Haplogroup R-Z282 (R1a, European branch)
R-Z282 is R1a's European wing, the dominant paternal lineage of the Slavic- and Baltic-speaking world, with a Scandinavian branch of its own. 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
R-Z282
- Testers
- 42,153
- 933 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia
- Formed
- Oldest man on this line
Origin and distribution of R-Z282 (R1a, European branch)
What is R-Z282? It is R1a's European wing: the branch of R-M417 that stayed in Europe while Z93 turned east, and it is today the dominant paternal lineage of the Slavic and Baltic speaking world, with a Scandinavian branch of its own.
- The split it belongs to
- Analysis of 2,923 R1a chromosomes from 126 populations finds two major groups, one primarily European and one confined to Central and South Asia, with coalescence within R1a-M417 about 5,800 years ago.Source: The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a (2015)
- How it expanded
- Ancient DNA suggests R1a spread into Europe from the east after 3000 BCE, as Corded Ware people of Germany came to trace about three quarters of their ancestry to the steppe's Yamnaya.Source: Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe (2015)
- The medieval redistribution
- The Slavic migrations of the first millennium CE moved eastern European ancestry across the Balkans and beyond, spreading Z282 sub-branches far from where they arose.Source: A genetic history of the Balkans from Roman frontier to Slavic migrations (2023)
- Its children
- R-M458 is densest in Poland and among West Slavs, R-Z280 runs from the Baltic across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and R-Z284 became Scandinavia's own R1a.
- Where it is common
- R1a, of which this is the European branch, is carried by about half of men in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, more in parts of western Russia, a third in Estonia and a fifth in Norway.Source: The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a (2015)
- 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.
R-Z282 is the counterpart to Z93: where that branch of R-M417 turned toward Asia, Z282 stayed in Europe and multiplied into the dominant paternal lineage of the continent's east. Its children divide the territory cleanly: R-M458 densest in Poland and among West Slavs, R-Z280 spread from the Baltic across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and R-Z284 an early offshoot that became Scandinavia's own R1a, common in Norway and among Norse-descended lines in the British Isles.
Ancient DNA ties the branch to the Corded Ware horizon and its successors on the North European Plain, with the Slavic expansions of the first millennium CE redistributing M458 and Z280 lines across half the continent. For men with Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Baltic or Balkan roots, the Z282 sub-branch is usually where the genealogically informative story starts.
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.
Poland
2,153 · 19%
Sweden
1,679 · 15%
Russian Federation
1,636 · 14%
Germany
1,039 · 9.0%
Ukraine
939 · 8.2%
Norway
916 · 8.0%
United States
819 · 7.1%
Czech Republic
712 · 6.2%
Plus 27,171 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.
Czech Republic
1 in 3 · 30%
Poland
1 in 3 · 29%
Slovenia
1 in 4 · 27%
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 R-Z282 (R1a, European branch)?
R-Z282 is R1a's European wing, the dominant paternal lineage of the Slavic- and Baltic-speaking world, with a Scandinavian branch of its own. 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 R-Z282 (R1a, European branch)?
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 R-Z282 (R1a, European branch) 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: