Field Museum exhibit puts Genghis Khan’s modern-day progeny in the millions
BY KARA SPAK Staff Reporter/kspak@suntimes.com February 21, 2012 7:28PM
Genghis Khan: Warrior and Statesman, the Field Museum's new exhibit, is on display Feb. 24 to Sept. 3 at the Field Museum.
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Updated: March 23, 2012 8:14AM
Genghis Khan was a lover and a fighter.
The 13th century Mongolian warlord made his reputation on the battlefield. But with more than 16 million men throughout Asia currently carrying a Y-chromosome believed to descend from him, he apparently also had quite the reputation with the ladies.
A new Field Museum exhibit opening Friday touches on Genghis Khan’s prolific breeding, one of several new facets of his life designed to give a more well-rounded look at the fearsome warrior who was also a legal innovator, skilled politician and savvy inventor.
“They don’t know for sure” how many women Genghis Khan slept with, said Tom Skwerski, the Field’s project manager of exhibitions. “He had five wives, and he had hundreds of concubines.”
The American Journal of Human Genetics first published a report in 2003 linking Genghis Khan’s Y-chromosome with 8 percent of men in the former area of the Mongol Empire, which at its height stretched across Asia and Russia. That’s .5 percent of the world’s male population.
“It’s important to note that here he is making a lot of babies but at the same point in time he is attacking and decimating huge populations,” Skwerski said. “It’s elimination of parts of the gene pool and replacing it with his own.”
Genghis Khan’s body has never been found, and there is no way to test his DNA to confirm a match. But geneticists base their conclusion on a unique set of circumstances — the widespread proliferation of the Y-chromosome in question, genetic markers that can be traced back in time, the size and scope of Genghis Khan’s empire and oral histories linking some populations to the famed warlord.
Y-chromosomes transfer directly from father to son with little change.
The conclusion, based on both genetic and historical research? Genghis Khan lives on.
Still, people in Mongolia who are descendants of Genghis Khan aren’t making a big deal out of their link to the national hero, said Naranzun Badruugan, head of the cultural policy division of the Mongolian Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
“Mongolians don’t give much point on that,” Badruugan said, noting that Genghis Khan’s or his family’s DNA is found in men living in a diverse stretch of land, including inner Mongolia, Russia and Afghanistan.
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