Cheddar Man

About

Cheddar Man refers to the a human male fossil excavated in 1903 from Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. In February of 2018, its full genome was extracted and scientists were able to discover what Cheddar Man possibly looked like. They discovered he had dark skin and blue eyes, upending the idea that the British have always been fair-skinned. The news of Cheddar Man's appearance led to jokes on Twitter.

Origin

Cheddar Man was excavated in 1903 from Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, England, and is kept in Natural History Museum in London. The remains date back to the Mesolithic Period, around 9,100 BCE. On February 7th, 2018, the Natural History Museum^[1] released a statement from postdoctoral researcher Dr. Tom Booth saying that Cheddar Man had dark skin.

"Until recently it was always assumed that humans quickly adapted to have paler skin after entering Europe about 45,000 years ago… 'Cheddar Man subverts people's expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go together… 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… He reminds us that you can't make assumptions about what people looked like in the past based on what people look like in the present, and that the pairings of features we are used to seeing today aren't something that's fixed."

Spread

After the model was released, Twitter users jokes about the model. Some Twitter users joked with cheese-based puns; @ChristianCawley tweeted several potential names for Cheddar Man bases on cheese (shown below, left). Twitter user Ryan Beckwith uploaded an image of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit reading "Cheese Monthly," gaining 280 retweets and 1,500 likes (shown below, right).

Other users jokes about the attractiveness of Cheddar Man. Twitter user and writer Caitlin Moran tweeted, "Quick poll – who fancies Cheddar Man? raises hand," gaining over 90 retweets and 1,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @BootstrapCook called Cheddar Man his "awkward crush of the day," gaining over 70 retweets 880 likes (shown below, right).

Jokes about Cheddar Man were covered by BBC^[2] and Twitter Moments.^[3] The Independent^[4] wrote a piece about how the discovery was an important milestone in a racially charged time as it upended the belief that British people had always been white.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References