Sunday, May 17, 2009

Genghis Khan, The Ultimate Alpha Male

Genghis Khan, the ultimate alpha male

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Are you distantly related to Genghis Khan? If you have Asian and/or European ancestors, you just might be.

A recent study was done to look at the Y chromosomes of 2,123 men across Asia. An astonishing 1 in 12 men shared the same Y chromosome. If this ratio holds up, that would mean 16 million males or 1 out of every 200 living males share this Y chromosome.

Early results indicate that the distant "father" of all these men was from the Mongolia area around 800-1200 years ago. Who could have fathered all of these males? The most obvious candidate is Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan lived from 1162-1227 and raped and pillaged from Mongolia to the gates of Vienna. Once he captured a village or town, he would essentially kill all the men and rape the women.

While deplorable from a social point of view, it seems to have been wildly successful from a biological point of view. As I said above, 1 in 200 males today may trace their lineage to Genghis and his sons.

Of course, this is a guess because we don't have Genghis Khan's DNA. His tomb remains hidden although the search is on to find it. Once we have his DNA, then we can determine if he really was as prolific as this data suggests.

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