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From The Times
July 5, 2004

Genghis Khan's DNA can get you a free meal

By Robin Young
DNA TESTS are on the menu at London’s two Mongolian restaurants, the branches of Shish in Hoxton and Willesden Green.

They will be used to determine which customers should get free meals to celebrate the fact that Mongolians are now allowed to have a surname for the first time in 80 years, and can use this right to claim descendancy from Genghis Khan and use his patronym.

The restaurants have teamed up with Oxford Ancestors, a company founded by Professor Bryan Sykes to determine which diners are direct descendants of Genghis Khan.

As 17 million people worldwide, are reckoned to be directly descended from him, so the odds are not too heavily weighted against anyone proving to be a winner.

Among those who it is already known could claim their free meals are our own Royal Family, Iranian royalty and the family of Count Dracula. The proliferation of Genghis Khan’s descendants was first identified during a ten-year survey by Oxford University which analysed the DNA of male inhabitants throughout the area of the former Mongol empire.

Recognition of his bloodline was strictly prohibited from 1925, when Russian communists banned the use of noble tribal surnames in Mongolia.The latest initiative of the democratic Government reinstalled in 1990, however, has been to restore the right to register for surnames which the Soviet Union abolished. By the end of June, 50,000 Mongolians had adopted the name of Borjigid, the clan of Genghis Khan.

The DNA testing procedure offered by Oxford Ancestors is simple: a small brush is rubbed inside the cheek, and the sample is sent for analysis, which takes about two months. There are special tests to identify descendants of Genghis Khan.

There is a snag, though: the DNA tests will only be offered at the two restaurants from today until Friday.

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