Note by Hunterbear: He's always been a hero of mine and, as I'm fond to note, my first paper as a college freshman was a 43 page [double-spaced] tribute to the Great Organizer and Strategist -- whose example, even now, stirs my blood and soul.
About a month ago, I posted on Jenghiz Khan and the Mongols, "Riding To The Aid Of Jenghiz Khan" http://www.hunterbear.org/riding%20to%20the%20aid%20of%20Jenghiz%20Khan.htm Responding to my post and in a fascinating first hand account, Bill Mandel commented on a visit he'd made into the setting of Mongolia to "Kyrgyzstan and Buriat-Mongolia (which encompasses the east shore of Lake Baikal) in the early Gorbachev years and 1990." Bill confirmed that Jenghiz is very much the primary culture hero of Mongolia and its environs -- and that, among other things, there are buttons and flags and signs and other public depictions of Jenghiz throughout the vast region. About a week ago, I watched a television presentation on the Discover Channel which focused on the current and very crass efforts by several European and Japanese entrepreneur/adventurers to locate the tomb of the great Mongol unifier-of-the-tribes and military genius. In the course of the flick, there were numerous shots of contemporary Mongolia with all sorts of Jenghiz buttons and flags etc. Jenghiz stipulated he wanted his tomb concealed. Although one group of Euro-adventurers feels it has located the setting, almost everyone else -- Mongolian leaders and grassroots people and various archaeologists from around the globe -- dispute this. The leaders of Mongolia are definitely schitzy about any search for the tomb. But the grassroots people of Mongolia -- on an essentially one and all basis -- are vehemently opposed to any search and certainly one by outsiders. And just about everyone in Mongolia is much against any efforts to excavate the tomb -- should it ever really be located. >From that perspective, their view of burials parallels in every respect that of Native American people. As I heard the Mongolian people speaking [almost all through translators] and against the backdrop of high mountains and plains and desert, it could all have been, for example, vast Navajoland. Jenghiz has long gone through the Curtain of Fog into the Spirit World and the Golden Horde of yore is Great Legendry. But Jenghiz lives on in many, many ways. In fact, in a whole multitude. Hunter [Hunterbear] February 11, 2003 A Prolific Genghis Khan, It Seems, Helped People the World By NICHOLAS WADE [New York Times] A remarkable living legacy of the Mongol empire has been discovered by geneticists in a survey of human populations from the Caucasus to China. They find that as many as 8 percent of the men dwelling in the confines of the former Mongol empire bear Y chromosomes that seem characteristic of the Mongol ruling house. If so, some 16 million men, or half a percent of the world's male population, can probably claim descent from Genghis Khan. The finding seems to be the first proof, on a genetic level, of the occurrence in humans of sexual selection, a form of sex-based natural selection in which a male or female has an unusual number of offspring. This process can greatly influence the genetic makeup of a species, resulting in otherwise puzzling features like the peacock's cumbersome tail. The survey was conducted by Dr. Chris Tyler-Smith of Oxford University and geneticist colleagues in China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia. Over 10 years they collected blood from 16 populations that live in and around the former Mongol empire. In the late 13th century the sons of Genghis Khan controlled territory that stretched from the Pacific coast of China to the Caspian Sea, spanning land now held by the Central Asian republics and the northeast corner of Iran. Dr. Tyler-Smith's team analyzed the DNA of the Y chromosome, a part of the genome that is useful for establishing human lineages because, like a surname, it is passed down from father to son. They found that a cluster of Y chromosomes carried a genetic signature showing they were closely related to one another and to a single founder chromosome in the recent past. These signature chromosomes were far more common than would be expected by chance among most of the populations living within the former Mongol empire. But none of the peoples outside the empire carried the chromosomes, except for the Hazara people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, former Mongol soldiers who claim descent from Genghis Khan. Dr. Tyler-Smith said the signature chromosomes probably belonged to members of the Mongol ruling house. They could have become so common in part because of the rapes that occurred during the Mongol conquest, but more probably because the Mongol khans had access to large numbers of women in the captive territories they ruled for two centuries. An article about the geneticists' findings has been published electronically by The American Journal of Human Genetics. Genghis Khan's sons and heirs ruled over the various khanates in his empire, and may well have used their position to establish large harems, especially if they followed their father's example. David Morgan, a historian of Mongol history at the University of Wisconsin, said Genghis's eldest son, Tushi, had 40 sons. As for Genghis himself, Dr. Morgan cited a passage from `Ata-Malik Juvaini, a Persian historian who wrote a long treatise on the Mongols in 1260. Juvaini said: "Of the issue of the race and lineage of Chingiz Khan, there are now living in the comfort of wealth and affluence more than 20,000. More than this I will not say . . . lest the readers of this history should accuse the writer of exaggeration and hyperbole and ask how from the loins of one man there could spring in so short a time so great a progeny." Dr. Morgan said that since Mongol rulers controlled a large area, it was "perfectly plausible" that they should have fathered many children. "It's pretty clear what they were doing when they were not fighting," he said. The Mongol rulers' apparent assiduity in propagating their genes has surprised even human behavioral ecologists, researchers who seek to explain many aspects of human society in terms of the pursuit of reproductive advantage. "I think it's astonishing," said Dr. Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool, co-author of a leading textbook of human behavioral ecology. "This is a staggering example of how a very small lineage can have a hugely disproportionate share of the descendant population." Dr. Dunbar said it was known that in tribes like the Yanomamo of Brazil, men of high status tended to have more children. But the Mongol study was the first to his knowledge to document this on a genetic level. "It's exactly equivalent to elephant seals slogging it out on the beach - a handful of males get all the matings," he said. The practice may have been common in human history and would explain why so many male lineages have gone extinct, leaving a single survivor. It could also explain why "Adam," the common ancestor of all Y chromosomes, seems to have lived much earlier than "Eve," the common ancestor of all mitochondria, genetic elements passed down through the female line, Dr. Dunbar said. When some individuals have far more children than others, the formula for calculating the time to the common ancestor yields a much earlier date. Dr. Tyler-Smith and his colleagues estimate that the common ancestor of the signature chromosomes they found in the Mongol empire populations lived in around A.D. 1000, 162 years before the birth of Genghis Khan. Dr. Morgan said, "I see no reason why the family shouldn't have descended in a straight line" from that time to Genghis Khan. The geneticists' evidence for linking the cluster of signature chromosomes to Genghis Khan is necessarily indirect. The Mongol ruler was buried secretly and his tomb has not been found, let alone any bodily remains that might still harbor fragments of DNA. But the signature chromosomes are carried by only a fifth of present-day Mongolian men, suggesting they belonged to an elite group, presumably the lineage of Genghis Khan and his sons. Dr. Tyler-Smith and his colleagues argue they have found a second link to Genghis Khan, through the Hazaras, whose oral tradition holds that some of them are his direct descendants. The fact that the Hazaras carry the signature chromosome confirms their oral tradition of descent from Genghis and suggests he carried the chromosome too, the geneticists say. But historians find fault with this argument. Dr. Morris Rossabi, a Mongol expert at Columbia University, described the Hazaras' claim to be direct descendants of Genghis Khan as "untenable." "They are descendants of troops and guards sent by Chinggis to this region, and I would be very suspicious about a genealogy based on their so-called oral traditions," Dr. Rossabi wrote in an e-mail message. (Chinggis is a more correct spelling of the familiar Genghis.) The name Hazara, from the Persian word for "thousand," suggests a Mongol military formation and the Hazaras do look Mongol, Dr. Morgan said, although unlike some villagers in Afghanistan who still speak archaic Mongol, the Hazaras themselves speak Dari, a form of Persian. Some Hazaras may have been Mongol soldiers but none of the imperial house ruled in Afghanistan, Dr. Morgan said, making it hard to argue that the Hazaras' signature chromosome comes directly from Genghis. Asked if the Mongol rulers' vigorous propagation of their genes was default human behavior, given the opportunity, Dr. Dunbar laughed and said it was probably an extreme form, and not universal. But it illustrated the keen interest some men have in using their power and status to maximize their reproductive advantages, he said. ============================================ Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] www.hunterbear.org Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ and Ohkwari' In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings. Then it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and remembering way. [Hunterbear] _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
