Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire from the Pacific Ocean to the Danube River during the late 12th to early 13th centuries. Leaving behind countless bloody battlefields along his conquests, this king also left an incredible legacy for his descendants. An estimated 16 million people today are descendants of Genghis Khan.
In a study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2003, research on the genetic heritage of the Mongol people found that 0.5% of men worldwide carry the genes of Genghis Khan, and 8% of men living in his former territory share the same Y chromosome.
A statue of Genghis Khan in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. (Photo: EPA)
The Rise of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan, whose Mongolian name was Temüjin, was born in 1162 during a period of intense tribal conflict in Mongolia. He came from a long-standing warrior family and was named after a Tatar leader his father captured. When Genghis Khan was nine years old, his father was killed by rivals. Abandoned by his tribe, Genghis Khan and his mother lived in poverty.
Gradually, his half-brother rose to become the leader of the tribe, causing him resentment. His resentment reached its peak when he personally shot and killed his half-brother.
Determined to unite the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian plateau, he married a foreign woman and fathered four sons with Borte. His sons were named Jochi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui. He later had countless more children. Genghis Khan mobilized an army of 20,000 warriors to annihilate the Tatars and led his army across the continent. He taught them to ride horses without using their hands, freeing them to wield spears and javelins to kill their enemies.
Whenever he won a battle, he ordered the execution of young male prisoners, men taller than 90 cm. He took any woman he found attractive as a concubine. Genghis Khan's army grew to 80,000 men by 1206. After defeating all the hostile Mongol tribes the following year, he was known as Genghis Khan, meaning "ruler of the world," the supreme deity of the nation.
"A man's greatest joy is to defeat his enemies, to drive them out before him, to take everything they possess, to see the tears of those they love, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms," said Genghis Khan.
Over 20 years later, he ruled over most of present-day Russia, China, Iraq, Korea, Eastern Europe, and India. Genghis Khan's massacre of 40 million people during his conquests helped reduce humanity's carbon emissions by 700 million tons.
Descendants of Genghis Khan
In 2003, an international team of geneticists posed the question: "How many people are descendants of Genghis Khan?" To find out, they studied 5,000 blood samples collected over 10 years from more than 40 populations living in and near the territory of the Mongol Empire. Only one population outside the former borders of the empire carried his genes: the Persian-speaking Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"The Hazaras provided us with the first clue about their relationship to Genghis Khan," said Spencer Wells, a geneticist and co-author of the study. " They have an age-old oral tradition that they are direct descendants of Genghis Khan."
The Hazaras of Pakistan, descendants of Genghis Khan. ( Photo: Wiki )
Wells focused his research on the Y chromosome in blood samples. Because this chromosome does not undergo recombination like other genes but is always passed from father to son, it does not change. Random mutations can occur, but this helps researchers detect that they all belong to the same lineage.
"We identified an abnormal Y chromosome lineage," the study states. "It was found in 16 ethnic groups living across a vast region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, and it appears with high frequency: 8% of men in these 16 ethnic groups carry the chromosome, equivalent to 0.5% of the world's population (nearly 16 million people)."
Experts have found a remarkable lineage dating back 1,000 years to be descendants of Genghis Khan, stating that one in every 200 men alive today is a descendant of his. This coincides with estimates by some scholars that he impregnated more than 1,000 women during his reign. Geneticists add that there is a correlation between Genghis Khan's path of territorial expansion and the spread of his lineage.
Hunting for descendants of Genghis Khan
It is unclear how many biological children Genghis Khan had. Only his first four children with Borte are officially recognized. Jochi had at least 16 children, while Chagatai had 15.
"This is clear evidence that culture plays a major role in genetic variation and diversity patterns within human populations," Wells commented. "This is the first documented case where human culture has caused a single gene pool to grow to such a large scale in just a few hundred years."
HONG PHUC (Source: All that interesting)
Beneficial
Emotion
Creative
Unique
Wrath
Source
Comment (0)