According to Kazakh folklore, the body of Genghis Khan’s eldest son Jochi is kept in a mausoleum in the Ulitau region in the country’s central highlands. But when archaeologists examined bodies recently unearthed from a medieval mausoleum, they did not find Jochi, but instead discovered a new genetic lineage that may have been inherited by Genghis himself.
Born Temujin in the Khenti Mountains of northeastern Mongolia, Genghis Khan was a Central Asian warrior who founded the vast Mongol Empire in 1206. The Mongols’ incredible horse-riding and archery skills allowed them to quickly conquer territory from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe. Genghis Khan and his wife Borte had four sons and five daughters. Their eldest son, Jochi, was born around 1182 and died around 1227, shortly before Genghis’ own death. The northwestern part of the Mongol Empire ruled by the Jochis (also spelled Joshi, Zoshi, and Jushi) later became known as the Golden Horde.
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In an effort to unearth DNA from Genghis’s intimate relationships, Askapuri and colleagues investigated folklore claims that Jochi, who died after falling from a horse at Ulitau, was buried in the mausoleum of the same name, built at least 70 years after his death. They published their findings in the journal PNAS on February 19th.
For the study, researchers traveled to the Ulitau region and analyzed male skeletons from three medieval mausoleums believed to belong to men from the elite Golden Legion, including Jochi. The researchers examined the DNA of these people to determine which Y-chromosome data is passed down from father to son.
Two of the male bones have been carbon-dated between 1286 and 1398, making them unlikely to be Genghis Khan’s children. However, researchers’ DNA analysis revealed that the two men share a paternal lineage thought to be related to Genghis Khan, as well as a man carbon-dated in the 18th century.
But one problem with confirming this link is that Genghis Khan’s remains have never been found, and no one knows where he was buried. “No one knows exactly what his Y DNA will be,” Ascapri said. “Not just him, his sons, his grandchildren, his immediate family, none of them are known. So this is an attempt to answer that question.”
A previous study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2003 showed that a rare Y-chromosome strain called C3*, which originated in Mongolia 1,000 years ago, is now common among people living in what was once the Mongol Empire. These researchers concluded that this family line was likely inherited by Genghis Khan’s male descendants, and that 0.5% of the world’s male population today, or 1 in 200 men, may be descended from this famous warrior.
In a new analysis, Ascapri and colleagues found that the three men buried in the Golden Horde mausoleum were all paternally related and shared recent ancestry in the C3* lineage.
“The Y chromosome haplotype they carry belongs to the C3* cluster, which was previously hypothesized to belong to Genghis Khan. However, this is extremely rare in modern populations,” Professor Askapuri said.
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The C3* cluster is a very large genetic family, a fact that was unknown in 2003. “The C3* cluster has many different branches, and the elites of the Golden Horde have one of those branches,” Ascapri explained.
The particular branch that researchers discovered on the mausoleum skeleton is actually much rarer than the one discovered in 2003, meaning that far fewer living men today are connected to Genghis Khan than previously assumed.
Scientists also discovered that the ancestry of the Golden Horde Mausoleum people can be traced back primarily to ancient Northeast Asian (ANA) populations, with genetic contributions from the Kipchaks. The Kipchaks are a group of East Scythian nomads who lived in the Eurasian steppe and were incorporated into the Golden Horde during the Middle Ages.
The exact Y chromosome lineage that Genghis Khan shared with his male descendants is still unknown, but Ascapri believes researchers may be able to answer this question in the near future.
“If there are graves that are historically recorded, and there are tombstones that say that this person belonged to a descendant of Genghis Khan, I think that if we do genetic testing on these people, we can come to a final conclusion,” Askapuri said. “But it’s not that simple, it’s complicated.”
Askapuli, A., Kanzawa Kiriyama, H., Tsunoda, T., Kassenali, A., Yessen, S., Schamiloglu, U., Schrodi, SJ, Hawks, J., Saito, N. (2026). Genomes of the elites of the Golden Horde and their influence on the rulers of the Mongol Empire. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 123(8). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2531003123
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