Europeans, Chinese and Native Americans Have the Same Father

An Irish fisherman, a taxi driver in Beijing, and a Maya farmer in Guatemala will never meet. Yet all three carry the same mark on their Y chromosome, left by one man who lived about 50,000 years ago.

Geneticists call his lineage K2. His descendants became the main paternal lines of Western and Eastern Europe (R), China (O), and the Native peoples of the Americas (Q). And the family tree hides a twist: on the father's side, Europeans and Native Americans are brothers. The Chinese are their cousins.