Science writer Carl Zimmer takes us on an interesting journey as he probes what good, if any, striving to achieve greatness has in the evolutionary long run. As a contribution to a series of articles on achievement run recently in Forbes, Zimmer’s article highlights findings that Genghis Khan and his descendants passed on his Y chromosome to about half a percent of the world’s male population, or about 16 million men.
While the DNA marker indicating whether men have Khan as an ancestor may be easy to find, there's no indication that being a descendant gives any predisposition to empire-building ability. Sorry, guys.
Â