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Haplogroup E-V13

E-V13 is Europe's own branch of haplogroup E: carried by Neolithic farmers, expanded in the Bronze Age Balkans, and today peaking among Albanians, Greeks and their neighbours. Explore the branch in the full Y-DNA haplotree: sub-branches, defining variants and where its testers live. Free, no account needed.

Paternal branch

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Paternal line

E-V13

Testers: 14,705; 1,893 on this exact branch
Strongest today: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Formed
Oldest man on this line

See it on the map Explore it in the full tree

Origin and distribution of E-V13

What is E-V13? It is Europe's own branch of haplogroup E: carried by Neolithic farmers, expanded in the Bronze Age Balkans, and peaking today among Albanians, Greeks and their neighbours.

Its farming root: Haplogroup E lineages are present in the Neolithic populations of southeastern Europe, from which V13 later expanded locally.Source: The genomic history of southeastern Europe (2018)
Where it is common: Highest among Albanians, Kosovar and North Macedonian populations and Greeks, common across the southern Balkans and in southern Italy.
What it is not: E-V13 is one of several major paternal lines in the region and is not an Illyrian or Albanian marker. In the Albanian record it sits beside J2b-L283, R1b and I2a branches.Source: Ancient DNA evidence for the history of the Albanians (2026)

E-V13 is the one major branch of haplogroup E that is thoroughly European. Its deeper ancestry (E-M78) is North-East African, but V13 itself crossed into Europe with early Neolithic farmers (a V13 man was buried in a seventh-millennium-BCE farming village in Iberia), and its great expansion happened in the Balkans during the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Today E-V13 peaks among Albanians and Kosovo Albanians, Greeks, North Macedonians, Bulgarians and southern Serbs, and appears at lower frequencies everywhere Balkan peoples travelled: Italy, the Carpathians, Anatolia. Ancient DNA from Iron Age Balkan sites shows it already prominent among the populations Greek and Roman authors would later call Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians, which makes V13 a favourite lineage for anyone tracing paternal ancestry to the palaeo-Balkan world.

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.

Germany

623 · 21%

United States

539 · 18%

England

450 · 15%

Italy

302 · 10%

Poland

172 · 5.9%

Ireland

157 · 5.4%

France

154 · 5.3%

Greece

140 · 4.8%

Plus 9,750 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.

Albania

1 in 4 · 28%

Bulgaria

1 in 7 · 15%

Bosnia and Herzegovina

1 in 7 · 14%

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 E-V13?

E-V13 is Europe's own branch of haplogroup E: carried by Neolithic farmers, expanded in the Bronze Age Balkans, and today peaking among Albanians, Greeks and their neighbours. 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-V13?

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-V13 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: