| description |
The paternal haplogroup (hg) N is distributed from southeast Asia to eastern Europe. The demographic processes that have shaped the wide spread of this major Y-chromosomal lineage across numerous linguistically and autosomally divergent populations have previously been unresolved. Based on 94 high coverage re-sequenced Y-chromosomes, we establish and date a detailed new hg N phylogeny. We genotype 16 novel binary markers in 1631 hg N Y-chromosomes from a collection of 6521 samples from 56 populations. The more southerly distributed subclade N4 coalesces 3000 years before N2a1 and N3, found mostly in the north, but the latter display more elaborate branching patterns, indicative of regional contrasts in recent expansions. Fine-grained phylogeographic patterns of sub-haplogroups reveal several instances of population mixing without concomitant language replacement. Notably, a number of N3 subclades, today being carried by men living in most distant regions of Eurasia, have undergone fast expansion within the last 5000 years. |