He got around-- 1.5m Chinese 'descendants of one man'

1.5 million Chinese men are the direct descendants on one man -- Giocangga, the grandfather of the founder of the Qing dynasty, according to a study. The BBC reported today:

Giocangga's extraordinary number of descendants, concentrated mainly in north-east China and Mongolia, are thought to be a result of the many wives and concubines his offspring took.

Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist working at Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, made the finding, based on a study of a set of genes on the male Y chromosome. The genes provided a "genetic surname" of the family to which each man belonged. T

This particular genetic code first appeared just before the Qing dynasty, which came to the fore in 1616 and had conquered China by 1644.

At the time of Giocangga, the population of China was about 100 million - compared with 1.6 billion today.

This means that the average Chinese man at the time of Giocangga would only have around 20 descendants living today - in marked contrast to Giocangga's 1.5 million men.