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 .