The greatest commander of all times and peoples Temuchin, known as Genghis Khan, created the largest empire in world history, occupying vast territories of Eurasia from the Black Sea to the Japanese Sea. Hordes of Mongols swept away the most ancient empires from the face of the Earth, subjecting everyone to the laws of Genghis Khan. I wonder if the invincible warrior has any descendants, and if so, who are they?
Scientists have not yet been able to establish the exact burial place of the founder of the Mongol Empire. Many archaeological expeditions were organized to various regions of Mongolia and China, where it is believed that he could be buried. Researchers put forward various versions about the location of the burial, but none of them received final confirmation. It is clear that the absence of Genghis Khan's remains makes it difficult to find his descendants. How can this problem be solved? Scientists gave the answer - with the help of a genetic study of the chromosomes of a large ethnic group of people and establishing the fact of kinship among them.
Biological processes
Scientists have done a huge research work on the genetic identification of the descendants of Genghis Khan. Then, when analyzing the DNA of the peoples of Mongolia and Central Asia, it was found that the male population of this territory often has a certain, repetitive variant of the Y chromosome.
We know that each human cell contains 46 chromosomes, or 23 pairs of them, and of these 23, only one is responsible for a person's sex. The Y chromosome is purely male. As you know, approximately half of the sperm contains the X chromosome, and the second - the Y, while the egg contains only the X chromosome. That is why the sex of the unborn child depends only on which of the sperm will fertilize the female cell. If it is the X chromosome, then a girl will be born, since the female sex is characterized by a pair of XX chromosomes. If it is a Y chromosome, then a boy will be born, respectively, since the male sex is characterized by a pair of XY chromosomes. Each family, related in the male line, has its own individual, different from the rest of the Y chromosome.
Chromosome research
Proceeding from this, scientists were able to do the work as a result of which it was found that about 16 million inhabitants of Mongolia and Central Asia are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Y-xpo-mosome is a living connection of people of the present with their common ancestors. This method of calculating ancestors - people who left the genetic imprint on millions - has long been used by scientists. Millions of people are branches of a common family tree. Theoretically, genetics allows you to go to its roots, to a single great-ancestor. If the Y chromosome remained completely unchanged from generation to generation, we would be able to calculate it. However, this is not possible due to chromosome mutations that occur century after century.
Mutations
The fact is that so-called safe mutations sometimes appear in a person's Y chromosome, which are inherited by all of his descendants. Thus, these descendants of the mutation are marked as a stigma. This does not allow us to calculate our common ancestor, the "scientific" Adam, but it makes it possible to find the descendants of many historical figures. However, it is worth making a reservation that safe chromosome mutations can occur, and then their trace in the gene pool will disappear, for example, if a person did not have sons or his sons had only daughters. But if the trail is not lost, it is possible to trace the expansion or migration over a certain territory, where a group of people connected by family ties moved. In the case of Genghis Khan, scientists concluded that 16 million people in Central Asia are relatives, since their Y chromosomes contain the same mutations. The concentration of enormous power over vast territories allowed Genghis Khan to forever leave a mark in the gene pool of these peoples. So he almost literally became the father of millions.
At first glance, insignificant, changes in the structure of chromosomes are gradually accumulating with each new generation, and now they have made it possible to calculate that this common ancestor among many representatives of Asian peoples lived about a thousand years ago (plus or minus 300 years). Another important fact: mutations are found mainly in Mongolia, and their age is about a thousand years! These coincidences made scientists turn to history.
800 years ago
Who could “reward” millions of people with their chromosome? Who could be the ancestor who left such a large offspring, bearing his Y-chromosome to this day? Scientists come to the conclusion that only Genghis Khan could have been. According to historical sources, he lived about 800 years ago. The Great Khan had a large harem and huge offspring. Genghis Khan had only five officially recognized sons, but genetic studies suggest that there were many more. In addition, Genghis Khan conquered exactly those territories in which modern Mongols and other Asian peoples now live, among which a special variant of the Y chromosome was found. According to elementary scientific calculations, in 300 years, Genghis Khan should have had five million descendants, and in 800 years - much more. In addition, if you trace the historical migration of peoples,due to which the mixing of blood occurred only with certain ethnic groups, this Y chromosome could not spread to other geographic territories. All these calculations lead to the conclusion that the great-ancestor of 16 million Asians could only be the great khan or someone from his direct descendants. Such results were given by world research.
They are also in Russia
Similar studies were carried out by a group of geneticists led by Professor I. A. Zakharov and on the Asian territory of the Russian Federation. The study involved 1437 men, distributed across 18 ethnic groups, who inhabit the territory of the former Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. These, in addition to the Mongols, are Altai Kazakhs, Teleuts, Khakases, Tuvans, Tajiks, Buryats, Evenks, Kalmyks, Persians, Russians and other peoples. Human hair follicles were used as genetic material for the study. They were taken, as a rule, from male schoolchildren and students, and among them were selected those who were sure that their fathers and grandfathers belonged to the same people as they, and were not persons of another nationality. The results of these studies showedthat about 30 thousand direct heirs of Genghis Khan live on the territory of Russia. Moreover, most of the "blood of Chingizids" is contained in the gene pool of the Altai Kazakhs - 8.3%. From 1.7 to 3.4 percent of Genghis Khan's genetic influence was found in the inhabitants of Kalmykia, Altai, Tuva and Buryatia.
But on the territory of historical Russia, as scientists say, during the initial study, no traces of the great khan's genes were found. Now geneticists are studying the genomes of modern Russians more deeply, so new discoveries are ahead. However, there are already scientifically established interesting facts - referring to history, one can trace that many Moscow genealogies date back to the Mongol-Tatar khans and princes of the times of the Mongol yoke. For example, the Chaadaev family descended from Chagadai, one of the five officially recognized sons of Genghis Khan. It is also curious that the Glinsky boyars were descended from the legendary Mamai, having awarded such a relationship to Ivan IV the Terrible, a male descendant of Dmitry Donskoy.
So the blood of those who stood to death against each other on the Kulikovo field united in one of the darkest figures in Russian history.