LONDON - A history teacher in south-western England discovered yesterday that he was a direct descendant of a hunter gatherer who lived in the same area some 9,000 years ago during the Stone Age.
Mr Adrian Targett has been shown by DNA tests to be related through the female line of descent to Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton ever found in Britain and now probably the world's most distant confirmed relative.
DNA was found in the pulp cavity of one of Cheddar Man's molar teeth by Dr Bryan Sykes, of Oxford University's Institute of Molecular Medicine, and then compared with the genetic make-up of 20 people living, in, the area.
Dr Sykes said that the two men "would have shared a common ancestor about 10,000 years ago, so they are related just not very closely".