In 2018, the dark-skinned, blue-eyed facial reconstruction of Cheddar Man, a 10,000-year-old British resident, made international headlines and sparked discussions about “native” identity in a nation grappling with Brexit and issues of migration.

A year later, an exhibit at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery revealed the faces of seven more ancient “locals” who lived on the coast of southern England over the past 40,000 years, showing how science confirms that the history of the region is much more complicated than we once thought.

Five of the seven individuals are true “locals,” forensically reconstructed from skulls excavated around Brighton in the southeastern county of Sussex. The most modern “local,” a 40-something man excavated