Haplogroup R1b

Y-DNA (paternal line) · one of the R lineages

The most common Y-haplogroup in Western Europe; arrived with the Bronze-Age Beaker expansion, causing a near-total turnover of Britain’s male line. [isogg][olalde2018][aadr][yfull]

The Beaker turnover

Estimated age of the lineage: ~6,400 years (TMRCA). Explore the full deep subtree (R-M269) at YFull → — the live, SNP-level tree where you can drill down to your own terminal subclade. [yfull]

In the ancient British record

Frequency of R1b among ancient male samples from Britain & Ireland, by period — from our aggregation of the CC0 Allen Ancient DNA Resource. See the full chart.

Bronze Age 84%
Early Medieval 55%
Iron Age 88%
Medieval+ 17%
Mesolithic 17%
Neolithic 1%
Roman 83%

Fuller account: R1b on Wikipedia.

Remember: a haplogroup is a deep, broad lineage shared by many people — not an ethnicity, a nationality or a clan. See what DNA can and can’t tell you.

Sources

[isogg] International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree. Reference — cite for haplogroup nomenclature only (not frequencies) · link
[olalde2018] Olalde et al., “The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe”, Nature 555 (2018), doi:10.1038/nature25738. Journal article — cite; open supplementary data · link
[aadr] Allen Ancient DNA Resource (AADR) v66, Mallick & Reich (Harvard), doi:10.7910/DVN/FFIDCW. CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) · link
[yfull] YFull YTree (github.com/YFullTeam/YTree) — a phylogenetic Y-chromosome tree with age estimates. CC BY 4.0 (attribution required) · link