Haplogroup I-M223 (I2a2)
I-M223 is a northwest-European branch of the ancient haplogroup I, present since the Mesolithic and today scattered from Britain to Germany and Scandinavia. 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
I-M223
- Testers
- 21,885
- 1,600 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland
- Formed
- Oldest man on this line
Origin and distribution of I-M223 (I2a2)
What is I-M223? It is the northwest European branch of haplogroup I2, one of the few clades that is widespread in Europe and virtually absent elsewhere. It has been here since before farming, and today it sits at moderate frequencies from Britain and Ireland through Germany, the Low Countries and Scandinavia.
- Its deep root
- Haplogroup I is the only major clade of the Y tree that is widespread over Europe and virtually absent elsewhere, and its subclades carry distinct post-glacial geographies.Source: Phylogeography of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup I Reveals Distinct Domains of Prehistoric Gene Flow in Europe (2004)
- Its ancient record
- I2 lineages run through Europe's Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and persist in Neolithic and Bronze Age populations beside the incoming farmer and steppe lines.Source: Population genomics of post-glacial western Eurasia (2024)
- Why the old lines are thin
- The Beaker horizon replaced around 90% of Britain's gene pool within centuries and almost the whole male-line pool, which is why pre-farming lineages survive as minorities rather than majorities.Source: The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe (2018)
- Where it is common
- Moderate frequencies across Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia. It never became the majority lineage of any region.
- Its island branch
- I-M284 is almost entirely confined to Britain and Ireland; continental branches such as I-L801 spread with Germanic-speaking populations.
- 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.
I-M223 is the northwest-European face of haplogroup I2: a lineage found in Europe's ancient hunter-gatherers and in Neolithic and Bronze Age burials from Britain to the Carpathians, surviving today at moderate frequencies across Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia rather than dominating any one region.
Its best-known sub-branch, I-M284, is almost entirely confined to Britain and Ireland, where it marks a lineage present since before Roman times; continental branches such as I-L801 spread with Germanic-speaking populations in the Iron Age and after. For a branch that never 'won' a region, M223 is remarkably persistent, a thread of the pre-farming European gene pool still visible in the modern tree.
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.
England
1,362 · 20%
United States
1,307 · 19%
Ireland
899 · 13%
Germany
876 · 13%
Scotland
718 · 11%
United Kingdom
485 · 7.2%
Sweden
321 · 4.8%
Northern Ireland
216 · 3.2%
Plus 13,658 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.
Netherlands
1 in 16 · 6.3%
Denmark
1 in 17 · 5.7%
Switzerland
1 in 19 · 5.3%
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 I-M223 (I2a2)?
I-M223 is a northwest-European branch of the ancient haplogroup I, present since the Mesolithic and today scattered from Britain to Germany and Scandinavia. 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 I-M223 (I2a2)?
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 I-M223 (I2a2) 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: