Stonehenge was built by black people, a new children’s history book has claimed.
Readers of Brilliant Black British History, by the Nigerian-born British author Atinuke, are told the neolithic monument in Wiltshire was built while Britain was a ‘black country’.
The book, which is aimed at children aged seven and above, also tells readers that ‘every single British person comes from a migrant’ and that the ‘very first Britons were black’.
The introduction adds that Britain has been ‘mostly a white country for a lot less time than it has been mostly a black country’.
Atinuke also claims that the remains of the 10,000-year-old Cheddar Man belonged to someone who had ‘skin as dark as dark can be’.
A facial reconstruction of Cheddar Man depicted him as having dark skin in 2018, although one 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 literacy charity The Book Trust, which itself is funded by the Arts Council.
The book takes readers through an overview of the presence of black people in Britain.
It says that Britain was ‘a black country more than 7,000 years before white people came and during that time the most famous British monument was built, Stonehenge’.
But research published in 2019 suggested the Neolithic farmers who built Stonehenge had paler skin and were descended from populations originating in Anatolia in what is now Turkey.
They also likely had brown eyes and black or dark-brown hair.
Atinuke’s book also features illustrations of Britain during various periods of its history.
One page shows an image of a black Roman legionary fighting a white Celt.
The author claims the Romans had ‘turned back to Europe and pushed north’ after trying and failing to conquer the African kingdom of Nubia.
By the Middle Ages, Britain was a ‘hodgepodge of people’, according to the author.
The population was made up of ‘original British migrants, Celts, Romans, Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Africans and Normans’.
They also spoke ‘a hodgepodge language too – English’.
A page on the Black Lives Matter movement says that although race ‘does not scientifically exist’, black people suffer ‘institutional racism’.
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