Haplogroup HV
HV is the Near Eastern trunk from which Europe's H and V descend, still carried in its own right from Anatolia and Iran to the Balkans. Explore the branch in the full mtDNA haplotree: sub-branches, defining variants and where its testers live. Free, no account needed.
Maternal branch
Live tester counts
Free · no account needed
Maternal line
HV
- Testers
- 213,503
- 3,171 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia
- Oldest person on this line
Origin and distribution of HV
What is mtDNA haplogroup HV? It is the Near Eastern trunk from which Europe's H and V both descend. Lines that never joined either branch are still labelled HV, and they remain most common in that homeland, from Anatolia and the Caucasus through Iran and Mesopotamia.
- What descends from it
- Haplogroup H, carried by about 40% of Europeans, is the branch of HV whose postglacial expansion from the Franco-Cantabrian refuge made it the continent's dominant maternal lineage.Source: The Molecular Dissection of mtDNA Haplogroup H Confirms That the Franco-Cantabrian Glacial Refuge Was a Major Source for the European Gene Pool (2004)
- Its other daughter
- Haplogroup V arose in a southwestern European refugium soon after the Last Glacial Maximum, while its ancestor pre-V predates the maximum and is scattered thinly through Europe and northwestern Africa.Source: A Signal, from Human mtDNA, of Postglacial Recolonization in Europe (2001)
- Its ancient record
- HV lineages belong to the Near Eastern and Anatolian populations from which farming spread into Europe, which is where lines still labelled HV are most common today.Source: Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East (2016)
- Where it is common
- Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran and Mesopotamia, thinning westward through the Balkans and Italy.
- Why a chip call can stop at HV
- The maternal tree is defined from complete mitochondrial genomes, so a kit reading a few dozen to a few hundred of the 16,569 positions may resolve a genuine H line only as far as HV, the coarser but correct claim.Source: A Copernican Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from Its Root (2012)
- What Ancestrify reports
- The free mtDNA Haplogroup Finder places your maternal line on this branch from a raw DNA export, at the resolution your file supports. Ancestry proportions come from the Ancient Ancestry (qpAdm) and Ancestry Map (Global25) reports, never from a haplogroup.
HV is the mother lineage of Europe's most common maternal haplogroups: both H (forty per cent of Europeans) and V branch from it. The trunk itself arose in the Near East around the last glacial maximum, and lines labelled simply 'HV', descendants that never joined H or V, remain most common in that homeland: Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran and Mesopotamia, thinning westward through the Balkans and Italy.
An HV result on a consumer chip carries a testable nuance: because chips read few mitochondrial positions, some kits genuinely on an H branch resolve only to HV, the coarser but correct claim. Full sequencing usually settles it. In the ancient record HV appears from Neolithic Anatolia onward, the quiet trunk behind Europe's biggest maternal success story.
One line among many: your mtDNA haplogroup traces a single maternal line, mother to mother into deep time, so it is a thread of ancestry, not an ethnicity and not a percentage of who you are. Two people in the same branch share a foremother; the rest of their genomes are their own story.
The line through time
Each branch on this line from the root of the tree, oldest first.
Where testers are found
Counts of people who took an mtDNA test and shared an origin. They describe the tested world, not ancient frequencies.
United States
8,838 · 20%
England
6,109 · 14%
Germany
5,507 · 12%
Ireland
4,946 · 11%
Sweden
4,563 · 10%
Finland
3,726 · 8.4%
United Kingdom
2,217 · 5.0%
France
2,216 · 5.0%
Plus 60,755 testers who gave no country. Shares are of testers with a known country.
Where this branch runs strongest
The share of each country's testers who sit on this branch.
Slovenia
54%
Bulgaria
52%
Croatia
51%
What defines it
The changes in the mitochondrial genome that every person on this branch carries. Positions are on the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence.
Is this your line?
If you have tested with a consumer DNA company, your own maternal branch is already in your raw data file. The free mtDNA Haplogroup Finder reads it and shows you where you sit on this tree.
Find my branch, freePrefer it read for you? The Ancient Ancestry report can carry your maternal haplogroup as an add-on, placed on this same tree beside your ancestry model, when your file holds enough mitochondrial markers.
Frequently asked questions
What is haplogroup HV?
HV is the Near Eastern trunk from which Europe's H and V descend, still carried in its own right from Anatolia and Iran to the Balkans. It is a branch of the mtDNA tree: everyone in it inherits the same set of defining mutations from one shared foremother.
How do I find out if I belong to HV?
If you have already tested with a consumer DNA company, the free mtDNA Haplogroup Finder reads a raw DNA export and places you on the tree at the resolution your file supports. It is free, and the file is discarded after analysis. A dedicated mtDNA sequencing test resolves deeper branches than a genotyping chip can.
Does belonging to HV make me related to one people?
No. A haplogroup follows a single maternal line, one ancestor per generation, while the rest of your ancestry doubles every generation back. It is a deep-time thread, not an ethnicity, and two members of the same branch can otherwise be as genetically different as any two strangers.
What does this page's tree data show?
The branch view on this page shows the branch inside the full mtDNA haplotree of tested lineages: the line it descends from, the branches below it, the variants that define it, and the countries its testers report. Counts reflect people who have taken a mtDNA test and shared an origin, so they describe the tested world, not ancient frequencies.
Keep exploring
Don't know your haplogroup yet? The free mtDNA Haplogroup Finder reads it from a raw DNA export. Or browse the whole tree in the mtDNA Haplotree. Other major branches: