Seriously though, it's pretty wild, the Wikipedia page about him doesn't show this reconstruction of his face, and includes a lengthy paragraph about "ongoing debate as to how Cheddar Man's skin pigmentation should be reconstructed". Needless to say, it's unlikely anyone would think twice if the researchers had found that he had pale skin.

Apparently the very idea that people in Neolithic Europe were Black is just too much for some Very Rational™ people to handle!

@InvaderXan I've been in those caves and spent a lot of time in the area. Cheddar Man has direct descendents in the area! a lot of little Englanders did not like that fact

@CornishRepublicanArmy Yeah, I remember going there when I was just a little kid. It's a pretty place!

Though it's also the kind of place I'd describe as extremely white, so I guess the absurd reaction isn't exactly unexpected.

@InvaderXan yeah, Somerset and Cornwall are EXTREMELY damn white. I took a friend of mine around a bunch of places in the south west I like, his grandparents are Jamacian aaaaand 😬 we had a LOT of 'incidents'

@CornishRepublicanArmy Being a little mixed race kid in Devon was... interesting.

@CornishRepublicanArmy @InvaderXan the way little Englanders view history is so fucked.

Their worldview literally can't accept that anglos aren't native to the islands.

@GreenandBlack @InvaderXan Anglos stole my great great ×50 grandparents hillfort 😔

@CornishRepublicanArmy @InvaderXan Make Britain a loose confederation of decentralized communities again!

@InvaderXan so sad to think that Cheddar Man would never have gotten to enjoy a nice bit of Cheddar cheese, both due to his lactose intolerance and also by predating cheese by around a thousand years.

@alex @InvaderXan he might have been able to enjoy some aged cheddar! the harder and older a cheese gets the less lactose is present.

@glitterwitch @alex Interestingly, we have no idea when, or even where cheese was first made. It may have come from West Asia or North Africa. I remember reading the oldest known cheese making equipment was around 8000 years old, but it's usually a safe bet that if something was widespread enough for us to find traces of it, it was probably going on for much longer before that.

So who knows!

@InvaderXan @alex I always went with the theory that it came from some herding folks who were storing milk in a bag made from a stomach. i always assumed it was somewhere in Africa or the Near/ Middle East but I haven't boned up on my cheese history lately!

@glitterwitch @alex Yeah, from what I've read, that seems the most likely explanation.

@InvaderXan @glitterwitch @alex alright, but who was the first person to see the curdled mess inside and say "Fuck it, I'm going to try it anyway, I - hmm. This is pretty nice actually. Hey guys! GUYS! Try this, it's - no, it looks disgusting but actually - hey come back! Where are you going?"

@RedFuture @InvaderXan @glitterwitch @alex "hungrier than the first person who ate an artichoke", as some say

@matias93 @InvaderXan @glitterwitch @alex Damn that's hungry

@InvaderXan it's kind of frustrating how many wikipedia articles go out of their way to coddle the feelings of bigots

@amandag Unfortunately, I think a lot of those articles are written by the bigots. Bigots with too much time on their hands. Possibly the biggest downside to Wikipedia's anyone-can-edit-freely model.

@InvaderXan This is indeed amusing 😃

@InvaderXan Nothing against your point, but to clarify: Since this is an artist's reconstruction, afaik even a freely licensed image of it could not be included in the article as long as the piece of art itself hasn't been released under a free license or entered public domain.

@InvaderXan Racists gonna be racist. Also, it shouldn't matter which color or exact tone nuance was his skin, 'cause all of us descend from black African hominidae, if someone cares about that.

@tagomago Apparently, a great many people care. So the color of his skin is important.

@carl If they care about the Cheddar Man skin tone, they must care about their ancestors' too, because they didn't come from outer space. Well, actually some of them believe that too...

@InvaderXan
Why I learn by visiting Stonehenge archaeological site, and some other sources, is, that it was made in several steps, both from pre-Celtic civilisations. The first one, 3500~2800BC, the second one is from 2800~2100BC and the third 2000~1100BC

People, from all Europe and Mediteranean bounds already come at this site at this time. It's main role was probably winter solstice for death, not summer one for live (the time everyone come now) :).

@InvaderXan the wildest thing is that someone related to him still lives in the town! Adrian targett was a history teacher there. 300 generations in a geographical area of maybe 10 miles. it's so wild. Mesolithic ppl with lactose intolerance makes so much sense when you think about the introduction of domestic cattle and pastoralism as a neolthic practice only introduced 3000 years later

@knownrobes @InvaderXan he looks so chuffed.

@knownrobes @InvaderXan Actually, not needing to digest lactose after weaning (~4 y.o. for humans) is normal. Lactase not being switched off after that time was a lucky mutation for those, who had domestic cattle.

@InvaderXan

> Though the fact that he was lactose intolerant also feels pretty ironic.

Why ironic? Many types of cheeses (including cheddar) are naturally low in lactose.

@ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan Just adding: "Us" being humankind. Most of humankind does not need the ability to digest lactose after weaning.

@carl @InvaderXan yes. but i'm meaning that in the contemporary, and maybe im wrong, but specifically ppl of afro descent are often lactose intolerant.

i dont know nearly as many white folks who are vs blk folks.

@ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan The whole spectrum of lactose digestion ability is present in Black people, them being the ancestors of all humans. Massai or other cattle pastoralist Black people can digest lactose as adults. AFAIK Asian people do not retain the ability to digest lactose. Only some white people do, and not even all of them.

@carl yes i understand that

but i am only talking about black people.

@carl @ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan I'm not sure, but I remember reading that lactose tolerance evolved several times in Africa, Asia and Europe, so the only continent without local milk-drinking peoples would be the Americas and the Pacific Islands, due to their comparatively super fast population process and the lack of suitable cattle. But as you say, it's an spectrum and this is a simplification.

@matias93 @ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan Without knowing myself, it seems pretty likely that such a useful mutation for cattle-herders would evolve several times.
Then again, the human norm is not to have it, it just happens that white people (which are a minority) have it overproportionally.

@carl @ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan the result of a lot of herders moving west and getting into a geographical dead end until 500 years ago

@ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan To spin this further, this time language:
"intolerant" implies an illness, outside the norm. But the actual norm for humans is different, so white europeans decided that their mutation of lactase regulation was "normal".
It is always fun to call white people melanine-deficient which subtly changes the power of definition of "normal" in the medical sense.

@carl @ArtistMarciaX @InvaderXan adult-retention lactose tolerance 🙃

@ljwrites I like this! Headcanon accepted! ☀️

@wenom Honestly, I kinda thought the same thing! Also, that combination of dark skin and green eyes? Gosh 💚

@InvaderXan @wenom also, a fantastic work by the sculptor(s), a field that has advanced a lot, from merely reproducing the sites of flesh to generate a lifelike image based on evidence. It's art as well as science :)

@wmd 💚

@InvaderXan the article is certainly a hot potato. lots of edits and revert stuff :)