Stonehenge was built by black people, a new children’s history book claims.
Readers of Brilliant Black British History, by Nigerian-born British author Atinuke, are told that the Neolithic monument in Wiltshire was built while Britain was a ‘black country’.
The book, which is aimed at children aged seven and over, also tells readers that ‘every Briton is descended from a migrant’ and that ‘the very first Britons were black’.
The introduction adds that Britain ‘has been largely a white country for far less time than it has been largely a black country’.
Atinuke also claims that the remains of the 10,000-year-old Cheddar Man belonged to someone with “skin as dark as dark can be.”
Stonehenge was built by black people, a new children’s history book claims. Readers of Brilliant Black British History, by Nigerian-born British author Atinuke, are told that the Neolithic monument in Wiltshire was built while Britain was a ‘black country’
Stonehenge, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, was built about 5,000 years ago by Neolithic Britons
A facial reconstruction of Cheddar Man depicted him with dark skin in 2018, although an expert involved in the project insisted it was a “probable profile” rather than a certainty.
Brilliant Black British History is published by Bloomsbury and promoted by the literacy organization The Book Trust, which is itself funded by the Arts Council.
The book takes the reader through an overview of the presence of black people in Britain.
It says that Britain was “a black country for more than 7,000 years before the whites arrived and it was at that time that Britain’s most famous monument, Stonehenge, was built.”
But research published in 2019 found that the Neolithic farmers who built Stonehenge had paler skin and descended from populations from Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey.
They also probably had brown eyes and black or dark brown hair.
Atinuke’s book also contains illustrations of Britain during different periods of its history.
One page shows an image of a black Roman legionary fighting a white Celt.
The author claims that the Romans ‘returned to Europe and moved north’ after attempting and failing to conquer the African kingdom of Nubia.
According to the author, Britain in the Middle Ages was a ‘mixture of people’.
The population consisted of ‘original British migrants, Celts, Romans, Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Africans and Normans’.
They also spoke ‘a mixed language: English’.
A page about the Black Lives Matter movement states that while race “scientifically does not exist,” black people suffer from “institutional racism.”
The book is billed in the blurb as an ‘eye-opening history of Britain’ that focuses on ‘a part of our past largely left out of the history books: the brilliant dark history of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. ‘
It adds: ‘Did you know the first British were black? Or that some of the Roman soldiers who invaded and ruled Britain were also black?
‘Take part in this fascinating journey through the ages to meet the first Britons, as well as the Black Tudors, Georgians and Victorians who existed here in all walks of life.’
The book was published on August 31.
Brilliant Black British History is by Nigerian-born author Atinuke, who has written several books for children
The Cheddar Man research was carried out by a team from University College London.
The remains of Cheddar Man – the oldest near-complete human skeleton ever found in Britain – were excavated in 1903 from Gough’s Cave, in the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset.
DNA tests showed he had black skin, dark curly hair and blue eyes.
Geneticist Susan Walsh of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who helped create the reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s face, said shortly afterward that while it was “likely” he was dark-skinned, DNA testing had not yet had progressed far enough to be able to provide certainty about this.
The new book comes after campaign group Don’t Divide Us revealed in a report how children are being exposed to controversial ‘anti-racism’ theories.
The research produced a book that talks about how racism in children started when “white people wanted more control.”
Another encouraged teachers to tell children “what white privilege is.”