A British research firm recently combed 25,000 DNA samples searching for a modern descendant of Genghis Khan from outside the Mongolian warlord’s ancient empire.
They found the first one: a University of Miami accounting professor with a receding hairline.
Tom Robinson, a 48-year-old Palmetto Bay resident, has taken the odd news with amiable modesty. In some quarters, he’s being treated like the guy who walks into a store and finds out he’s the millionth customer. The Mongolian ambassador to the United States plans to invite him as an honored guest to his country’s embassy in Washington.
They’re an unlikely pair, the emperor and the accountant. Genghis was known as the type of guy who would conquer villages across two continents, murder entire tribes and take thousands of female partners. Robinson, on the other hand, just returned from a cruise to Alaska with his wife of 25 years.
“I think I do have a certain number of administrative skills,” Robinson said, noting he was once president of a local financial analyst society. “I haven’t done any conquering, per se.”
Despite their disparate lifestyles, the link is backed by strong genetic evidence, according to Bryan Sykes, an Oxford University geneticist who conducted the research for his private company, Oxford Ancestors. Robinson’s Y chromosome bears seven of nine genetic markers identical to Genghis’ genetic signature–remarkably close considering the two men lived more than 700 years apart, Sykes said.
The Genghis genetic mark was discovered in 2003 by a group of 23 international geneticists, who found that 8 percent of all males in large parts of Asia carry startlingly similar genetic markers. Those markers are historically traceable to areas ruled by Genghis and his sons. No one has tested Genghis’ actual DNA because his tomb has never been found.
Women can only learn if they are descended from Genghis through male relatives because only men have a Y chromosome.
Genghis is believed to have 16 million Asian descendants.
“With every people who he conquered, Genghis Khan set up a large harem, and he took as many women as he wanted,” said Nicholas Wade, a New York Times writer who published “Before the Dawn,” a book on recent human evolution. Robinson, however, is the first Caucasian linked to the 13th Century marauder, Sykes said.
How did those genes make it to Robinson’s ancestral home in England’s bucolic Lake District?
That remains a mystery. It’s possible Robinson’s ancestors traveled from the Ukraine–the edge of the Mongol empire–on Viking slave ships, Sykes said. But he acknowledges that that’s mere conjecture.
“It’s a very good demonstration of how we all have a mixed ancestry,” Sykes said.