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Haplogroup C-M130

C-M130 is one of the oldest non-African lineages, from Mongolic and Tungusic Siberia to Aboriginal Australia, with a famous medieval star cluster in its C2 branch. Explore the branch in the full Y-DNA haplotree: sub-branches, defining variants and where its testers live. Free, no account needed.

Paternal branch

Live tester counts

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Paternal line

C-M216

Testers: 3,857; 397 on this exact branch
Strongest today: Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Korea, Republic of
Formed
Oldest man on this line

See it on the map Explore it in the full tree

Origin and distribution of C-M130

What is C-M130? It is one of the oldest lineages outside Africa, its deep branches reaching Aboriginal Australia while its northern wing dominates Mongolic and Tungusic Inner Asia. It also carries the most famous medieval descent cluster in genetic genealogy.

Its deep age: Sequencing 13 Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes puts their divergence from other continents at about 50,000 years, which rules out the Y chromosome as evidence for recent gene flow from India.Source: Deep Roots for Aboriginal Australian Y Chromosomes (2016)
The medieval cluster: A C2 lineage found in 16 populations from the Pacific to the Caspian is carried by about 8% of men in that region, roughly 0.5% of men worldwide, with a variation pattern suggesting an origin in Mongolia about 1,000 years ago.Source: The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols (2003)
How to read that cluster: A survey of 5,321 Asian Y chromosomes defined 11 such descent clusters, expanding between 2100 BCE and 1100 CE among both settled farmers and pastoral nomads. The genetics records the expansion; it does not name the man behind it.Source: Y-chromosome descent clusters and male differential reproductive success: young lineage expansions dominate Asian pastoral nomadic populations (2015)
Where it is common: Its C2 branch dominates among Mongols, Kazakhs, Buryats and Tungusic-speaking peoples and reaches into Korea and Japan; older branches survive in Aboriginal Australia, New Guinea and pockets of South and Southeast Asia.
In the Americas: C2 lines are among the founding paternal lineages of several Indigenous North American peoples, notably in the Na-Dene-speaking world.
What Ancestrify reports: The free Y-DNA Clade Finder places your paternal 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.

C-M130 preserves one of the earliest chapters of the human expansion out of Africa: its deep branches scatter along the old coastal route (Aboriginal Australian C lines, Papuan and Wallacean branches, relict pockets in South and Southeast Asia), while its northern wing, C2 (M217), became a great lineage of Inner and Northeast Asia. C2 dominates among Mongols, Kazakhs, Buryats, Tungusic-speaking peoples and reaches into Korea and Japan; across the Bering Strait, C2 lines are among the founding paternal lineages of several Indigenous North American peoples, notably in the Na-Dene-speaking world.

The branch carries genetic genealogy's most storied cluster: a C2 'star cluster' that expanded explosively from around the eleventh to thirteenth centuries across the former Mongol world, long popularly attributed to Genghis Khan's male line, an attribution the sources cannot confirm and recent scholarship treats with caution. What the tree does record, regardless of the name attached, is a single medieval lineage multiplying across half of Asia.

One line among many: your Y haplogroup traces a single paternal line, one ancestor per generation out of thousands, so it is a thread of deep ancestry, not an ethnicity and not a percentage of who you are. Two men in the same branch share a forefather, but the rest of their genomes can differ as much as any two strangers'.

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 a Y-DNA test and shared an origin. They describe the tested world, not ancient frequencies.

Kazakhstan

313 · 26%

Mongolia

258 · 22%

Russian Federation

155 · 13%

China

116 · 9.7%

Japan

72 · 6.0%

United States (Native American)

66 · 5.5%

India

53 · 4.5%

New Zealand (Māori)

42 · 3.5%

Plus 2,089 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.

Mongolia

57%

Kazakhstan

1 in 2 · 42%

Korea, Republic of

1 in 6 · 17%

What defines it

The changes on the Y chromosome that every man on this branch carries. Positions are on the GRCh38 reference.

Is this your line?

If you have tested with a consumer DNA company, your own branch is already in your raw data file. The free Clade Finder reads it and shows you where you sit on this tree.

Find my branch, free

Prefer it read for you? The Ancient Ancestry report can carry your paternal haplogroup as an add-on, placed on this same tree beside your ancestry model.

Frequently asked questions

What is haplogroup C-M130?

C-M130 is one of the oldest non-African lineages, from Mongolic and Tungusic Siberia to Aboriginal Australia, with a famous medieval star cluster in its C2 branch. It is a branch of the Y-DNA tree: everyone in it inherits the same set of defining mutations from one shared forefather.

How do I find out if I belong to C-M130?

If you have already tested with a consumer DNA company, the free Y-DNA Clade Finder reads a raw DNA export (23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage or a VCF) and places you on the tree at the resolution your file supports. It is free, and the file is discarded after analysis. A dedicated Y-DNA sequencing test resolves deeper branches than a genotyping chip can.

Does belonging to C-M130 make me descend from one people?

No. A haplogroup follows a single paternal 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 Y-DNA 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 Y-DNA test and shared an origin, so they describe the tested world, not ancient frequencies.

Keep exploring

Don't know your haplogroup yet? The free Y-DNA Clade Finder reads it from a raw DNA export. Or browse the whole tree in the Y-DNA Haplotree. Other major branches: