[1]
”INTERVIEW WITH OPRAH WINFREY
As you know, largely because of the hatred and smear campaign againstMeghan Markle, the royal couple [to me, they remain royals] left England,but it was nice to see, that Queen Elisabeth, Prince Harry’s grandmother,remained loyal and supportive to the couple!
https://www.astridessed.nl/queen-supportive-of-harry-and-meghans-new-life-well-done-your-majesty/
Yet new developments took place, resulting in the bombshell Oprah Winfreyinterview, which I share with you here, in full transcript!I will comment on it soon enough [look for my website]”
OPRAH WINFREY MEETS PRINCE HARRY AND HIS WIFE MEGHAN
MARKLE/FULL TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW
ASTRID ESSED
10 MARCH 2021
OR
[2]THE OBSERVERPRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN TOLD QUEEN ELIZABETHTHEY WON’T RETURN TO ROYAL ROLES19 FEBRUARI 2021
https://observer.com/2021/02/meghan-markle-prince-harry-royal-roles-leave-official-queen-elizabeth-statements/
There’s still a month left before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are due for their one-year review period after stepping back from their royal roles, but the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided to share their decision with the royal family early. Prince Harry and Meghan, who are now living in Montecito, California, told Queen Elizabeth that they will not be returning to their former position as senior working royals.
Buckingham Palace released a statement earlier today, confirming that the Queen and Prince Harry had spoken and that the Duke of Sussex had informed his grandmother of the decision. The Palace said, “While all are saddened by their decision, The Duke and Duchess remain much loved members of the family.”
It’s the official end to the Sussexes’ time as working members of the royal family, and as expected, the decision means that Prince Harry and Meghan have to give up their official royal patronages and honorary military titles, which will be returned to the Queen and then “redistributed among working members of The Royal Family,” per Buckingham Palace.
Prince Harry and Meghan’s spokesperson released their own statement, shared with Observer. “As evidenced by their work over the past year, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex remain committed to their duty and service to the U.K. and around the world, and have offered their continued support to the organizations they have represented regardless of official role. We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have already been removed from their positions as President and Vice President of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust. Prince Harry was reportedly hoping he would be able to retain his honorary military titles, but per Buckingham Palace, the associations, charities and titles that revert to the Queen include The Royal Marines, RAF Honington and Royal Navy Small Ships and Diving. They also include The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, The Rugby Football Union, The Rugby Football League, The Royal National Theatre and The Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Prince Harry and Meghan will still be able to continue on as patrons of other organizations, reports Harper’s Bazaar, including the Duke of Sussex’s roles with the Invictus Games and WellChild, and the Duchess of Sussex’s positions with Mayhew animal charity and Smart Works.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have kept busy over the past year, as in the time since they initially told the royal family that they planned on stepping back from their senior roles, Prince Harry and Meghan have signed major deals with Netflix and Spotify, as well as launched their nonprofit foundation, Archewell. They also relocated to a new home in Santa Barbara with their son, Archie, and recently announced that they’re expecting their second child.
We might get to hear a bit more about the Sussexes’ big decision, and details on their new life in California, in the very near future, as Prince Harry and Meghan are sitting down with Oprah Winfrey for their first post-royal exit interview, which is set to air March 7.
END OF ARTICLE
OBSERVERPRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN AREN’T HAPPY ABOUT LOSINGTHEIR ROYAL PATRONAGES24 FEBRUARY 2021
https://observer.com/2021/02/meghan-markle-prince-harry-royal-patronages-exit-reaction-not-happy-queen-elizabeth/
It’s been almost a week since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal exit became official, after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex informed Queen Elizabeth that they would not be resuming their official royal duties. Buckingham Palace sent out a statement shortly thereafter, which included a note that Prince Harry and Meghan would not be able to keep their royal patronages.
While it was known that this was a possibility, as the Queen doesn’t believe in a “half-in, half-out” role within the royal family, the Sussexes were still understandably upset that they wouldn’t be able to continue in their roles with the patronages that they have worked so closely with for the past few years.
According to royal expert Katie Nicholl in Vanity Fair, Prince Harry and Meghan had “hoped to have a long serving role within the Commonwealth.” Prince Harry and Meghan were disappointed with the Queen’s decision, reports People, especially because Prince Harry was also stripped of his honorary military titles, but the Sussexes “respect the decision that was reached.” The Sussexes were, however, apparently a bit annoyed by the part of the Queen’s statement that said, “it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service.”
Prince Harry and Meghan subsequently released their own statement, in which they said, “We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.” In this royal back-and-forth, the Palace was then less than thrilled, though per People, there remains a “very strong family bond” between the Sussexes and the rest of the royal family.
There does seem to be some tension, however, pertaining to the Sussexes’ upcoming interview with Oprah Winfrey. The Palace was “blindsided” by Prince Harry and Meghan’s announcement that they had agreed to an interview with Oprah, which is set to air on March 7, and per Vanity Fair, it seems this may have set in motion the official news of the Sussexes’ final exit. Now, the interview is reportedly being reedited after the announcement regarding their patronages, as when it was filmed, “it was never envisaged they would have their patronages taken away.”
Prince Harry and Meghan will continue to work with their personal patronages, but the Queen already has an idea about who will be taking over a few of the Sussexes’ roles within their royal patronages. She reportedly wants Prince William to replace his brother with the England Rugby Union and Rugby Football League, and Princess Anne the new Captain General of the Royal Marines
END OF ARTICLE
[3]
THE INDEPENDENTIS HARRY STILL A PRINCE AFTER LEAVING ROYAL DUTIES?8 MAART 2021
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/royal-family/is-harry-still-a-prince-b1814265.html
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will not return as working royals, it was confirmed on 19 February.
Buckingham Palace said in a statement that the Queen had written confirming Harry and Meghan would not be able to continue with royal duties, and their honorary military appointments and royal patronages would be returned.
A spokesperson for The Duke and Duchess of Sussex said the couple “remain committed to their duty and service to the UK and around the world” regardless of their role within the royal family.
The couple shocked the world when they announced their decision to step back as senior members of the royal family in January last year.
The move prompted the Queen to organise a crisis summit regarding their future roles and it also raised a number of questions about what the exit will mean for the monarchy, from how the couple will fund their lifestyle to the impact on the line of succession.
While the couple accepted that their decision to walk away from their royal roles means they will no longer receive public funding or be able to use their HRH titles, it has been confirmed that Prince Harry will maintain his current position in line to throne, which is sixth.
This is because the positioning is based on legislation meaning the government would have to step in to remove someone from the list.
Historian and author Marlene Koenig told Royal Central: “Succession to the throne is based on legislation including the Succession to the crown Act, which includes the Act of Settlement.
“It would take an act of Parliament to remove a person from the line of succession.”
While this is incredibly rare, it has happened once before. In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated from the throne, sparking a constitutional crisis which resulted in the King denouncing his position so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
However he could not do this without an act of parliament.
Currently, Prince Charles is first in line and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will become Queen when he takes the throne.
The Duke of Cambridge is now second in line and will follow in his father’s footsteps with his wife Kate Middleton at his side.
At present, the royal couple have three children: Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, who each respectively sit third, fourth and fifth in the line of succession.
In 2011, Commonwealth leaders agreed to change the succession laws so that both sons and daughters have the equal right to the throne.
Previous to this, the crown was passed lineally in birth order, but subject to male preference over females.
Prince Harry remains sixth in line to the throne after his niece and nephews. However, it is worth noting that, if the Cambridge family expands, the royal will keep moving down the line of succession.
END OF ARTICLE
MEGHAN MARKLE AND PRINCE HARRY’S SON IS NOTA PRINCE BUT HE’S STILL IN LINE FOR THE BRITISH THRONE12 MARCH 2021
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-12/who-is-in-the-line-to-the-british-throne-royal-family-tree/13243558
Meghan alleged in her interview that she and Prince Harry’s son was denied the title of prince at birth due to her biracial heritage.
Despite this, Archie remains seventh in line to the throne — ahead of Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second-eldest son.
Here’s who is in the line of succession when Elizabeth II’s time as the longest-reigning monarch in history comes to an end.
Charles, Prince of Wales
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s eldest son Charles, the Prince of Wales, is next in line to rule the Commonwealth, which includes Australia.
When he does, Prince Charles, who is currently 72-years-old, will be the oldest person to ever ascend to the British throne — the previous oldest ruler was William IV at age 64.
His wife, Camilla, currently goes by the title the Duchess of Cornwall.
When the pair married in 2005, Clarence House released a statement that she would have the title princess consort if Prince Charles becomes king.
William, Duke of Cambridge
The eldest son of Prince Charles and his first wife Princess Diana, Prince William is second in line to the throne.
His wife Catherine is currently the Duchess of Cambridge but will become queen consort and go by the title of Queen Catherine if William becomes king.
The couple’s three children are ahead of Princess Diana’s second son and Prince William’s brother Harry in the line of succession despite their young age.
George, Prince of Cambridge
Prince William and Catherine’s eldest child Prince George is third in line to the throne.
Historically, the first-born son of the monarch would be claimed as heir to the throne regardless of any older daughters.
Only when there was no son could a female child reign — as was the case for Queen Elizabeth II, whose father King George VI had two daughters.
In 2011, two years before Prince George was born, the succession laws were changed to give sons and daughters equal right to be heir.
Charlotte, Princess of Cambridge
The first daughter of Prince William and Catherine, Princess Charlotte is fourth in line to the throne.
If her older brother Prince George has children, they will precede Princess Charlotte in the line of the succession.
Louis, Prince of Cambridge
The second son and third child of Prince William and Catherine, Prince Louis is fifth in line to the throne.
Thanks to the change to the laws in 2011, Prince Louis does not skip ahead of Princess Charlotte in the line.
Harry, Duke of Sussex
Prince Charles and Diana’s second son, Prince Harry is sixth in line to the throne.
Before the birth of his nephews and niece, Harry was as high third in line to the throne.
Harry and his wife Meghan currently retain their royal titles as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex despite being stripped of their royal patronages and honorary appointments.
The pair stepped back from their roles in March 2020 and have a fractured relationship with the royal family following their revealing interview with Oprah earlier this month.
Archie, Master Mountbatten-Windsor
The first child of Harry and Meghan, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor is seventh in line to the throne.
In their interview with Oprah, Meghan said Archie, who was born in May 2019, was denied the title of prince at his birth, something she suggested could be due to her biracial heritage.
Due to a declaration made by George V, Archie will become a prince when Prince Charles becomes king, as he will then be the son of a child of the monarch.
However, as king, Charles would have the power to issue decrees to extend or reduce the number of titles on offer.
Meghan and Harry also revealed in the Oprah interview that they are expecting a second child, a girl — who, when born, will be eighth in line to the throne.
Andrew, Duke of York
Prince Andrew, the second son and third child of Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II, is eighth in line to the throne.
He overtakes his older sister Princess Anne as an heir because the laws of succession gave preference to male children before they were changed in 2011.
Prince Andrew withdrew from public duties in November 2019 after a disastrous interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Duke of York had come under increasing scrutiny after footage was published in August 2019 by UK tabloid the Mail On Sunday showing him at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2010, two years after Epstein had been convicted and jailed after pleading guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, said Epstein forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew at a London apartment in 2001 when she was 17.
Prince Andrew has previously denied any inappropriate relations with Ms Giuffre and said during the BBC interview he had “no recollection” of ever meeting her.
Last year, the Duke’s legal team denied claims he was not cooperating with US authorities’ investigation into Epstein and possible accomplices.
END OF ARTICLE
INDIANEXPRESS.COMAFTER QUITTING ROYAL DUTIES, IS PRINCE HARRY STILL IN LINEOF SUCCESSION?
https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/after-quitting-royal-duties-is-prince-harry-still-in-line-of-succession-7197107/
Queen Elizabeth II wrote in a statement that Harry and Meghan’s honorary military appointment and royal patronages would be returned
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have confirmed they will not return as working royals.
Queen Elizabeth II wrote in a statement that Harry and Meghan’s honorary military appointment and royal patronages would be returned, Buckingham Palace informed, mentioned Independent.
Prince Harry and Meghan, who are expecting their second child, will remain “committed to their duty and service to the UK and around the world”, regardless of their role in the royal family, a spokesperson was quoted as saying by the publication.
The decision to walk away from the royal roles means the couple will no longer be receiving any public funding nor will they be able to use their HRH titles. But does that mean Prince Harry will not be in the line of succession?
Turns out, Prince Harry will maintain his current position in line to the throne, which is sixth, the publication confirms. This is because the position is based on legislation. To remove one from the list, the government would have to intervene, historian and author Marlene Koenig was quoted as saying by Royal Central.
It was in 1936 that Edward VIII abdicated from the throne so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, who was an American divorcee. However, he could do this only with an act of the parliament.
Currently, Prince Charles is first in line with his wife Camilla.
END OF ARTICLE
HARPERSBAZAAR.COMTHE LINE OF SUCCESSION TO THE BRITISH THRONEEXPLAINED
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/g31928340/british-royals-line-of-succession/
The British line of succession delineates who will inherit the throne and become the king or queen of Great Britain. Queen Elizabeth II is the current monarch, having reigned for nearly seven decades. After the queen, her firstborn, Charles, Prince of Wales, will rule, followed by his firstborn, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and then his firstborn, Prince George. Still, where do other known royals like Princess Charlotte and Princess Beatrice fall in the line for the crown? Whether you’re watching the new season of The Crown or brushing up on your royal knowledge, scroll through to see how close your favorite royals are to becoming the heir to the throne.
1
PRINCE CHARLES
The Prince of Wales is first in line to succeed his mother, Queen Elizabeth.
2
PRINCE WILLIAM
3
PRINCE GEORGE
The six-year-old royal–as the firstborn to Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge–is third in line to the British throne.
4
PRINCESS CHARLOTTE
As the second-born of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the four-year-old princess is fourth in line to the throne.
5
PRINCE LOUIS
Prince Louis, the one-year-old son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, is the fifth in line to the throne.
6
PRINCE HARRY
Should none of the Cambridges become the next monarch of Great Britain, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, will become the heir.
7
MASTER ARCHIE MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR
As the firstborn to Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Master Archie is seventh in line to the throne.
8
DUCHESS MEGHAN AND PRINCE HARRY’S SECONDCHILD
In February, the Sussexes announced that they are expecting their second child together. This new addition to the family changes the line of succession, with the future royal coming in at eighth in line to the throne.
9
PRINCE ANDREW
The third child of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Duke of York is ninth in the line of succession.
10
PRINCESS BEATRICE
As the eldest daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York, Princess Beatrice is next in line after her father.
11
PRINCESS EUGENIE
Princess Eugenie is the next in line to the British throne after her eldest sister, Princess Beatrice.
12
PRINCESS EUGENIE’S SON
The son and first child of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, whose name has not yet been revealed, follows his royal mother as the 12th person in line for the throne.
13
PRINCE EDWARD
As the youngest son to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Earl of Wessex comes in at 13th in line to the throne.
14
JAMES, VISCOUNT SEVERN
As the only son of Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, James, Viscount Severn, is next in line after his father.
15
LADY LOUISE WINDSOR
Lady Louise, the eldest child of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, is next in line after her brother, James.
16
ANNE, PRINCESS ROYAL
As the second-eldest child of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Princess Royal is the 16th in line to the throne.
[17]
PETER PHILIPS
Peter Phillips is the oldest grandchild of the queen and the only son of Princess Anne. He is 17th in line to the throne.
[18]
SAVANNAH PHILIPS
Savannah is the eldest child of Peter and Autumn Phillips, making her the first great-grandchild of Queen Elizabeth and the 18th in line to the throne.
[19]
ISLA PHILIPS
Isla is the second child of Peter and Autumn Phillips, and is the 19th in line to the throne.
20
ZARA TINDELL
As the daughter of Princess Anne, Tindall is 20th in line to the throne.
END OF THE ARTICLE
[4]
WEBSITE ASTRID ESSEDPRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE
ALSO:
PRINCE HARRY AND HIS BRIDE MEGHAN MARKLE/CONGRATULATIONSTO THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF SUSSEXASTRID ESSED23 MAY 2018
https://www.astridessed.nl/prince-harry-and-his-bride-meghan-markle-congratulations-to-the-duke-and-duchess-of-sussex/
[5]
”Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the western European population at the time, with lactose intolerance, probably with light-coloured eyes (most likely green but could be blue or hazel), dark brown or black hair, and dark to black skin”
WIKIPEDIACHEDDAR MAN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Man
NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMCHEDDAR MAN: MESOLITHIC BRITAIN’S BLUE EYED BOY
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html
Ancient DNA from Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 at Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, has helped Museum scientists paint a portrait of one of the oldest modern humans in Britain.
Cheddar Man lived around 10,000 years ago and is the oldest almost complete skeleton of our species, Homo sapiens, ever found in Britain.
New research into ancient DNA extracted from the skeleton has helped scientists to build a portrait of Cheddar Man and his life in Mesolithic Britain.
The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that some of the earliest modern human inhabitants of Britain may not have looked the way you might expect.
Dr Tom Booth is a postdoctoral researcher working closely with the Museum’s human remains collection to investigate human adaptation to changing environments.
‘Until recently it was always assumed that humans quickly adapted to have paler skin after entering Europe about 45,000 years ago,’ says Tom. ‘Pale skin is better at absorbing UV light and helps humans avoid vitamin D deficiency in climates with less sunlight.’
However, Cheddar Man has the genetic markers of skin pigmentation usually associated with sub-Saharan Africa.
This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe.
The model of Cheddar Man rendered by Kennis & Kennis Reconstructions features in the Channel 4 television documentary The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man © Tom Barnes/Channel 4
‘He is just one person, but also indicative of the population of Europe at the time,’ says Tom. ‘They had dark skin and most of them had pale colored eyes, either blue or green, and dark brown hair.’
‘Cheddar Man subverts people’s expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go together,’ he adds.
‘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.’
Who was Cheddar Man?
Cheddar Man was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer (fully modern human) with dark skin and blue eyes. He was about 166 centimetres tall and died in his twenties.
His skeleton was uncovered in 1903 during improvements to drainage for Gough’s Cave, a popular tourist attraction.
When he was first found, there were claims that Cheddar Man was the long-sought earliest Englishman, with exaggerated dates of 40,000-80,000 years. But subsequent radiocarbon dating from the 1970s onwards suggests he lived around 10,000 years ago.
His skeleton shows a narrow pelvis shape. It’s uncertain whether a hole in his forehead was from an infection or from damage at the time of excavation.
Like all humans across Europe at the time, Cheddar Man was lactose intolerant and was unable to digest milk as an adult.
At the time Cheddar Man was alive, Britain was attached to continental Europe and the landscape was becoming densely forested.
‘Cheddar Man belonged to a group of people who were mainly hunter gatherers,’ says Tom. ‘They were hunting game as well as gathering seeds and nuts and living quite complex lives.’
In addition to seeds and nuts, his diet would have consisted of red deer, aurochs (large wild cattle) along with some freshwater fish.
Cultural life in Mesolithic Britain
While Cheddar Man was not found with any recorded animal or cultural remains, other Mesolithic sites offer clues about his diet and the kind of cultural life he may have been part of.
Star Carr was a Mesolithic settlement in North Yorkshire that predates Cheddar Man by around 1,000 years.
There, archaeologists uncovered red deer skull-caps (which may have been worn as headdresses), semiprecious stones including amber, hematite and pyrite and an engraved shale pendant known as the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain.
While impossible to say for certain, similar kinds of objects may have been familiar to Cheddar Man.
An unusual cave burial
Most of the Mesolithic human remains that date to this period were discovered in caves and there is a strong tradition of cave burial in the region.
‘About a mile up the road from where Cheddar Man was found, there is another cave known as Aveline’s Hole which is one of the biggest Mesolithic cemeteries in Britain. Archaeologists found the remains of about 50 individuals, all deposited over a short period of 100-200 years,’ says Tom.
Cheddar Man’s case is quite unusual because at a time when communal burials were common, he was found buried alone.
‘He was recovered from sediment but it wasn’t clear whether he had been buried or just covered in sediment over time by natural mineral deposits in the cave,’ says Tom.
‘So he could have been special, or he may just have curled up and died there.’
According to several Victorian accounts, a large quantity of bones, teeth of extinct animals, flint knives and bone instruments were, unfortunately, wheelbarrowed out from the site and discarded. Some must have been from earlier occupations of the cave but it is possible some would have held additional clues about the life of Cheddar Man and other humans who once lived in the region.
A fresh take on ancient DNA
Coaxing data from ancient DNA can be painstaking work. Dr Selina Brace specialises in ancient DNA at the Museum and worked closely on Cheddar Man.
‘Ancient DNA doesn’t necessarily mean that the specimen you’re working with is thousands of years old,’ Selina explains. ‘It just means that the DNA is degraded.’
As soon as an organism dies, DNA begins to break down. Temperature and humidity also make a big difference to the quality of data that it’s possible to extract.
The consistently cool conditions of Gough’s Cave and layers of natural mineral deposits both helped preserve Cheddar Man’s DNA.
Selina explains the process used to obtain Cheddar Man’s DNA:
‘To extract ancient DNA from a human or animal what you’re looking for is a dense bone which might have protected the DNA inside it as much as possible.’
‘We used to use leg bones or teeth as the thick bones and enamel keep DNA quite intact, but in the last two years we’ve shifted to using the petrous, or inner ear bone, which is the densest bone in the human body,’ she says.
‘However it isn’t a golden egg,’ cautions Selina. ‘You can still fail to retrieve useful DNA. But if the body was deposited in a good environment, where there was a cool and constant temperature then the petrous bone is a good place to find useful ancient DNA.’
The skull of Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton of a human found in Britain
After extracting the DNA Selina and the team used next-generation shotgun sequencing, which involves defining millions of fragments of DNA distributed randomly across the genome, to create a library of Cheddar Man’s DNA and map what they found against a modern human genome.
‘We had a lot of genetic data but you have to kind of know what you’re looking for,’ says Tom. ‘I had taken a recreational DNA test that looked specifically at physical traits, and they had helpfully listed the markers they use to come up with their assessments.’
‘We were able to send that list of markers to our own bioinformatics lab to help us develop a portrait of Cheddar Man.’
Reconstructing Cheddar Man
The model of Cheddar Man was made by Kennis & Kennis Reconstructions who specialise in palaeontological reconstructions.
The artists took measurements of the skeleton, scanned the skull and 3D printed a base for their model.
‘Of course facial reconstruction is part art and part science,’ Tom says ‘but there are some standards of how thick the tissue is in different regions of people’s faces so they can use those conventions to develop the morphology of the face.’
END OF ARTICLE
”’He is just one person, but also indicative of the population of Europe at the time,’ says Tom. ‘They had dark skin and most of them had pale colored eyes, either blue or green, and dark brown hair.’
‘Cheddar Man subverts people’s expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go together,’ he adds.
‘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.’NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMCHEDDAR MAN: MESOLITHIC BRITAIN’S BLUE EYED BOY
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html
SEE FOR THE WHOLE TEXT IMMEDIATELY ABOVE
BBCCHEDDERMAN:DNA SHOWS EARLY BRITON HAD DARK SKIN23 FEBRUARY 2018
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42939192
A cutting-edge scientific analysis shows that a Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin and blue eyes.
Researchers from London’s Natural History Museum extracted DNA from Cheddar Man, Britain’s oldest complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903.
A University College London team analysed the genome, and the results were used for a facial reconstruction.
It underlines the fact that the lighter skin characteristic of modern Europeans is a relatively recent phenomenon.
No prehistoric Briton of this age had previously had their genome analysed.
As such, the analysis provides valuable new insights into the first people to resettle Britain after the last Ice Age.
The analysis of Cheddar Man’s genome – the “blueprint” for a human, contained in the nuclei of our cells – will be published in a journal, and will also feature in the upcoming Channel 4 documentary The First Brit, Secrets Of The 10,000-year-old Man.
‘Cheddar George’ tweet on early Briton
Cheddar Man’s remains had been unearthed 115 years ago in Gough’s Cave, located in Somerset’s Cheddar Gorge. Subsequent examination has shown that the man was short by today’s standards – about 5ft 5in – and probably died in his early 20s.
Prof Chris Stringer, the museum’s research leader in human origins, said: “I’ve been studying the skeleton of Cheddar Man for about 40 years
“So to come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like – and that striking combination of the hair, the face, the eye colour and that dark skin: something a few years ago we couldn’t have imagined and yet that’s what the scientific data show.”
Fractures on the surface of the skull suggest he may even have met his demise in a violent manner. It’s not known how he came to lie in the cave, but it’s possible he was placed there by others in his tribe.
The Natural History Museum researchers extracted the DNA from part of the skull near the ear known as the petrous. At first, project scientists Prof Ian Barnes and Dr Selina Brace weren’t sure if they’d get any DNA at all from the remains.
But they were in luck: not only was DNA preserved, but Cheddar Man has since yielded the highest coverage (a measure of the sequencing accuracy) for a genome from this period of European prehistory – known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.
They teamed up with researchers at University College London (UCL) to analyse the results, including gene variants associated with hair, eye and skin colour.
Extra mature Cheddar
They found the Stone Age Briton had dark hair – with a small probability that it was curlier than average – blue eyes and skin that was probably dark brown or black in tone.
This combination might appear striking to us today, but it was a common appearance in western Europe during this period.
Steven Clarke, director of the Channel Four documentary, said: “I think we all know we live in times where we are unusually preoccupied with skin pigmentation.”
Prof Mark Thomas, a geneticist from UCL, said: “It becomes a part of our understanding, I think that would be a much, much better thing. I think it would be good if people lodge it in their heads, and it becomes a little part of their knowledge.”
Unsurprisingly, the findings have generated lots of interest on social media.
Cheddar Man’s genome reveals he was closely related to other Mesolithic individuals – so-called Western Hunter-Gatherers – who have been analysed from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary.
Dutch artists Alfons and Adrie Kennis, specialists in palaeontological model-making, took the genetic findings and combined them with physical measurements from scans of the skull. The result was a strikingly lifelike reconstruction of a face from our distant past.
Pale skin probably arrived in Britain with a migration of people from the Middle East around 6,000 years ago. This population had pale skin and brown eyes and absorbed populations like the ones Cheddar Man belonged to.
No-one’s entirely sure why pale skin evolved in these farmers, but their cereal-based diet was probably deficient in Vitamin D. This would have required agriculturalists to synthesise this essential nutrient in their skin using sunlight.
“There may be other factors that are causing lower skin pigmentation over time in the last 10,000 years. But that’s the big explanation that most scientists turn to,” said Prof Thomas.
Boom and bust
The genomic results also suggest Cheddar Man could not drink milk as an adult. This ability only spread much later, after the onset of the Bronze Age.
Present-day Europeans owe on average 10% of their ancestry to Mesolithic hunters like Cheddar Man.
Britain has been something of a boom-and-bust story for humans over the last million-or-so years. Modern humans were here as early as 40,000 years ago, but a period of extreme cold known as the Last Glacial Maximum drove them out some 10,000 years later.
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”No-one’s entirely sure why pale skin evolved in these farmers, but their cereal-based diet was probably deficient in Vitamin D. This would have required agriculturalists to synthesise this essential nutrient in their skin using sunlight.
“There may be other factors that are causing lower skin pigmentation over time in the last 10,000 years. But that’s the big explanation that most scientists turn to,” said Prof Thomas.”BBCCHEDDERMAN:DNA SHOWS EARLY BRITON HAD DARK SKIN23 FEBRUARY 2018
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42939192
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL UTRECHTA DESCENDANT OF CHEDDAR MAN PAYS A VISIT TO IBDPENGLISH B
https://www.isutrecht.nl/2018/10/a-descendant-of-cheddar-man-pays-a-visit-to-ibdp-english-b/
This week, Diploma Programme Language B students were in luck to receive a special visitor: arguably the most famous of Cheddar Man’s descendants, Adrian Targett from Cheddar, UK. He is a former history teacher and happens to be in the Netherlands to visit his cousin—my partner’s mother who is half British and Dutch.
DP1 English Language B students were eager to meet him and ask questions. During the 40-minute session they heard stories about how Adrian found out about being a descendant and how the discovery has affected his life. “It’s been an incredible opportunity to get to visit different places and speak to people about this,” he stated.
“Does it change the way you think about yourself?” one student asked. “Not at all. If you think about it, I’m not any different from any of you. We all have relatives from 10,000 years ago. It just so happens that I know one of mine.”
Linguistic fluency and intercultural understanding
This year at ISUtrecht, we started our first cohort of IBDP English B Higher Level students, just in time for the new Language B syllabus. Changes to the syllabus include five new themes (Identities, Experiences, Human Ingenuity, Social Organisation, and Sharing the Planet) instead of the “core” and “options” structure previously used. Assessments are also slightly different—the externally-marked written response (Paper 1) and internally-marked individual speaking component are now worth 25% each, whilst externally-marked comprehension tasks (reading and listening in Paper 2) comprise 50% of the total score.
The aim of the course is to build linguistic fluency and intercultural understanding so that students can expand their cultural competence in a globalised world. Students who successfully complete English B, along with a Group 1 course in another language (Dutch Language and Literature or self-study literature) are able to receive a bilingual diploma.
The role of DNA in our identity
While our class has been exploring the first theme of “Identities” and what it means to be human, we encountered a variety of riveting topics for discussion: personality traits (Myers-Briggs), cultural iceberg theory, individualist vs collectivist societies, LGBT, race, and belief.
During an activity about race & identity, students completed a comprehension carousel about three texts on genetics and identity: one about the role of DNA in our identity, another on implications of genetic studies for white nationalists, and lastly about DNA testing on Cheddar Man, Britain’s oldest complete skeleton from the Mesolithic era (circa 9100 BP). Additional information can be found here about Cheddar Man from the British National History Museum.
While we all looked at the latest reconstruction of Cheddar Man—with dark skin, blue eyes, and curly hair—our visitor says, “It’s marvelous what scientists can reconstruct once they sequence the DNA. They can even determine the amount of fat in your cheeks. I do see a resemblance. My hair was blond when I was your age, but certainly curly like that. And of course my eyes are blue.”
“Has there been an impact on your privacy?”, one of the students want to know. While at the beginning of the media frenzy, Adrian was bombarded by various news outlets such as BBC, New York Times asking for interviews—to the point that he had to disconnect his telephone—he feels that his privacy is still intact. Ardrian: “You can decide what you want to tell people. Cheddar is a small community, so everyone knows each other anyway.”
Dealing with the media
Another student wondered, “How did it affect your classes when you were teaching?” Adrian commented: “It was a bit of a novelty for 2 to 3 days, but then we returned to normal. The discovery did entice students to become more motivated to learn about ancient history. In the first couple of weeks, there would be an occasional television crew outside of the school building.”
He shared a story about how he dealt with the media. During one television interview in 1997 with Karel van de Graaf in the Netherlands, he was taken aback by one question about the royal family in the UK. At the time, the Prince of Wales (Charles) was separating from Princess Diana. The interviewer asked, “You’ve got the longest proven English family tree. As we’ve all heard, the royal family isn’t getting on very well at the moment. Don’t you think, therefore, you should be king?”
“Now, this is essentially a live show, and you’ve got to react to it. So I said, ‘I’d rather carry on as a history teacher in Cheddar, and let the Queen be the queen. It’s what we’ve been trained for’.”
“Smart answer,” one student responded among the uproar of laughs.
‘We’ve all come from somewhere’
The latest DNA findings in February 2018 about Cheddar Man’s dark skin color has generated resistance, especially among nationalists and the far-right on the political spectrum. One congressional candidate in the US, for instance, was banned from Twitter after a racist meme about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, whose face was superimposed with Cheddar Man.
One student asked, “Did the findings in 2018 affect the way people think about race?”
“Yes, I do think it’s significant. Not many people in Cheddar mind it. But the lesson is that we’re all immigrants, whether you’ve been in a place for 10 minutes or 9,000 years. We’ve all come from somewhere.”
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”
How did Europeans develop paler skin?
The versions of the genes primarily responsible for lighter skin pigmentation in modern North-West Europeans arrive in Europe on the back of two waves of migration thousands of years after Cheddar Man died; one associated with Near Eastern farmers and another with pastoralists from the Pontic steppe10-12. In addition, there seems to have been ongoing natural selection favouring lighter skin pigmentation in Europe over the last 9,000 years, probably in relation to an increased need for UV induced vitamin D synthesis in the skin.”
NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUMCHEDDAR MAN FAQ
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our-work/origins-evolution-and-futures/human-adaptation-diet-disease/cheddar-man-faq.html
SEE FOR THE WHOLE ARTICLE, IMMEDIATELY BELOW
NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUMCHEDDAR MAN FAQ
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our-work/origins-evolution-and-futures/human-adaptation-diet-disease/cheddar-man-faq.html
If you’ve watched the Channel 4 documentary The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man, or read about the Museum’s research into Cheddar Man, you may have some further questions you’d like answered.
Here are our researchers’ responses to some of the most popular queries they’ve received.
How can DNA survive 10,000 years?
DNA can survive in bones and teeth for extraordinary lengths of time given the right environmental conditions. The oldest ancient DNA extracted to date is probably that from a horse bone which was preserved in the Canadian permafrost for over 550,000 years1. DNA survives less well in bones from temperate environments, but cave environments seem to provide some protection. Ancient DNA has been successfully extracted and analysed from 35,000 year-old human remains from Europe2. The good preservation of the DNA we retrieved from Cheddar Man is unusual, but not unexpected.
How do you know his skin colour?
We were able to extract enough information from Cheddar Man’s DNA to run it through a forensic tool that predicts differences in the level of skin pigmentation in modern world populations3. The results indicated that Cheddar Man’s skin pigmentation was most likely in one of the two most highly-pigmented of five categories (‘dark’ or ‘dark to black’), and definitely not in the lightest categories.
Is this a surprising finding?
No, not really. Previous studies of DNA from Mesolithic individuals recovered from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary identified that they also lacked the versions of genes associated with reduced skin pigmentation in modern, light-skinned Europeans4-6. We found that Cheddar man belonged to the same population as these individuals – usually referred to as western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers – so in that context his pigmentation is not unusual. However, we did predict how dark Cheddar Man’s skin was by examining variation in a wider range of genes related to skin pigmentation.
Will these findings be published in a peer-reviewed paper?
We are preparing a related paper for submission, but this paper is not exclusively about Cheddar Man. As previous studies had already suggested that darker skin pigmentation was common in western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the results from Cheddar Man are not novel enough by themselves to form the basis of a scientific paper. But finding that he was typical of that population was novel, and when put in the context of subsequent migrations into Britain, his genome becomes a valuable piece of the British population history jigsaw.
Is Cheddar Man actually an escaped slave or a tourist from Africa?
No! The bones of Cheddar Man have been radiocarbon dated twice, and on both occasions the results indicate that he died around 10,000 years ago7.
Are there any people with lighter skin pigmentation at this time?
Yes. Populations with the versions of genes primarily responsible for lighter skin pigmentation were living in parts of Scandinavia and western Asia at around the time Cheddar man was alive5,8-9.
How did Europeans develop paler skin?
The versions of the genes primarily responsible for lighter skin pigmentation in modern North-West Europeans arrive in Europe on the back of two waves of migration thousands of years after Cheddar Man died; one associated with Near Eastern farmers and another with pastoralists from the Pontic steppe10-12. In addition, there seems to have been ongoing natural selection favouring lighter skin pigmentation in Europe over the last 9,000 years, probably in relation to an increased need for UV induced vitamin D synthesis in the skin.
What is his mitochondrial DNA type?
Cheddar Man’s mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited exclusively down the maternal line, belongs to haplogroup U5b1. As this is only a tiny portion of an individual’s genome, and there have been several large-scale population movements in Europe and across the world since Cheddar Man was alive, this result has no relevance to his skin pigmentation, and says little about the distribution of this mitochondrial haplogroup amongst modern populations.
How do we calculate that 10% of British ancestry can be linked to Cheddar Man?
When we look at genetic variation in modern British people today, we find that – for those who do not have a recent history of migration – around 10% of their ancestry can be attributed to the ancient European population to which Cheddar Man belonged. This group is referred to as the western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. However, this ancestry does not relate specifically to Cheddar Man or the Mesolithic population of Britain. Well after Cheddar Man’s death, two large-scale prehistoric migrations into Britain produced significant population turnovers13. Both of these migrations into Britain represented westward extensions of population movements across Europe10-12. In both cases, these migrating populations intermixed with local people who carried western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry, as they moved across Europe. When these populations arrived in Britain they already had some hunter-gatherer ancestry derived from this mixing with local populations. Therefore the majority of western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers ancestry that we see in modern British people probably originates from populations who lived all over Europe during the Mesolithic, which was carried into Britain by these later migrations.
References
1Orlando, L., Ginolhac, A., Zhang, G., Froese, D., Albrechtsen, A., Stiller, M., Schubert, M., Cappellini, E., Petersen, B., Moltke, I. and Johnson, P.L. et al. 2013. Recalibrating Equus evolution using the genome sequence of an early Middle Pleistocene horse. Nature, 499(7456), p.74.
2Fu, Q., Posth, C., Hajdinjak, M., Petr, M., Mallick, S., Fernandes, D., Furtwängler, A., Haak, W., Meyer, M., Mittnik, A. and Nickel, B. et al. 2016. The genetic history of ice age Europe. Nature, 534(7606), p.200.
3Walsh, S., Chaitanya, L., Breslin, K., Muralidharan, C., Bronikowska, A., Pospiech, E., Koller, J., Kovatsi, L., Wollstein, A., Branicki, W. and Liu, F. et al. 2017. Global skin colour prediction from DNA. Human genetics, 136(7), pp.847-863.
4Olalde, I., Allentoft, M.E., Sánchez-Quinto, F., Santpere, G., Chiang, C.W., DeGiorgio, M., Prado-Martinez, J., Rodríguez, J.A., Rasmussen, S., Quilez, J. and Ramírez, O. et al. 2014. Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European. Nature, 507(7491), p.225.
5Jones, E.R., Gonzalez-Fortes, G., Connell, S., Siska, V., Eriksson, A., Martiniano, R., McLaughlin, R.L., Llorente, M.G., Cassidy, L.M., Gamba, C., Meshveliani, T. et al. 2015. Upper Palaeolithic genomes reveal deep roots of modern Eurasians. Nature communications, 6, p.8912.
6Gamba, C., Jones, E.R., Teasdale, M.D., McLaughlin, R.L., Gonzalez-Fortes, G., Mattiangeli, V., Domboróczki, L., Kővári, I., Pap, I., Anders, A., Whittle, A. et al. 2014. Genome flux and stasis in a five millennium transect of European prehistory. Nature communications, 5, p.5257.
7Meiklejohn, C., Chamberlain, A.T. & Schulting, R.J., 2011. Radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic human remains in Great Britain. Mesolithic Miscellany, 21(2), pp.20-58.
8Gallego-Llorente, M., Connell, S., Jones, E.R., Merrett, D.C., Jeon, Y., Eriksson, A., Siska, V., Gamba, C., Meiklejohn, C., Beyer, R. and Jeon, S., 2016. The genetics of an early Neolithic pastoralist from the Zagros, Iran. Scientific reports, 6, p.31326.
9Günther, T., Malmström, H., Svensson, E.M., Omrak, A., Sánchez-Quinto, F., Kılınç, G.M., Krzewińska, M., Eriksson, G., Fraser, M., Edlund, H. and Munters, A.R., 2018. Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation. PLoS biology, 16(1), p.e2003703.
10Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Llamas, B., Brandt, G., Nordenfelt, S., Harney, E., Stewardson, K. and Fu, Q. et al. 2015. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature, 522(7555), p.207.
11Allentoft, M.E., Sikora, M., Sjögren, K.G., Rasmussen, S., Rasmussen, M., Stenderup, J., Damgaard, P.B., Schroeder, H., Ahlström, T., Vinner, L. and Malaspinas, A.S., 2015. Population genomics of bronze age Eurasia. Nature, 522(7555), p.167.
12Mathieson, I., Lazaridis, I., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Patterson, N., Roodenberg, S.A., Harney, E., Stewardson, K., Fernandes, D., Novak, M. and Sirak, K., 2015. Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature, 528(7583), p.499.
13Olalde, I., Brace, S., Allentoft, M.E., Armit, I., Kristiansen, K., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Booth, T., Szécsényi-Nagy, A., Mittnik, A. and Altena, E., 2017. The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe. bioRxiv, pp.1-28.
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THE GUARDIANCHEDDAR MAN CHANGES THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT OURANCESTORS
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/10/cheddar-man-changed-way-we-think-about-ancestors
The study of a 10,000-year-old man surprised people when it revealed his blue eyes and dark skin – and few predicted he would reshape our view of our genetic heritage
In 1903 workmen digging a drainage trench in Gough’s Cave in the Cheddar Gorge, in Somerset, uncovered the remains of a young man, sealed under a stalagmite. The figure, feet curled up underneath him, was small, at about 5ft 5in, and would have weighed around 10 stone when he died in his early 20s. The cause of death has still not been determined by palaeontologists.
The skeleton’s antiquity was revealed when fossil experts dated his bones and realised that Cheddar Man, as he quickly became known, was almost 10,000 years old. This is still the oldest virtually complete skeleton that has been unearthed in the British Isles, although it is unclear whether the young man died in the cave or was brought there by fellow tribesmen and was then buried there.
His antiquity has since ensured his importance to historians and scientists who study how the British Isles were populated – a topic that went viral last week when geneticists published new research that showed the young man would have had black hair, blue eyes – and dark skin.
A great many widely held – but incorrect – assumptions about the expected pale-skinned, fair-featured nature of Britain’s founders were promptly overturned, to the rage of some commentators and the joy of many. “I just wish I knew about you when I was growing up and people asked me where I was ‘really’ from. North London, bruv,” the Labour MP David Lammy tweeted.
The news was certainly intriguing, for apart from revealing some home truths about the implications of how skin colour can change over time, the new research underlines some essential and unexpected features about the ancestry of the British people. According to one geneticist involved in the latest study of Cheddar Man, Mark Thomas of University College London (UCL), it is now clear that about 10% of our genes come from the mesolithic hunter-gatherer folk, of which Cheddar Man was a member.
“That does not mean that 10% of the British population today is descended directly from him,” cautioned Thomas. “It means that the average person in Britain today carries around 10% of the genes of these ancient hunter-gatherers.”
Thus the DNA of Cheddar Man shows there is a 10,000-year-old unbroken genetic lineage from people who inhabited Britain long before agriculture reached our shores to British men and women of today. We are not a nation of farmers (or shopkeepers, for that matter) but can trace our ancestry to nomadic hunters, who – 300 generations ago – carved antlers to make harpoons for fishing, used bows and arrows, and trained dogs that would have assisted them in the hunt for animals such as red deer, aurochs and boar, as well as protecting their masters from competing predators such as wolves.
Cheddar Man was a member of a population of nomadic hunters who thrived during the middle stone age, also known as the mesolithic age, about 10,000 years ago. These were the western European hunter-gatherers, whose remains have been found in Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary. Crucially, the DNA of these people also shows they had dark skin and blue eyes and were similar, genetically, to Cheddar Man.
At this time, Britain was a peninsula of northern Europe, linked by an area of land that now forms the seabed of the southern North Sea and the Channel. As a result, nomadic people, often following migrating animals, undertook frequent visits and made the most of the British landscape, which was then flourishing in the wake of the retreat of the glaciers that had covered the country a few thousand years earlier.
But change was at hand. Like the rest of the world, Europe was continuing to warm, and ice caps were melting, raising sea levels. Around 8,000 years ago, the last land connection between Britain and Europe – a stretch of terrain called Doggerland, which linked north Norfolk with Holland – was inundated. Britain became an island, and the few thousand individuals who were then roaming its forest and heaths in search of food were isolated. By accident, these hunter-gatherers became the founding mothers and fathers of Britain.’
It is an intriguing scenario which raises a host of questions. If these dark-haired, dark-skinned people were the nation’s founders, what happened to our complexions in the intervening millennia? What triggered the emergence of the pale aspect of the typical Brit?
Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London traces the cause to the first farmers who reached our shores around 6,000 years ago, as agriculture spread eastwards after its birth in the Middle East several thousand years earlier. “These farming people would have had relatively poor diets, based only on one or two cereal crops, and would have lacked vitamin D. By contrast, hunter-gatherers, although few in number, probably had very healthy diets with lots of fish and liver that were rich in vitamin D. Cheddar Man had very healthy teeth, which suggests a good diet, for example.”
Diets low in vitamin D would have had an impact on these early farmers, who would have developed soft bones, skeletal deformities and other problems. However, vitamin D is also created underneath our skin in response to sunlight. As a result, nutritionally deprived farming folk evolved lighter skin in order to boost their vitamin D, while gene variants for dark skin disappeared. Genes for lighter skin were brought to our shores by these farming people.
“Farming may have provided poorer diets in those days but it also allowed far greater numbers of people to live per acre of land compared to those who lived as hunter-gatherers,” added Stringer. “In other words, they had the numbers and so, once farming became established in Britain, the genes for lighter skin would have taken over the population.”
The existence of blue eyes, also revealed by the Cheddar Man geneticists, is more difficult to explain. “Using classic genetic surveys, it was thought that blue eyes first appeared in humans between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago,” said Thomas. “Now studies of ancient DNA are showing it was already well established in some populations.”
How it became established is not known, however, nor is it clear that it conferred any evolutionary advantage on those blessed with blue eyes.
“The continent was awash with migrations, and it may be that the trait was just picked up and passed on to us,” added Thomas.
This last point is also crucial. Ten or 20 years ago, many historians and archaeologists argued against the concept that new fashions and technologies, from metalworking to agriculture, were passed on as ideas and were not imported directly. “Genetics has shown this is simply not the case,” added Thomas. “It is now very clear that migration has been the standard agent for bringing about cultural change.”
This point was endorsed by Dr Richard Bates of St Andrews University. “When we do more of this kind of deep genetics, on other ancient remains, we are going to find an incredible diversity among the people of this time,” he said.
Our predecessors moved around a lot more, he added, and were able to move far greater distances than we have given them credit for until now.
“It is only when farming arrived that we became sedentary, and when that happened we also got the concept of land ownership and with it the idea of defence – and in its wake came conflicts,” said Bates. “It took generations to occur, and it happened in many other parts of the world. Nevertheless, it was the biggest social change that ever affected our species. The story of Cheddar Man gives us a feeling for the profundity of that change.”
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[6]
SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST MEGHAN MARKLE WITHSOME RACIST UNDERTONES/SOME DIRTY EXAMPLESASTRID ESSED17 JANUARY 2020
https://www.astridessed.nl/smear-campaign-against-meghan-markle-with-racist-undertones-some-dirty-examples/
TWITTER BANS GOP CONTENDER FOR RACIST TWEETTARGETING MEGHAN MARKLE13 FEBRUARY 2018
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/13/585339969/twitter-bans-gop-contender-for-racist-tweet-targeting-meghan-markle?t=1539888196041
Twitter has banned Paul Nehlen, a Republican challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan for a congressional seat, for a racist tweet targeting American actress Meghan Markle, the fiancée of Prince Harry.
This week, the Natural History Museum in London released images of Cheddar Man, a dark-skinned Mesolithic man believed to be one of the oldest modern humans in Britain. Nehlen posted the couple’s official engagement photo with Cheddar Man’s face superimposed on Markle’s, who is biracial. He captioned the tweet, “Honey does this tie make my face look pale?”
Harry and Markle, set to wed in May, have dealt extensively with online harassment. In 2016, months into their relationship, Harry released an official statement decrying the “racial undertones” of abuse targeted toward Markle.
The tweet is hardly Nehlen’s first instance of controversy. The politician has made waves for racist and anti-Semitic tweets in the past and proclaimed that “Jews control the media” on former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s podcast last month.
Nehlen “has spent months curating an image of a sometimes ironic, but most certainly sincere, white nationalist willing to say things intended to push populist nationalism into the discourse,” writes the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Twitter, which does not normally comment on individual accounts, confirmed to NPR that Nehlen was permanently suspended for repeated violations of its terms of service.
“And as we explained in our blog about world leaders on Twitter:We review Tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly,” a Twitter spokesperson told NPR. “No one person’s account drives Twitter’s growth, or influences these decisions. We work hard to remain unbiased with the public interest in mind.”
The company updated its policies late last year in an effort to reduce abusive and violent content.
“For Twitter, reining in abusive content has posed a challenge as the company has touted itself as the ultimate place for free speech and open debate,” reported NPR’s Alina Selyukh in 2016, noting that the 2016 presidential election cycle was “marked by a flood of sexist, racist, anti-Semitic and threatening commentary.”
“We will be filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in the coming days,” the self-avowed “Pro-White” candidate posted on his still-active Facebook account. “These are unprecedented, brazen acts of censorship.”
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[7]A STATEMENT BY THE COMMUNICATIONS SECRETARY TO PRINCE HARRY
https://www.royal.uk/statement-communications-secretary-prince-harry
Published 8 November 2016
Since he was young, Prince Harry has been very aware of the warmth that has been extended to him by members of the public. He feels lucky to have so many people supporting him and knows what a fortunate and privileged life he leads.
He is also aware that there is significant curiosity about his private life. He has never been comfortable with this, but he has tried to develop a thick skin about the level of media interest that comes with it. He has rarely taken formal action on the very regular publication of fictional stories that are written about him and he has worked hard to develop a professional relationship with the media, focused on his work and the issues he cares about.
But the past week has seen a line crossed. His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public – the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments. Some of it has been hidden from the public – the nightly legal battles to keep defamatory stories out of papers; her mother having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door; the attempts of reporters and photographers to gain illegal entry to her home and the calls to police that followed; the substantial bribes offered by papers to her ex-boyfriend; the bombardment of nearly every friend, co-worker, and loved one in her life.
Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subjected to such a storm. He knows commentators will say this is ‘the price she has to pay’ and that ‘this is all part of the game’. He strongly disagrees. This is not a game – it is her life and his.
He has asked for this statement to be issued in the hopes that those in the press who have been driving this story can pause and reflect before any further damage is done. He knows that it is unusual to issue a statement like this, but hopes that fair-minded people will understand why he has felt it necessary to speak publicly.
END OF THE STATEMENT OF
PRINCE HARRY
PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE SUE TABLOID/PRINCE HARRY DEFENDING HIS WIFE/THE ONLY HONOURABLE THING TO DO
ASTRID ESSED
2 OCTOBER 2019
[8]
WIKIPEDIA
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND/SYNOPSIS
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
[9]
SEE NOTE 6
[10]SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST MEGHAN MARKLE WITHSOME RACIST UNDERTONES/SOME DIRTY EXAMPLESASTRID ESSED17 JANUARY 2020
https://www.astridessed.nl/smear-campaign-against-meghan-markle-with-racist-undertones-some-dirty-examples/
OR