Haplogroup R-Z93 (R1a, Asian branch)
R-Z93 is R1a's Asian wing, the steppe lineage that spread with Indo-Iranian speakers into Central and South Asia, common today from the Altai to India. 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
R-Z93
- Testers
- 8,539
- 757 on this exact branch
- Strongest today
- Pakistan, Israel, India
- Formed
- Oldest man on this line
Origin and distribution of R-Z93 (R1a, Asian branch)
What is R-Z93? It is R1a's Asian wing, the steppe lineage that spread with Indo-Iranian speakers into Central and South Asia, and it is common today from the Altai to India.
- Where ancient DNA finds it
- On the Bronze Age steppe of the second millennium BCE, every sampled man of the central steppe's Middle to Late Bronze Age cluster carried it.Source: The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia (2019)
- How it entered South Asia
- Steppe Middle to Late Bronze Age ancestry reaches the Swat valley by around 1200 BC, with the admixture dated between roughly 1900 and 1500 BC.Source: The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia (2019)
- Where it is common
- Across northern India and Pakistan, Central Asian groups such as Tajiks and Kyrgyz, and pockets through Iran and the Arabian Gulf.
R-Z93 is the branch of R1a that turned east. Ancient DNA finds it in Bronze Age steppe cultures (Sintashta, Andronovo, the chariot-building pastoralists of the second millennium BCE), and its modern distribution follows the historical range of Indo-Iranian languages: high frequencies among many populations of India and Pakistan (where it is a major component of the paternal gene pool, particularly in the north and among Brahmin communities), Central Asian groups such as Tajiks and Kyrgyz, and pockets across Iran and the Arabian Gulf.
Its sub-branches carry more recent founder stories: R-L657 expanded strongly within South Asia, while other lines mark Scythian-era and medieval movements across the steppe belt. Together with its European sibling Z282, Z93 makes R1a one of the clearest examples of a haplogroup whose geography was written by a single prehistoric expansion.
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
262 · 16%
Russian Federation
235 · 14%
India
194 · 12%
Ukraine
157 · 9.5%
Poland
145 · 8.8%
Germany
121 · 7.3%
United States
119 · 7.2%
Iraq
111 · 6.7%
Plus 5,406 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.
Pakistan
1 in 4 · 24%
Israel
1 in 6 · 16%
India
1 in 8 · 13%
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-Z93 (R1a, Asian branch)?
R-Z93 is R1a's Asian wing, the steppe lineage that spread with Indo-Iranian speakers into Central and South Asia, common today from the Altai to India. 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-Z93 (R1a, Asian 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-Z93 (R1a, Asian 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: