History of the Mongols SPECIAL: Chinggis Genetic Legacy

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At the start of the twenty-first century, a study was released which brought the thirteenth </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">century starkly into the present. A 2003 study led by Chris Tyler-Smith published in the</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">American Journal of Human Genetics</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">simply titled “</span><span style= "font-weight: 400;">The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols,”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">determined that an alarming number of men across Asia, from China to Uzbekistan, carried the same haplotype on their Y-chromosome, indicating a shared paternal lineage. 8% of the studied group, just over 2100 men from 16 distinct populations in Asia shared this haplotype, which if representative of the total world population, would have come out to about 16 million men. This was far beyond what was to be expected of standard genetic variation over such a vast area. The researchers traced the haplogroup to Mongolia, and with the BATWING program determined that the most recent common ancestor lived approximately 1,000 years ago, plus or minus 300 years in either direction. The study determined that this could only be the result of selective inheritance, and there was only man who fit the profile, who had the opportunity to spread his genes across so much of Asia and have them be continually selected for centuries to come; that was Chinggis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire. Identifying him with the Y-Chromosome haplogroup, the C3* Star Cluster, the image of Chinggis Khan as the ancestor of 0.5% of the world population has become irrevocably attached to his name, and a common addition in the comment sections on any Mongol related topic on the internet will be the fact that he is related to every 1 in 200 men in Asia today. Yet, recent studies have demonstrated that this may not be the case, and that Chinggis Khan’s genetic legacy is not so simple as commonly portrayed. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Gener