A walk in the woods: Sue Purkiss

Ironically, the beginning of the lockdown coincided with the beginning of spring - and with a spell of glorious sunny weather. I'm lucky enough to live on the slopes of the Mendip Hills, with the double bonus of a large garden, so I've been able to enjoy it: I know that many haven't.

I always love spring. Winters seem increasingly dreary, and so once the first crocus appears, I breathe a deep sigh of relief in the knowledge that the days are beginning to lengthen and life is about to begin again. So this year, as the lockdown began, I decided to post each day on Facebook a picture, usually of a flower, either from the garden or from my morning walk, to remind myself and others that life goes on and spring keeps on springing - it sounds trite, but I think this year in particular it's a useful message to hear.

Blackthorn blossom

A side effect has been that I've taken much more notice of what I'm seeing. I think, quite frankly, that I'm a bit dozy, and that any normal person would have noticed these things years ago. For instance, I've finally discovered the difference between blackthorn and hawthorn: with blackthorn, the blossom comes before the leaves, so it's much earlier. Hawthorn blossom comes after the leaves - now, in fact.


I've also noticed far more places on our hill where bluebells grow - I've always thought they were a rarity, but not so; if you only look, they're all over the place. But this is not the case with primroses. I've noticed in previous years that they're few and far between, and this was still the case this spring. One day, as I ambled through the wood, I wondered why this should be so. On Exmoor a couple of years ago we walked along the River Barle, and primroses were everywere along the river edge.

And that made me think of rivers. The Mendip countryside has so much, but it doesn't have rivers like the Barle on Exmoor or the Dwyfor in North Wales. And that must be at least in part because the Mendips are made of porous limestone - so the water sinks down underground, and that's where it spends much of its time, meandering through caves and 'caverns measureless to man' (thank you, Coleridge), before it emerges at, for example, the bottom of Cheddar Gorge or in the gardens of the Bishop's Palace in Wells.

Cheddar Gorge

So, still wandering through the woods with an eye out for primroses, I started to think about that. And it struck me that this geological circumstance has had an enormous part to play in the settlement and history of this area. Cheddar Gorge itself, for instance. (With a little research, I've found out more about how its actual formation was due not just to glaciation but to the limesone - but stay with me here, I'm still back in the wood, just thinking.) The underwater rivers created the caves, which were to be used by people at least 9000 years ago: one of them was famously buried there, and his skeleton is now in the British Museum; astonishingly, one of his direct descendants still lives in Cheddar. The skulls of others, more disturbingly, have marks on them which suggest cannibalism. So presumably the caves played a part in the origin of Cheddar as a settlement; they must have been a place of safety. (Well, except, obviously, if you were the original owner of one of the cannibalised skulls.)

The reconstructed face of the ancient skeleton, and his modern descendant, Adrian Targett - who, very fittingly, is a retired history teacher.

And then there's Wells, which must have a claim to being one of the smallest, but most beautiful cities anywhere. There is something special about Wells. I'm not particularly spiritual - you won't catch me in a druidical cloak or a goddess's garland - but when I go to Wells, it makes me feel better. I don't know why, but it does. Very noticeably.

Water in the Bishops' Palace Gardens

And perhaps Wells is actually there because, thousands of years ago, people came across the three wells where water emerges from its long journey underground, anmd thought that here was something that was not only useful, but also magical. Those wells still exist; one is in the market place, the other two are in the grounds of the cathedral, nor the Bishop's Palace Gardens. Because of them, the city is where it is; because of them, it became a spiritual centre where eventually one of the loveliest cathdrals in Britain was built. And now, those wells form the centrepiece of an enchanting garden, which provides pleasure and spiritual sustenance to those who visit it. At the moment, of course, there are no visitors. Its springtime glory - the banks by the moat sprinkled with cyclamen, narcissi, crocuses and primroses; the tulips in the quiet garden; the snowdrops, bluebells and orchids in the orchard - they're all still blooming, of course, but not, this year, for us.

So where am I going on this ramble? Well, first, the extent to which the geography of a place shapes its subsequent history has never been so clear to me. It should have been; there's nothing remotely new about what I'm saying, and I'm sure that somewhere, a geography teacher is sighing in despair.

And secondly - forgive me for stating the obvious. But perhaps nothing makes you quite so aware of something as when there is a possibility that you might lose it. Perhaps this awful pandemic will be a wake-up call. Perhaps this closer relationship with nature which many of us have experienced -  whether it leads to a discovery of the blindingly obvious or to people making pesto from wild garlic -  will have an effect, long after the pandemic is over. Perhaps we will become more careful stewards of this extraordinary world.

Hope so.

Who do you think you are? By Sue Purkiss

Cheddar Gorge

Nine thousand years ago, a young man was buried near the entrance of a cave in Cheddar Gorge. He and his people were hunter gatherers: reindeer, boar and wild horses roamed over the Mendips at the time, and berries and nuts would have been plentiful. Archaeological evidence found in the cave strongly suggests that he and his tribe were cannibals. He died violently, from a blow to the head, but whether he was murdered, or killed in some sort of ritual, or whether his death was the result of an accident, is uncertain. He really was a very silent witness. Or so it seemed...

His skeleton was discovered in 1903. The oldest complete skeleton to have been found in Britain, it's in the Natural History Museum now, but a replica allows you to see how he looked when he was found; curled up, his head turned upwards, gazing at those who gaze at him, wondering perhaps who these strangers are.

But fifteen years ago, by the strangest of chances, something happened which showed that he is not so alone after all - that, in fact, he has a relative, a direct descendant, living within a couple of miles of his ancestral cave. He has family.

It happened like this.

In 1997, a programme on archaeology in Somerset was being made. It occurred to someone that it might just be possible to to extract DNA from Cheddar Man, as the skeleton was fondly known. And so it proved. Mitrochondrial DNA  - which is inherited through the maternal line - was found in one of the skeleton's tooth cavities. The next step was to take DNA from some contemporary inhabitants of the village, and compare the two. Perhaps something might be learned - anyhow, it would make good television.

Adrian and his ancestor

It was agreed that samples should be taken from a randomly chosen class at the local secondary school. On the day, someone was away - so the teacher agreed to make up the numbers. As it happened, he was a history teacher, named Adrian Targett.

Soon, that name was to become known all round the world. Because unbelievably, it turned out that Adrian was a direct descendant of Cheddar Man. Think of it: Christ lived 2000 years ago; 2500 years before that, the Egyptians were building the Great Pyramid. 4500 years before that, Cheddar Man hunted on the Mendips. And through all those centuries, all those long years from the stone age to the silicon age, the line from him to Adrian continued unbroken. (Though Adrian himself moved to Cheddar when he got the job at the school - he actually came all the way from Bristol, eighteen miles away. Which makes the chance that he should have been tested even more of a fluke.)

According to Charles Arthur, writing in The Independent on 8th March 1997: 'The link between Cheddar Man and Adrian Targett easily outstrips the existing record for distant ancestors. The oldest previously recorded relative was the great-great-great-great grandfather of Confucius, who lived in the 8th century BC. Two of Confucius' 85th lineal male descendants today live in Taiwan.' Adrian's lineage is incomparably more venerable than that of the royal family.

Adrian was immensely tickled to find how close he was living to his family's ancestral home. He had a fantastic time after the discovery: he was interviewed for newspapers and TV all over the world. And ever since, of course, he's become Cheddar Man to his pupils (two of whom were my sons). I thought of all this when I bumped into him the other day. But there is more.

Up until this discovery, the accepted truth was that modern Europeans were descended, not from the ancient  hunter gatherers, but from farmers who had left the Middle East in a 1066-like wave 6000 years ago, arriving in Britain several hundred years later. But now this seems not to be the case: Adrian cannot be the only person to have descended from the hunter gatherers. So that assumption was probably wrong: how many other huge historical assumptions have been similarly mistaken?

So - lessons? Question assumptions, no matter how entrenched they are. Truth, yet again, is proven to be much more far-fetched than fiction. Family endures. And your ancestors - and mine - may very well be cannibals...