Haplogroup T1
T1 is haplogroup T's steppe-riding wing, a Near Eastern lineage that became a regular passenger of the Bronze Age pastoralist expansions. 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
T1
- Testers
- 9,798
- 2,924 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria
- Oldest person on this line
Origin and distribution of T1
What is mtDNA haplogroup T1? It is haplogroup T's smaller wing, born in the Near East like T2 and a regular passenger of the Bronze Age steppe expansions. Nowhere common, it runs in a thin band from Europe through the Volga-Ural region into Central Asia and Iran.
- When it came west
- Haplogroups J and T carry a substantial, perhaps predominant, Late Glacial signal of dispersal into Europe from Near Eastern refugia about 19,000 to 12,000 years ago, earlier than the Neolithic spread long assumed for them.Source: Mitochondrial DNA Signals of Late Glacial Recolonization of Europe from Near Eastern Refugia (2012)
- Its steppe passage
- The third millennium BCE migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe reshaped central and northern Europe's ancestry, and the maternal lines the pastoralists carried travelled with it.Source: Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe (2015)
- Where it rides
- T1a is a conspicuous regular of Bronze Age pastoralist burials, and the branch's modern band from Europe through the Volga-Ural region into Central Asia still traces those movements.
- Where it is common
- A few per cent across most of Europe and the Near East, slightly stronger eastward, and nowhere the dominant lineage.
- Its double history
- A T1 line can belong to the farming spread or to the steppe one. The finer branches, and sometimes an ancient match, are what separate the two.
- 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.
T1 shares haplogroup T's Near Eastern birth with its larger sibling T2, but wrote a different second act. Its dominant branch T1a appears with the first farmers and then becomes a conspicuous regular of the Bronze Age steppe: Yamnaya, Corded Ware and later pastoralist burials carry T1a lines again and again, and the branch's modern geography, a wide, thin band from Europe through the Volga-Ural region into Central Asia and Iran, still traces those movements.
Nowhere common, T1 is everywhere persistent: a few per cent across most of Europe and the Near East, slightly stronger eastward. For a modern carrier, the interesting question is usually which side of its double history a line belongs to, the farming spread or the steppe one, a question the finer branches, and sometimes an ancient match, can actually answer.
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
422 · 22%
England
272 · 14%
Germany
245 · 13%
Sweden
222 · 11%
Ireland
195 · 10%
Finland
118 · 6.1%
Scotland
109 · 5.6%
United Kingdom
100 · 5.1%
Plus 2,731 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.
Armenia
1 in 22 · 4.6%
Turkey
1 in 22 · 4.5%
Bulgaria
1 in 26 · 3.8%
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 T1?
T1 is haplogroup T's steppe-riding wing, a Near Eastern lineage that became a regular passenger of the Bronze Age pastoralist expansions. 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 T1?
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 T1 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: