I’m not sure about the exact fraction of Asian people that have genetic indicators of being his descendants allegedly, but how are researchers determining that a “father” whose DNA they don’t have is the specific “father” of all these descendants? Are they doing the family tree inference from relatives’ DNA they have like the golden state killer? Or is it basically some guy from around Mongolia from around Khan’s time fathered this many descendants, so we assume it’s Khan because… he did most of the sexual assaulting? I get that he had lots of wives and historical records of around the time allege he had thousands of children (although I suspect without a detailed accounting, I.e. a guess), but you don’t have to be married to have a child and the mongols had no shortage of opportunities to make children with lots of women if they were on a military campaign. Why can’t it have been one of his generals? Why wouldn’t it be *more likely* to be one of his generals that he dispatched ahead of him on additional reconnaissance missions like Subutai?
In: Biology
You are correct
The claim is based on the discovery of a specific Y-chromosome lineage that is found in a large number of men across a wide geographic area, primarily in Central Asia. Y-chromosomes are passed almost unchanged from father to son, which means that men who share this Y-chromosome likely share a common male ancestor….
They can’t say with certainty that this Y-chromosome belonged to Genghis Khan himself because, as you mentioned, his body has not been found and his DNA has not been directly tested….
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