  Cultural transmission of reproductive success states that successful men have
more children and pass this raised fecundity to their offspring. Balaresque and
colleagues found high frequency haplotypes in a Central Asian Y chromosome
dataset, which they attribute to cultural transmission of reproductive success
by prominent historical men, including Genghis Khan. Using coalescent
simulation, we show that these high frequency haplotypes are consistent with a
neutral model, where they commonly appear simply by chance. Hence, explanations
invoking cultural transmission of reproductive success are statistically
unnecessary.
