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1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

blogs.discovermagazine.com

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Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#11

Post by tomjen3 »

Cushman wrote: post #3

This is not as surprising as it might seem, and in fact is more of a statistical trick than anything else— according to Wiki, the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today is believed to have lived only 2~5,000 years ago. Of course Genghis Khan was unusually prolific, and the direct patrilineal aspect is what makes it special, but you don't have to go far back in time to find an ancestor you share with on…

Sorry that statistic seems completely impossible -- how would a man alive just before the roman republic became an ancestor to the Gauls (whom the Romans wouldn't discover for quite some time) let alone the American Indians?

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#12

Post by config_yml »

I've recently read that about every second western european male is somehow a descendant of the egyptian pharaoh Tutenchamun. I actually lived right next to the labs of a company where you can get yourself tested for that specific gene (and all other sorts of DNA related tests).

I guess then it is not too uncommon to have some genetic relation to any kind of people if they've lived many hundreds of years ago.

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#13

Post by Someone »

iwwr wrote: post #2

I wonder what the degree of relatedness (assuming inbreeding) these descendants actually have with Genghis Khan. We know that family trees break down into direct acyclic graphs over the longer term. Note that the title assumes just patrilinear descent, so any man that may have had only daughters will not pass on the Y chromosome, though he will still have a non-patrilinear lineage (carried by both sons and daughters)…

The obvious one is a difference in branching factor. Women can have ten children, and I would expect many more men than women die childless (not only because more than half of all newborns are male)

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#14

Post by 46Bit »

tomjen3 wrote: post #11
Cushman wrote: post #3

This is not as surprising as it might seem, and in fact is more of a statistical trick than anything else— according to Wiki, the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today is believed to have lived only 2~5,000 years ago. Of course Genghis Khan was unusually prolific, and the direct patrilineal aspect is what makes it special, but you don't have to go far back in time to find an ancestor you share with on…

Sorry that statistic seems completely impossible -- how would a man alive just before the roman republic became an ancestor to the Gauls (whom the Romans wouldn't discover for quite some time) let alone the American Indians?

They probably wouldn't no. However he's talking about humans alive today. Whilst I'm not really keen on this distant ancestral concept due to it essentially being a statistical trick, it's not unreasonable to assume that the descendants of Gauls/etc would have married someone in that descendancy tree, somewhere along the way.

The place this really falls down would probably be extremely isolated tribes which have had little if any external contact - there's very few nowadays, but some are remote enough that no pairing has probably happened.

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#15

Post by Hisoka »

The ideal lifestyle if life was perfect would be that of Genghis Khan. There'd be no use for religion, spirituality, philosophy, etc. All of philosophy stems from "I can't have everything that I want, so...". But if you can have everything you want: endless supply of women.. then life is all grand. You conquer, You win, You build, you get endless orgasms. No need to master your emotions and deal with unfairness.

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#17

Post by sorbus »

ja2ke wrote: post #16

Side question brought on by the headline: Is there such a thing as an "indirect descendant?" Seems like all descendants are direct.

Yep, there are "indirect descendants". If X is a direct descendant of Y's sister (or other sibling), then X is an indirect descendant of Y. Doesn't make much sense, and it's hardly ever used, but there you go.

Another reason to say "direct descendant" instead of just "descendant" is that it makes it clear that there's a blood relation.

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#18

Post by sorbus »

Hisoka wrote: post #15

The ideal lifestyle if life was perfect would be that of Genghis Khan. There'd be no use for religion, spirituality, philosophy, etc. All of philosophy stems from "I can't have everything that I want, so...". But if you can have everything you want: endless supply of women.. then life is all grand. You conquer, You win, You build, you get endless orgasms. No need to master your emotions and deal with unfairness.

Also an endless number of people trying to kill you. Not to mention that - while Genghis Khan's religion isn't known - it was probably either Shamanism or Tengriism, and he was "interested in learning philosophical and moral lessons from other religions. To do so, he consulted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christian missionaries, and the Taoist monk Qiu Chuji."[1] So you're operating under an "idealized" view of his life. And that's without even getting into the misogyny that your opinion reveals.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan#Religion

Re: 1 in 200 of men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan

#19

Post by sorbus »

Cushman wrote: post #3

This is not as surprising as it might seem, and in fact is more of a statistical trick than anything else— according to Wiki, the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today is believed to have lived only 2~5,000 years ago. Of course Genghis Khan was unusually prolific, and the direct patrilineal aspect is what makes it special, but you don't have to go far back in time to find an ancestor you share with on…

Reading this comment, I thought that the 2,000 to 5,000 year claim was complete rubbish. Turns out that it's not, which is a bit surprising - it's supported solely by computer models at this point, not genetic evidence, and is probably contradicted by groups that were not interbreeding at the right times, but still.

http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf

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