Going Prehistoric

 

I have been very annoyed lately by fake history stories.  The St Augustine ghost ship appearing after Hurricane Milton hoax was especially maddening, because it was such a cool story.  I really WANTED it to be true, because it's fascinating and it's different and it would have brought something good out of the disaster.  Alas.  I was doomed to be disappointed.

So today I was all prepared to be furious when I read that Cheddar Man has a descendant living less than a mile away from where he was buried...a descendant who actually looked a little bit like him.  But this time - it's true!!!  It's not a new story (I'm not exactly up to speed on prehistoric history) but it's new to me, so I thought it was a worthy blog topic.

Cheddar Man is the affectionate term for Britain's oldest skeleton. He was found in Gough's Cave in 1903, and archaeologists soon found out that he was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer.  He had been lying in the cave near the town of Cheddar for 10 000 years.  And recent DNA tests have shown that some of the people still living in Cheddar are his descendants.  Adrian Targett, a retired history teacher in the village school, shares a common female ancestor with Cheddar Man.  And better yet, they have the same nose!

That's my favourite part.  The nose.  I just love that.

It's fascinating to me that so many people in the Cheddar village were actually related to Cheddar Man.  One article I read said that there would be approximately 300 generations between Cheddar Man and current residents.  And yet they're still there, running pubs and teaching kids and farming and making cheese.  

Maybe it's true; there's nothing new under the sun.  But thank you, Cheddar Man, for a great story that turned out to be real.  It kinda made my day.