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Haplogroup Q-M242

Q-M242 crossed Beringia into the Americas. It is the paternal lineage of most Indigenous American men, with an older homeland across Siberia and Central Asia. 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

Q-M242

Testers: 10,963; 718 on this exact branch
Strongest today: Mexico, Colombia, Pakistan
Formed
Oldest man on this line

See it on the map Explore it in the full tree

Origin and distribution of Q-M242

What is Q-M242? It is the paternal lineage that peopled the Americas: virtually every Native American Y chromosome in Mesoamerica and South America belongs to it. Its older relatives remain scattered across Siberia and the Central Asian steppe, the region the lineage came from.

Its American reach: Haplogroup Q is the only pan-American Y haplogroup and accounts for virtually all Native American Y chromosomes in Mesoamerica and South America.Source: Analysis of the human Y-chromosome haplogroup Q characterizes ancient population movements in Eurasia and the Americas (2019)
When it expanded: A phylogeny of 152 Y chromosomes records a major phase of male population growth in the Americas after 15,000 years ago, a period of constant population size from 8,000 to 3,000 years ago, and a secondary growth signal after that.Source: Analysis of the human Y-chromosome haplogroup Q characterizes ancient population movements in Eurasia and the Americas (2019)
The wider picture: Genome-wide data from ancient and present-day individuals place the ancestors of Native Americans as a population that separated from Siberian groups and entered the Americas through Beringia.Source: Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans (2015)
Where it is found in Eurasia: A scattered northern lineage: notable among Siberian peoples such as the Kets and Selkups, present across the Turkic-speaking steppe, and in small numbers in Europe.
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.

Q-M242 is the haplogroup that peopled a hemisphere. Rising in Central Asia and southern Siberia during the last Ice Age, its Q-M3 branch crossed Beringia with the ancestors of the First Peoples and became the paternal lineage of the overwhelming majority of Indigenous men from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, one founder line stretched across two continents.

In Eurasia, Q remained a scattered northern lineage: notable among Siberian peoples (Kets, Selkups), present across the Turkic-speaking steppe, and carried into Europe in small numbers: a documented Q cluster among Ashkenazi Jews, traces in Scandinavia and the Balkans left by steppe nomads such as the Huns and Avars. The deep split between the American and Eurasian branches is old enough that the tree itself records the Beringian crossing.

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.

Mexico

736 · 27%

United States (Native American)

586 · 22%

Sweden

417 · 15%

United States

228 · 8.4%

Russian Federation

136 · 5.0%

England

134 · 4.9%

Germany

117 · 4.3%

Poland

112 · 4.1%

Plus 6,838 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.

Mexico

1 in 3 · 32%

Colombia

1 in 8 · 12%

Pakistan

1 in 11 · 8.8%

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 Q-M242?

Q-M242 crossed Beringia into the Americas. It is the paternal lineage of most Indigenous American men, with an older homeland across Siberia and Central Asia. 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 Q-M242?

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 Q-M242 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: