quite well-defined territories

that they moved around seasonally.

They would have known their landscape very, very intimately

in terms of what was available at certain times of year.

Narrator: And they had another hunting asset at their disposal, too...

Dogs.

The dog had been domesticated

for some thousands of years already.

Once you have those, you have the possibility

of driving game.

And quite often we know from, again, ethnographic accounts

that men, women, and children

would participate in game drives.

And we're on the doorstep of cheddar gorge,

which can funnel animals into a narrow place,

which is a classic landscape that you would use

this style of hunting with.

Narrator: For decades, Britons have debated where they came from

and what defines the nature of their genetic heritage,

according to historians,

cheddar man's tribe was one of the first groups of people

to move back into Britain at the end of the last ice age.

But the genetic makeup

and resulting appearance of the population

has varied considerably over time.

So what did cheddar man actually look like?

Through cutting-edge DNA analysis, Dr. Selina Brace

and her team at London's natural history museum hope to find out.

But first, they need to collect a viable DNA sample.

Dr. Brace: We want to make a very, very small hole,

about 2 millimeters in diameter, so, like, a tiny hole,

so that out from that hole,

we'll pull this very white bone powder that we would hope

would be the preserved bone of cheddar man himself.

And then from that, we will be able to pull out the DNA.

We really don't know before we start

what the quality of the DNA is gonna be like...

So how much human DNA we're going to get from cheddar man.

It could be that there is basically

absolutely no human DNA left in this specimen at all.

Narrator: Fortunately, the team was able to extract

enough genetic information from the preserved bone...

Data that is vital for the team who will be creating

a facial reconstruction of cheddar man's skull.

And the inside of the skull is showing up very nicely.

A little bit more inside these eye orbits.

Using a 3-d scanner,

scientists from the university college London

create a 3-d image of the skull.

And we're... just to get the bottom of the jaw.

Once the image is complete, using a 3-d printer,

scientists turn the image into a physical representation.

In 13 hours, this print model will provide the foundation

for the reconstruction.

It has a rather robust cranium.

Big, so this is clearly... Looks like a big male,

but you see, his face is fairly small.

Narrator: Working from their studio in the Netherlands,

model makers Adrie and Alfons Kennis

are among the world's leading paleoartists.

Narrator: The Kennis brothers aren't the first paleoartists

to attempt a facial reconstruction of cheddar man.

But this will be the first model guided by DNA evidence.

Step one of the reconstruction is based on skull structure.

31.31 is in the middle. The middle.

In the middle, yeah. In the middle.

Using the printed skull,

they'll produce a fully fleshed-out head and face.

You want to have flesh measurements on the skull,

so you have a table of flesh measurements.

On the table, you find the more or less exact measurements

for the tissue thickness on this point or this point

or this point and this point.

Narrator: But before the brothers can start adding

specific physical traits to the model,

they need hard data.

Alfons: In the past, there's a lot of research done

on skin thicknesses of all races.

And you can then figure out

how thick is the skin here from a guy

who is the same age as, more or less cheddar man,

so around 20 years old.

You will drill a hole.

You stick a stick in this hole in this place,

and then you cut it off at the right size.

And then we fill up with Clay.

That's the forensic way of reconstructing a face.

Narrator: As the Kennis brothers wait for this crucial information,

others working on the project

are hopeful that cheddar man's genetics

will hold the answers to their own pressing questions,

some of which have evaded researchers

since this ancient man's remains

were discovered in Gough's cave in 1903.

Stringer: I think the idea of cannibalism for many people is shocking.

But of course, once you see evidence,

it's very difficult to argue with that.

♪♪

Narrator: Everything scientists hope to discover

about cheddar man, from his appearance

to his genetic legacy,

could be revealed by DNA analysis,

but only if Dr. Selina brace's efforts

to retrieve DNA were successful.

When you get the sequencing data back,

that's when you can be starting to think,

"wow, what can we tell about this individual?"

Narrator: For centuries, scientists have studied

cheddar man's skeletal remains,

which were discovered in Gough's cave...

Only able to pose theories about his ancestors.

It wasn't until 1992, during another excavation,

that scientists made another remarkable discovery...

Bones of earlier, temporary visitors to Britain.

They occupied the cave

nearly 5,000 years before cheddar man lived.

These mysterious visitors came during an ice age thaw,

but were driven out when temperatures dropped again.

Their bones are also being analyzed

to see if there's a connection between them and cheddar man.

Were they his ancestors?

Was the cave even a kind of ancestral tomb?

From the bones they left behind, scientists have discovered

people were using sophisticated butchering techniques

to strip flesh from bones.

So if these bones belong to his ancestors,

is it possible that cheddar man's people

also engaged in the ultimate taboo...

Cannibalism?

You don't want to give in and say,

"yes, they were cannibalized," but the evidence is so clear.

Narrator: Dr. Silvia Bello has spent the last 10 years

studying the cannibal bones discovered in Gough's cave.

This is one of the tooth marks, a score that we can see here,

and here, there are two very fine cut marks.

So this is on the femur, and there are the chewing marks,

the cut marks, and a percussion Mark all in the same area.

Stringer: I think, you know, the idea of cannibalism

for many people is shocking.

You know, I had that view to, that, you know,

we should look for alternative explanations

for the modification of the cheddar bones.

But, of course, once you see evidence

of actual human chewing marks on the bones,

it's very difficult to argue with that.

We think we can identify five individuals.

There's a young child, maybe three years old.

We've got two adolescents...

Teenagers, based on the jaws and teeth...

And then we have... An adult.

Have they all been treated this way?

Yes, all been treated, all the modified

with this constant filleting and detachment of the muscle.

We've got finger bones and toe bones.

Yes, these were modified in a...

Well, they just crushed the end.

And it's probably crushed between the teeth.

In the mouth?

And sucked the grease.

So because of that, it's possible

that they were boiling these bones,

so to make it softer, to extract.

And otherwise, there's no evidence of cooking, though?

There's no trace of a direct fire

or contact of fire with the bones.

They don't seem to have been cooked,

at least that way.

They were all butchered. Yeah.

Narrator: With this evidence, Dr. Bello believes

that this cannibalistic behavior

might not have been driven by hunger.

Rather, it was performed for ritualistic purposes.

These are, as you can see, very, very fragmentary.

But the skulls are almost complete.

One in particular... And this is a reconstruction...

It was almost complete.

Again, a huge amount of cut marks and breakage

and the breakage on the face,

which resulted in this, possibly.

Yes, yes. Detachment.

And then all a series of modification all around.

Yes, so whereas they were

obviously getting the flesh off these

and eat... you know, purpose...

For the food, really, for the purpose of eating,

in this case, they're cleaning this skull very carefully.

They're taking the scalp off. Yes.

And why wouldn't that be just,

say, to get the brain out to eat it?

If the purpose is just to extract the brain,

they would probably smash it from the top

or in a much easier way.

But here, there seems to be some care

and all around to obtain the result...

This final cup.

So a skull cup.

And that's why they are not so broken.

These intentionally crafted relics suggest

that the cannibalism may be part of a death ritual.

Was this part of a tribute to the dead...

That within your own group, when one of your relatives dies,

you eat parts of them in order to take on

maybe their courage and knowledge.

In other words, it's a sort of respect for the dead.

Narrator: Using DNA analysis, scientists hope to prove

if these cannibals are indeed cheddar man's ancestors.

Back in Holland, the basic anatomical work

on the cheddar man facial reconstruction

is almost complete.

Before they can move forward, Adrie and Alfons Kennis

will need to know cheddar man's genetic results

to determine his coloring.

We really don't have a great idea

about what Mesolithic people would have looked like.

We assume that they're probably quite similar to people

that you see around today.

Narrator: There are many factors involved in skin color,

and the research is still in progress.

Currently, experts believe that modern humans appeared in Africa

around 200,000 years ago

and were all dark skinned.

Around 60,000 years ago, some of those humans left

to populate the rest of the world.

Those who went to Europe developed lighter skin over time

in order to absorb more sunlight and produce more vitamin d.

Most scientists assume that Europeans had already developed

paler skin many thousands of years before cheddar man.

Stringer: Without DNA evidence, it's all guesswork.

When we think about all the appearances

cheddar man may have been... Often depicted as light skinned,

light hair color, light eyes, but in fact,

cheddar man could have been quite different to that.

He might have been quite dark skinned, dark haired.

Narrator: The genetic material taken from cheddar man

could yield groundbreaking information on his appearance,

but researchers also hope it will provide context

on his place in history.

Three hundred generations after he died,

what is cheddar man's genetic legacy today?

I'd love to know where his closest relatives are.

Are they somewhere else in Britain,

or are they across the ancient land bridge

that existed in continental Europe?

One of the really important questions

is to examine his genome

and see to what extent we can claim

that there is continuity...

A settlement in Britain from cheddar man

all the way through to the present day.

We might see that there is a reasonable degree of continuity

of ancestry going all the way back to cheddar man.

So we might find

that cheddar man is actually very similar

to many people that live in Britain today.

Narrator: Today, thanks to modern technology,

DNA can be tested from both living and deceased individuals.

So is it possible

that there are people still living in cheddar

that could be linked to cheddar man?

Genealogist Brad argent is in cheddar to find out more.

My name is Brad. Yes.

And you are?

Heather. Heather.

Do you have much of a connection with the village?

My ancestors I can trace back as far as 1650.

Many of my ancestors were carpenters.

My husband's traced our family to 1600.

It does suggest that our family's been in this area

for quite some time.

After collecting DNA samples from multiple cheddar residents,

a lab will process the data

and compare it to cheddar man's DNA

to determine whether or not there could be a link.

What the team needs now

is cheddar man's DNA to compare it to.

After weeks of waiting,

cheddar man's DNA results are finally in.

The data is good, the quality is good...

A lot more than we thought, so that's brilliant news.

So I'm just getting it prepared here,

ready to send off to UCL for some further analysis.

Narrator: A team at UCL, university college London,

will now turn Dr. Brace's data

into real conclusions about cheddar man.

And the nation's oldest man has some surprises in store.

♪♪

Narrator: The university college London team

has received the DNA sequence data,

and they're about to solve one of the greatest mysteries

surrounding the 10,000-year-old bones.

What did cheddar man look like?

What color or pigment were his hair, eyes, and skin?

Thomas: Skin pigmentation, the same as eye and hair pigmentation

and the shape of hair and so on...

These are things that are determined by a number of genes,

not just one gene.

And we know a lot of those genes.

We don't know all of them, but we know a lot of the genes

that influence skin pigmentation.

And so we can we can look at those, and we can ask,

"right, does he have the variants that is associated

with lighter or darker pigmentation?"

And by putting those together,

using algorithms that have been developed,

for example, in forensics, we can get an idea

of the levels of pigmentation in the eyes, the skin, and so on.

Narrator: First... eye color.

Research on modern DNA tells the team

where the eye-color genes, or markers, are.

By comparing those to cheddar man's DNA,

they get their answer.

Cheddar man had blue eyes.

Normally, we think of light blue eyes as being part

of a kind of overall package,

with light skin and blond hair that you see in general,

and it's kind of a marker of European ancestry...

And northern European ancestry.

Narrator: Next... hair color.

Cheddar man had dark hair.

Finally... skin color.

This is the most genetically complex trait.

And the results defy expectations.

Dr. Diekmann: I looked at two markers

that are associated with hypopigmentation,

so with light skin... Were both absent.

We do not find neither of them.

So that suggests the absence of a light-skin phenotype.

Okay.

Most likely a dark-skinned phenotype.

Dark skin, especially with blue eyes, is surprising.

Dr. Diekmann: I'm trying to increase the power

of this prediction to get more of these informative markers

by using a surrogate,

by using another individual for which we have more data,

which is no different to cheddar man's,

and that is what allows me to derive a stronger prediction

and really establish cheddar man having most likely dark skin.

Narrator: While Yoan continues the analysis,

the team sends the news to the Kennis brothers,

who have already started

creating cheddar man's skin pigment.

Ohh, okay.

Okay, yeah, the red blush has come through very nice.

Narrator: Driven by science,

the Kennis brothers take their lead from human anatomy.

Skin pigment comes from tissue layers,

which the Kennises replicate inside a mold

with paint and silicone.

It's not too dark, not too light.

We need more orange.

Purple.

Yeah, purple.

But this has to be like this.

While the Kennises wait for more detail on skin color,

Ian and Selina are starting to answer

one of their other biggest questions.

Here is... this is the most recent PCA that we've had.

Narrator: Since Britain was newly inhabited

when cheddar man arrived,

where did his ancestors come from?

When we add in our cheddar man data,

it's falling right here, right at the bottom

of the other Mesolithic individuals.

The data they're looking at plots other European populations

who lived around the same time as cheddar man.

By comparing his DNA to theirs,

the team can calculate who he's closest to genetically.

And these are the ones that cheddar man...

So the other ones that it's really close to...

Cheddar man's very close to is la Braña from Spain.

This one here.

It's the Loschbour, which is Luxembourg.

And then this Hungarian individual, as well.

So cheddar man is genetically close

to several other Mesolithic Europeans

whose DNA has already been analyzed.

The surprise is just how closely related they are.

The team has concluded they were all part

of the western hunter-gatherers group.

We're not seeing large differentiation

between the population to which he belonged

and the populations in, for example, Spain or Germany.

I think it would be fair to say

that he's more a European than he is a Brit.

Narrator: Cheddar man would have been closely related

to his contemporaries throughout Europe, not just in Britain.

But what about his ancestry?

The team thinks they have an answer

to the longstanding question

of cheddar man's mysterious origins

and how, if at all,

the notorious Gough's cave cannibals were involved.

♪♪

Narrator: After decades of speculation,

the London natural history museum team

has finally discovered the genetic heritage

of their 10,000-year-old skeleton.

Cheddar man's ancestors came from the middle east.

They move across from the near east,

mix with standing Mesolithic populations

that are moving north into Europe,

and then end up in Britain, in southern Britain.

Yeah, 'cause no one's shown that

from Britain before, have they?

We've got samples from Europe, but...

So this actually shows that they actually would have come

all the way across into the U.K., as well.

Yeah. That's really cool.

Scientists have suspected these middle eastern origins

for a while.

But no one has ever proved it in an ancient Britain until now.

It seems that cheddar man's ancestors moved from Africa

into the middle east.

Later, some headed west into Europe,

and when the ice melted, some migrated to Britain.

The team now knows how and when

his ancestors first came to Britain.

But other big questions still remain.

Chief among them... What did he look like?

Team archeologist Dr. Tom booth has used his own DNA sequence

to come up with part of the answer.

So I was just looking at my own personal DNA results

'cause I was checking out that marker,

that was a market for curly hair.

Yes.

And I looked at the same marker in my genome,

and it turns out that we've both got the same marker.

That's great, yeah.

It's pretty incredible, isn't it?

So, yeah, my hair is gonna be the model

for cheddar man, I think, from now on.

But Yoan has news, too.

He's received a full skin pigment analysis

from a specialist in the u.S.

So it turns out that cheddar man was probably darker

than we initially expected in terms of skin pigmentation.

And so, yeah, we have a little chart.

The scale that they produce is basically probabilities

for five different categories.

And what we see is that

it's pretty far down the spectrum.

And yeah, it certainly is darker than we inferred before.

This dark-to-black result is both extraordinary

and unexpected.

If a person with that color skin

was kind of wandering around town now,

you know, we would call him black, I suppose.

That's incredible. That's brilliant.

And a lot darker, you expect, for Europe, as well.

Absolutely. Yeah.

These results are the final vital piece of the puzzle

for the Kennis brothers' cheddar man model.

It's a bit too black here, I think,

it's too black and too much red in it.

If the whole face is like this, it will be nice... very nice.

Alfons: I know. I know. I know. I know.

What the team has discovered strongly suggests

that paler skin in Britain and Europe

is a far more recent phenomenon than anyone thought.

It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories

that we have are really very modern constructions.

It may be that we have to rethink some of our notions

of what it is to be British,

what we expect a Briton to look like at this time.

Narrator: Two weeks later, the natural history museum team

is about to witness the unveiling

of cheddar man's reconstructed head.

Stringer: After all these years of knowing cheddar man,

which is more than 40 years, in my case,

it will be great to see this bringing together

of artistry and anatomy and DNA.

It's something that we've now seen all the way through

from taking the bone sample to getting the genome,

extracting information, and really unusually for us,

actually getting a physical thing,

a physical object we can look at.

I'm genuinely kind of excited

to get the science and the physical appearance

and to have the two together... Yeah, I'm really excited.

It's gonna be great.

Narrator: After years of hard work,

the time has finally come.

1, 2, 3.1, 2, 3.

♪♪

Narrator: The team at the London natural history museum

has been working for years

to understand the details of cheddar man's lineage.

And all of their hard work has finally yielded answers.

The first revelation... The cannibals have Gough's cave

were genetically unrelated to their specimen.

Cheddar man shares no direct ancestry

with the earlier cannibals.

However, he was genetically similar to another group,

the western-hunter gatherer population.

The team searched for that DNA in modern residents,

and they found it in almost all of them.

So 300 generations later,

cheddar man's genetic legacy lives on.

If we ask the question,

"to what extent do we have ancestry

from the population to which he belonged?"

Then the answer we do have a very good idea about,

and it's a good proportion.

You know, it's something like 10 percent of our ancestry

comes from that that population.

We label those as western European hunter-gatherers.

Narrator: DNA science has unlocked

the 10,000 year old secrets of cheddar man's genetic identity.

And it's finally time to reveal his face.

Nice that you all come here to reveal the cheddar man.

I want to remind you it's your data we work on,

so part of it is your work.

But here, we will reveal it for you guys.

1, 2, 3.1, 2, 3.

Oh, wow. Hey!

Brilliant.

Will you show it already?

[ Laughter ]

Here he is.

Quite a delicate jaw and face and teeth,

and that comes through, and it's a face

that's really quite distinctive.

Barnes: I think it looks great.

The combination of the face shape and the skin color

and the eye color... it all just kind of works together

it's a very broad, big skull.

Dr. Brace: Really, really cool to have done the genetics for someone

or to have looked at their DNA so closely

as we have done with this

and then to actually see that made into flesh is...

Yeah, it's amazing.

I guess it's the only time this will ever happen.

I think the Kennises have done a fantastic job.

The light is now picking up his blue eyes.

They're really showing now.

He has the biggest eyes I ever made.

That combination of, you know, quite dark skin and blue eyes

is something that we don't imagine is typical.

But that was the real appearance of these people...

Something that's quite rare today.

And we're not just conjuring this up out of nowhere.

We really do have scientific data.

I mean, this is as close as we're gonna get to know

what cheddar man really did look like.

He's alive. He's a person now. He's not just bones.

Narrator: It's been a long and extraordinary road...

Four months of work for the artists...

Two years for the scientists...

Ten millennia for cheddar man.

He marks the beginning of a nation's story

and has left a genetic Mark on his region,

still present today.

This is the great thing about working in this field,

the historical perspective that you get just tells you

that things change, things are in flux,

and what may seem as cemented truth

that people that feel British should have white skin,

through time is not at all something

that is an unmutable truth.

It has always changed, and it will change.

♪♪