by the Way . . .

At least 1.6 million Chinese men carry the Manchu Y chromosome of one founding grandfather. The NYT Science Times reported:

Because the founder of the lineage lived some 500 years ago, according to calculations based on the rate of genetic change, he may have been Giocangga, who died in 1582, the grandfather of the Manchu leader Nurhaci.

A team of elderly scientists will be departing for Northern China in the next few weeks, in an attempt to determine what it was that Giocangga was taking.