The dominant paternal lineage of West and Central Africa
Haplogroup E1b1a, defined by V38, is the most common Y-chromosome lineage across West, Central and Southern Africa. Its modern distribution is closely tied to the Bantu expansion, the major agricultural migration that carried Bantu languages and farming across much of sub-Saharan Africa, and it is the predominant lineage among many populations of West African descent.
E1b1a dominates the paternal landscape of West and Central Africa and is very common across Southern Africa among Bantu-speaking populations. Through the transatlantic slave trade it also became the most common Y lineage among men of the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. Its sweep across sub-Saharan Africa is one of the clearest genetic signatures of a farming expansion anywhere in the world.
E1b1a is a branch of the large, predominantly African haplogroup E. While haplogroup E as a whole is old and its deeper origins are debated, the specific expansion of E1b1a that produced its modern distribution is considerably more recent and is generally linked to the spread of agriculture and the Bantu languages over the last several thousand years. As always, exact dating varies between studies.
E1b1a contains a set of downstream branches whose frequencies vary across African regions, and the fine structure of the haplogroup has been used to trace the routes and timing of the Bantu expansion in detail. Particular sublineages are more common in West Africa, others in Central and Southern Africa, reflecting the staged nature of that migration.
An E1b1a result points to West or Central African paternal ancestry, and for many people in the African diaspora it is the expected lineage. Downstream SNP testing can narrow this considerably within Africa, which is often the more useful level for connecting with specific regions or surname groups on the map.
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