Haplogroup J-M172 (J2)
J-M172 spread from the northern Fertile Crescent with the first farmers. Today it is a leading paternal lineage across Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran and the Mediterranean. 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
J-M172
- Testers
- 40,845
- 4,724 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Georgia, Iran, Armenia
- Formed
- Oldest man on this line
Origin and distribution of J-M172 (J2)
Where does J-M172 come from? Haplogroup J2 rose in the uplands of the northern Fertile Crescent and the Zagros around the beginning of farming, and it spread with Neolithic and later expansions to become a leading paternal lineage across Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran, the Levant and the Mediterranean.
- How it reached Europe
- The distribution of J-M172 excluding its M12 branch is consistent with a Levantine and Anatolian dispersal route into southeastern Europe, and may reflect the spread of Anatolian farmers.Source: Origin, Diffusion, and Differentiation of Y-Chromosome Haplogroups E and J: Inferences on the Neolithization of Europe and Later Migratory Events in the Mediterranean Area (2004)
- Its Balkan wing
- J-M12, the branch that carries J-L283, is one of the lineages tracing the movement of people from the southern Balkans westward, and the same study estimated a 7% to 22% contribution of Y chromosomes from Greece to southern Italy.Source: Origin, Diffusion, and Differentiation of Y-Chromosome Haplogroups E and J: Inferences on the Neolithization of Europe and Later Migratory Events in the Mediterranean Area (2004)
- Its ancient record
- J2 lineages belong to the farming and later populations of Anatolia, the Zagros and the Caucasus, the world from which agriculture spread in several directions.Source: Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East (2016)
- Its Caucasus peak
- In the Caucasus, paternal haplogroup frequencies correlate with geography and even more strongly with language, and a different major haplogroup prevails in each of four linguistic and geographic sets of populations.Source: Parallel Evolution of Genes and Languages in the Caucasus Region (2011)
- Where it is common
- Among the leading paternal lineages in Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, the Levant and Mesopotamia, with strong frequencies in Greece, Italy and the Mediterranean islands.
- 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.
J-M172, haplogroup J2, rose in the uplands of the northern Fertile Crescent and the Zagros around the dawn of agriculture, and its history is the history of that world's expansions: with early farmers into Anatolia and the Aegean, with Bronze Age civilisations across the Near East, and by sea along the whole Mediterranean. Today it is among the most common paternal lineages in Turkey, the Caucasus (peaking spectacularly among some Dagestani peoples), Iran, the Levant and Mesopotamia, with strong Mediterranean frequencies in Greece, Italy and the islands.
Its two great wings, J-M410 (J2a) and J-M12 (J2b), took different roads, J2a dominating the Near Eastern and Mediterranean heartland, while J2b (particularly J-L283) established itself early in the Balkans, where ancient DNA finds it in Bronze Age burials from the Adriatic to the Morava. In South Asia both wings appear as a significant minority, a trace of Neolithic and later westerly contacts.
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.
Saudi Arabia
1,378 · 16%
Italy
1,146 · 13%
Germany
1,102 · 12%
United States
797 · 9.0%
Russia (Republic of Chechnya)
731 · 8.2%
Russian Federation
724 · 8.2%
Iraq
696 · 7.9%
England
681 · 7.7%
Plus 23,672 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.
Georgia
1 in 4 · 27%
Iran
1 in 4 · 25%
Armenia
1 in 4 · 23%
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 J-M172 (J2)?
J-M172 spread from the northern Fertile Crescent with the first farmers. Today it is a leading paternal lineage across Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran and the Mediterranean. 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 J-M172 (J2)?
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 J-M172 (J2) 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: