An old lineage spanning Asia, Oceania and the Americas
Haplogroup C is an old and geographically far-flung lineage, defined by the marker M130. It is thought to have spread widely during the early peopling of Asia and beyond, and today it is found from Australia and Oceania through Central and East Asia to the Americas, usually at moderate rather than dominant frequencies.
Haplogroup C has one of the broadest distributions of any Y lineage. It occurs among Indigenous Australians, across parts of Melanesia and Polynesia, throughout Central and East Asia — reaching high frequencies among some Mongolic and Tungusic populations — and among several Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This scattered but very wide range reflects its involvement in some of the earliest human movements across Asia.
Haplogroup C is generally regarded as one of the older lineages carried by early modern humans as they expanded across Asia, with age estimates running to several tens of thousands of years. Its presence in both Australia and the Americas is often cited as evidence of its antiquity and of the early coastal and continental routes taken during human expansion, though the details remain an active area of research.
C splits into several major branches with strong regional signatures. One branch is characteristic of Indigenous Australian populations; others are widespread in Central and East Asia. The branch sometimes discussed in connection with the medieval Mongol expansions falls within C, and its unusually broad spread across Asia has attracted particular attention. Another branch is found among Indigenous Americans.
Because haplogroup C is so widespread, the top-level result tells you comparatively little on its own — it could point to ancestry anywhere from Australia to Siberia to the Americas. The subclade is what carries the geographic signal, so downstream SNP testing is especially valuable for this lineage.
Live counts by country are shown on this page once the map data loads.