The collection of tombs were located in Ulitau region of Kazakhstan—an area once dominated by a division of the Mongol Empire known as the Golden Horde. This subdivision, which commanded the western wing of the empire, was overseen by the descendants of Khan’s eldest son, Jochi, who lived from roughly 1182 to 1225 C.E.

Local tradition had long held that one of the mausoleums analyzed in this new study was, in fact, the final resting place of Jochi himself. While the analysts couldn’t conclusively prove who was buried there, they were able to identify a common ancestor of all three of the men buried in the mausoleums. The trio all carried the haplogroup C3 Y-chromosome signature—the same signature that the aforementioned 2003 study found was in 0.5 percent of the population and attributed to Genghis Khan. This Y-chromosome lineage indicated that those buried in the mausoleums bore the genetic signature of the Mongols, as opposed to the genetic makeup of the Kipchak Turks native to the region.

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There are reasons to question whether or not the mausoleum holds the remains of Jochi himself—radiocarbon dating indicates that the burials occurred after the time Jochi is believed to have died, for one, and it is known that Mongol tradition preferred secret graves to grand resting places like these. However, if one of these three men was Jochi, the presence of this shared Y-chromosome lineage could not only provide further confirmation that haplogroup C3 stems from Genghis Khan, but could clear up a centuries-old controversy regarding Genghis Khan’s descendants.

Jochi was born to Börte Üjin, the first wife of Genghis Khan. However, shortly after the two wed, she was kidnapped by members of the Merkit tribe in an act of revenge against Khan. Khan ultimately rescued his wife, who (as stories have suggested) may have been forcibly married to, and subsequently sexually assaulted by, a member of the Merkit tribe—a story perpetuated in the oldest surviving work of Mongolic language literature, Secret History of the Mongols.