By Sean O'Neill. Daily Telegraph, March 8th 1997
This story got a lot of coverage, appearing in most of the newspapers. This is the Daily Telegraph's version. A similar treatment appeared in the Independent.
A HISTORY teacher was "overwhelmed" yesterday when scientists told him that he was a direct descendant of a hunter who lived in the Cheddar Gorge 9,000 years ago.
DNA from a tooth in the skull of Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton found in Britain, matched a DNA sample from the mouth of Adrian Targett, 42, a teacher at Kings of Wessex School, Cheddar, Somerset. The matching gene can only be passed on through the female line and its discovery established that Mr Targett descended from Cheddar Man's mother.
He said yesterday: "It is a very strange piece of news to receive. I'm not quite sure how I feel." Mr Targett, an only child who is married but has no children, took part in the experiment along with other staff and pupils at the school. He gave a mouth swab which was studied by scientists at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University, who have been studying Cheddar Man for two years and are preparing a genetic map of Britain.
"I was astonished when they said I was a descendant. I took part to make up the numbers," he said. "Appropriately enough, I am a history teacher but I have to admit I know next to nothing about Cheddar Man. It is not my period. I suppose I should try to include him in my family tree - but going back 9,000 years could take some time. My family have been in these parts for a long time. On my father's side they were farm labourers. In archaeological terms it is very important that this has happened, I am just astonished it has happened to me."
Mr Targett was born in Bristol but has lived in Cheddar since 1981. He and his wife, Catherine, 47, live several hundred yards from Cheddar Caves, where the fossilised remains of his ancestor were uncovered during drainage work in December 1903.
Richard Gough, the then cave owner, opened the site as a tourist attraction and the skeleton was put on display. It remained in Cheddar until the 1980s when the bones were taken to the Natural History Museum. Tests established that the skeleton was of a Mesolithic Man, who lived just after the end of the last Ice Age.
His environment was heavily forested and he probably belonged to a group which moved over a wide area, north to where Bristol is today and south along the Bristol Channel. The landscape would have been inhabited by deer, wild boar, wolves and bears and Cheddar Man would have lived by hunting animals, trapping birds and gathering wild plants. When he died, at a young age, he was given a ritual burial, his body folded into a crouch and placed in a round hole in the caves.
Further excavations have discovered many human remains, some up to 13,000 years old, but none as complete as Cheddar Man's. Dr Bryan Sykes, who discovered the genetic match, said although the discovery was not surprising in scientific terms, it remained an intriguing piece of research. "It is a fascinating demonstration of a direct link between ourselves and our prehistoric ancestors," he said.""We are revealing connections which go far beyond any written record."
He said it was extraordinary that the DNA had survived, but it was carefully extracted and sequenced. "The DNA is like a series of letters, you can check the spelling sequence against people who are living today," he said. "We can see clearly that Cheddar Man and Mr Targett share a close maternal ancestor."
Dr Sykes said the link undermined the theory that modern Europeans were largely descended from peoples who migrated from the East and brought farming techniques with them. "Cheddar Man lived well before the advent of farming and this discovery shows a clear link between us and hunter-gatherers," he said.
Prof Chris Stringer, principal researcher in human origins at the Natural History Museum, said he hoped Dr Sykes would be able to find and record DNA from older remains. Mr Targett's wife had the last word: "Perhaps this explains why he likes his steaks rare," she said.
Daily Telegraph, March 8th 1997