Half of European men are related to Tutankhamun

HALF of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland have said.

Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel.

The results showed King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50% of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating they share a common ancestor.