Haplogroup E-M2 (E1b1a)
E-M2 is sub-Saharan Africa's great paternal lineage, spread with the Bantu expansions across half a continent, and the majority Y line of the African diaspora. 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
Free · no account needed
Paternal line
E-M2
- Testers
- 17,421
- 2,782 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Ghana, Cameroon, Jamaica
- Formed
- Oldest man on this line
Origin and distribution of E-M2 (E1b1a)
What is E-M2? It is sub-Saharan Africa's great paternal lineage, the line that spread with the expansion of food producers across the continent's southern half in the last few millennia, and the majority Y lineage of African-descended populations in the Americas.
- Its place on the tree
- Haplogroup E, defined by M40, is the most common Y chromosome clade within Africa. A study of 729 mutations in sequenced chromosomes plus 62 markers in 5,222 samples from 118 populations revised its topology and resolved its remaining polytomies.Source: Phylogeographic Refinement and Large Scale Genotyping of Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup E Provide New Insights into the Dispersal of Early Pastoralists in the African Continent (2015)
- The expansion behind it
- Ancient genomes from 20 sub-Saharan individuals show once contiguous hunter-gatherer populations contracting as food producers spread, with Bantu ancestry in Botswana post-dating an earlier admixture between pastoralists and foragers.Source: Ancient genomes reveal complex patterns of population movement, interaction, and replacement in sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
- Where it is common
- Dominant in the paternal gene pools of West, Central and Southern Africa and much of East Africa.
- In the diaspora
- Through the Atlantic slave trade it became the majority paternal lineage of African-descended populations from the United States to Brazil and the Caribbean.
- What a sub-branch can add
- Its dense sub-branches are increasingly well dated, so for diaspora genealogy the sub-branch can point toward a region of origin at a resolution the paper trail rarely reaches.
- 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.
E-M2 is one of the most successful paternal lineages in human history: born in West or Central Africa, it swept across the continent's southern half with the Bantu expansions of the last three thousand years, one of the largest demographic events of the ancient world, and today dominates the paternal gene pools of West, Central, Southern and much of East Africa. Through the Atlantic slave trade it also became the majority Y lineage of African-descended populations across the Americas, from the United States to Brazil and the Caribbean.
Its dense sub-branches (M191/U174, U175 and their children) are increasingly well resolved and increasingly well dated, which matters practically: for African-diaspora genealogy, the sub-branch can point toward a region of origin at a resolution the paper trail almost never reaches. In Europe and the Near East, E-M2 appears at low frequency along old Mediterranean and Saharan corridors, a small signal of contacts that long predate the modern era.
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.
United States
1,285 · 44%
Saudi Arabia
481 · 16%
Ghana
398 · 14%
Cameroon
153 · 5.2%
Nigeria
126 · 4.3%
United States (Native American)
125 · 4.2%
Jamaica
93 · 3.2%
Kuwait
86 · 2.9%
Plus 13,307 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.
Ghana
94%
Cameroon
62%
Jamaica
1 in 2 · 42%
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, freePrefer 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 E-M2 (E1b1a)?
E-M2 is sub-Saharan Africa's great paternal lineage, spread with the Bantu expansions across half a continent, and the majority Y line of the African diaspora. 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 E-M2 (E1b1a)?
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 E-M2 (E1b1a) 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: