Half of European men share King Tut's DNA

(Reuters) - Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said.

Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel.

The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share a common ancestor.

Among modern-day Egyptians this haplogroup contingent is below 1 percent, according to iGENEA.

"It was very interesting to discover that he belonged to a genetic group in Europe -- there were many possible groups in Egypt that the DNA could have belonged to," said Roman Scholz, director of the iGENEA Centre.

Around 70 percent of Spanish and 60 percent of French men also belong to the genetic group of the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

"We think the common ancestor lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago," Scholz told Reuters.

It is estimated that the earliest migration of haplogroup R1b1a2 into Europe began with the spread of agriculture in 7,000 BC, according to iGENEA.

However, the geneticists were not sure how Tutankhamun's paternal lineage came to Egypt from its region of origin.

The centre is now using DNA testing to search for the closest living relatives of "King Tut."

"The offer has only been publicised for three days but we have already seen a lot of interest," Scholz told Reuters.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/oukoe-uk-britain-tutankhamun-dna-idUKTRE7704OR20110801

Something is wrong in the wording... here I understood that they based themselves on a discovery channel movie...

anyways, DNA markers show that tut and Euros have a common ancestor dating back to 7500 BC, tut was 1000 BC, can you see how the title and first line are misleading?

In any case, pharaohs have often been of foreign origins, there were Greek ones, Nubian ones...so finding non egyptian markers on one isn't quite a surprise (though they say some Egyptian groups have the marker too... it's likely that you'll find asian populations with the same marker if you looked well). basically the people of Egypt were ruled by others for a long time, the notion of nationality was not such an issue probably because borders always changed.

That said, all humans can be traced to a common ancestor (forgot the dating) using mitochondrias... so this news is only a fun fact, not actual news.

I thought most people can trace DNA back to one woman from Africa and that would probably include King Tut.

Eve?

mitochondrial DNA, not Human :p

Mitochondrial Eve, which is a reference to the mother of all women or something like that so between the both of you yes!

Don't let the skinheads find out.

Since I'm a descendant of a relatively important brazilian nobleman, I can trace my lineage back to Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Afonso Henriques, Hugo Capet and Ferdinand of Aragon.

It's not that hard to descend from someone pretty important that far back in time - someone one day will probably link Obama to the first chinese emperor or something like that...

I'm sure they would just spin it that to their advantage.

I'm thinking....

"Only the white man could tame the savage egytpians and rule over both Egypts, and the white royal line ruling over all those non white people just further proves white man's superiority."

Nice, nice.

(wonder who's MY ancestor, being that I am a white EASTERN european male! Pop said that we have abundant Swedish roots)