PEOPLE who belong to the same tribe may be no more closely related than other individuals in the same country, a study in Uzbekistan has shown. The finding suggests that tribal groups sometimes invent common ancestors to strengthen social bonds.
Some Uzbek tribes, which are divided into clans and lineages, trace their roots to relatives of Ghengis Khan. Evelyne Heyer of the Museum of Humankind in Paris reasoned that since these tribes trace genealogies through their fathers, their relatedness could be traced via the Y chromosome. But while people with the same clan or lineage did have a common ancestry,…
