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By Siobhan Kennedy | January 17, 2006 DUBLIN (Reuters) - Scientists in Ireland may have found the country's most fertile male, with more than 3 million men worldwide among his offspring. Article Tools Printer friendly E-mail to a friend Science RSS feed Available RSS feeds Most e-mailed More: Globe front page | Boston.com Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts The scientists, from Trinity College Dublin, have discovered that as many as one in twelve Irish men could be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord who was head of the most powerful dynasty...

The Hidden History of MenA research team braves Central Asia to capture a surprising genetic record of human migration and military conquest By Robert Kunzig DISCOVER Vol. 25 No. 12 | December 2004 | Anthropology One day last fall, in the home freezer of Spencer Wells, there were these things: a large leg of lamb, a few quarts of milk, and underneath, DNA samples from 2,500 people in Central Asia. Wells is an anthropological geneticist and an energetic collector of DNA, especially Y chromosomes. He lived then in an old stone house outside Geneva, but he was raised in Lubbock,...

Ghengis Khan a Prolific Lover, DNA Data Implies  Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News February 14, 2003   Genghis Khan, the fearsome Mongolian warrior of the 13th century, may have done more than rule the largest empire in the world; according to a recently published genetic study, he may have helped populate it too. An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or...

Despite some recent FReeper posts, one question that has not been satisfactorily answered is, What did Kerry mean when he testified before Congress that our troops in Vietnam "razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan"? Who is Ghengis Khan? * * * Genghis Kahn, or Ghengis Khan (interpreted as either "precious warrior" or "spirit of light") as he is more widely known, was born about the year 1162. On a hunting trip when young, he was ambushed by an enemy tribe and taken prisoner. While prisoner he killed his guard and escaped. The enemy searched, but excellent survival...

Half of Western European men are descended from one Bronze Age 'king' who sired a dynasty of elite nobles which spread throughout Europe, a new study has shown. The monarch, who lived around 4,000 years ago, is likely to have been one of the earliest chieftains to take power in the continent... It is likely his power stemmed from advances in technology such as metal working and wheeled transport which enabled organised warfare for the first time. Although it is not known who he was, or where he lived, scientists say he must have existed because of genetic variation in...

Genghis Khan, law giver, free trader and diplomat, is back with a new image By Richard Spencer in Ulan Bator (Filed: 11/07/2006) The Mongolian capital has been swamped with images of its former potentate, Genghis Khan, in honour of the anniversary of his unification of the nation in 1206. At the climax of celebrations in Ulan Bator yesterday, soldiers in traditional uniform and bearing yaks' tail standards heralded the unveiling of an enormous statue of the Great Khan in the main Sukhbaatar Square. The monument in which it is set contains earth and stones from the holy and historic places...

Speaking Monday in Valparaiso, Chile, Secretary of State John Kerry was asked why the term "climate refugees" does not exist in international law. Kerry said the question was "right on point," and although the term is a new one, he expects it's "just a matter of time" before it is incorporated into international policy. "We have climate refugees today," Kerry told a town hall meeting on the sidelines of an Oceans conference.

A group of military veterans is taking aim at U.S. drone strikes overseas with graphic TV ads directly asking Air Force pilots to stop flying the unmanned aircraft, calling the operations immoral and illegal. The ads are the first commercials opposing U.S. drone operations ever shown on American TV, according to sponsors, which include the Veterans Democratic Club of Sacramento County and the Sacramento chapter of Veterans for Peace. The campaign is spearheaded by an activist website, KnowDrones.com. The commercials are airing this month on Comcast in Northern California communities near Beale Air Force Base, which is home to Golden...

Paso Robles, CA -- Their political party lines maybe different but one thing United States presidents could share is their family line. A young girl in California has put together a Presidential Family Tree. Twelve-year-old BridgeAnne d'Avignon found that all the presidents but one are related to King John of England through a common ancestor. "They are all cousins and all grandsons of John Lackland," BridgeAnne told KCOY News. The girl searched more than a half million names for months. She started with George Washington, then traced both the male and female family lines to make the connection. KCOY reports...

In addition to Genghis Khan and his male descendants, researchers have previously identified the founders of two other highly successful Y-chromosome lineages: one that began in China with Giocangga, a Qinq Dynasty ruler who died in 15823, and another belonging to the medieval Uí Néill dynasty in Ireland. Jobling's team made a systematic search for genetic founders by analysing the Y chromosomes of more than 5,000 men from 127 populations spanning Asia... because lots of data were available and there was already evidence of such lineages. The team identified 11 Y-chromosome sequences that were each shared by more than 20...

Location of the tomb was, after all, an archaeological enigma lacking historical descriptions of its visual appearance.The authors said that not a single burial of the Mongolian imperial family has been identified. What is more, there are largely undocumented cultural heritage sites across a sparsely populated and undeveloped landscape. So while looking for the tomb was a motivation, the effort was also to leverage the power of human perception in a search for the unexpected. This was a challenge. The authors said that without a pre-existing reference for validation they turned towards consensus, defined by kernel density estimation, to pool...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The head of Iraq's largest church said on Sunday that Islamic State militants who drove Christians out of Mosul were worse than Mongol leader Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulagu who ransacked medieval Baghdad. Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako led a wave of condemnation for the Sunni Islamists who demanded Christians either convert, submit to their radical rule and pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. At the Vatican, Pope Francis decried what he said was the persecution of Christians in the birthplace of their faith, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the...

The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years. High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots. The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and...

Found this website that is interesting: Vegetarians are Evil; Vegan & Vegetarian Killers The following is a list of vegetarians who were also killers: Pol Pot, Vegan despot and mass murderer Out of a population of approximately 8 million, Pol Pot's regime exterminated one quarter, or almost 2 million people. Charles Manson - Vegan Animal Rights Activist Manson was an environmentalist and animal rights activist concerned about damage to the environment and pollution. Volkert van der Graaf, vegan killer Volkert was also a member of a group called the "Furious Potatoes" (De Ziedende Bintjes), a group that carries out illegal,...

Humanity’s greatest land empire was made possible by non-human climate change. Many phenomena, real and imagined, have been attributed to global warming. From rising ocean levels to increased agricultural yields to tornadoes to polar vortices to droughts to rapes to car thefts, global warming now stands as the cause of just about anything. And because of current political dogma, man is ultimately blamed for all these evils (and occasional goods). Now a recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that there is a correlation between increasing global temperatures and the rise of the Mongolian empire. According...

The Mongol warlord built the world's largest land-based empire. But he couldn't have done it without a change in climate. The difference was Genghis Khan, the warlord who united the tribes and launched them on their wave of unstoppable conquest. But the Mongol Empire wasn’t solely the product of Genghis’s will. As a fascinating new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) demonstrates, the rise of the Mongols may have owed just as much to beneficial changes in the climate that made the grasslands of the Mongol steppes green and verdant, fueling the horses that were...

September 1, 2013 KERRY DOES THE FULL RICE Scott Johnson This morning Secretary of State John Kerry performed the full Rice (formerly the full Ginsburg) on behalf of the Obama administration, appearing on all five Sunday gabfests. Having put himself out there on Friday to make the case for the urgency of action action against Bashaar al-Assad on Friday, he now argued that Obama was taking the correct approach in putting the question to Congress. Chris Wallace asked some tough questions on Fox News Sunday (below), including one that worked in a reference to Obama’s golf round after Obama’s surprise...

Here's your 101 guide on the structure that helped Genghis Khan conquer Eurasia — from how they're made to where you can stay in one or where you can buy one.A yurt is a round cylindrical dwelling capped with a conic roof that's been in use for at least the past few thousand years. Originating in Central Asia (Genghis Khan and his horde used them), the yurt was valued by its native progenitors for its portability, durability and structural soundness. Yurts are easy to put up and take down (requiring just a couple hours of work) and could be transported...

Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest. The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study. The deaths of 40 million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, reports Mongabay.com. Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. So how did Genghis Khan, one of history's cruelest conquerors, earn such a glowing environmental report card? The reality may be a bit difficult for today's environmentalists to stomach, but Khan...