On Wednesday 08 Nov 2006 10:40 am, Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote: > > IIRC Gengis Khan genes have been found in 25% (or some such > > ridiculously high proportion) of all humans. > > I looked for evidence of this assertion, and I didn't find any; > apparently Genghis's corpse has been lost for some time, so nobody > knows what his genes were. At least, that's what most of the > references I found said. Do you have an update? > > Perhaps you were thinking of the article that found 25% of the > Y-chromosomes among men of the Hazara tribe in Pakistan belonged to > the "star cluster", which the researchers believe came from Genghis > Khan? > > The same article also found that 8% of men in the former Mongol empire > have the cluster in their Y-chromosomes. Presumably, then, nearly > 100% of the people in that area are descended from the Khan by some > path or other. >
You are probably right. I am not sure if I actually read anything of the sort - but I may have been quoting from memory of something I heard on TV watching a program on the spread of Humans in the National Geographic channel. Anyhow I think I found what I heard - and I was way way off the mark on the question of Genghis Khan's randiness... http://reference.aol.com/natgeo/_a/gene-project-to-trace-humanitys/20050413141909990001 and http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html quote: '' An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or roughly 16 million descendants living today." shiv
