Map of frequencies in Europe during the modern era, based on current academic studies and charted by Eupedia.com.

R1b-L21 Descendant Tree

PDF downloadable version of the Tip of the Iceberg Descendant Tree. This file has more resolution for better visibility with zooming and panning.
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FTDNA's full haplotree with thousands of branches for L21. Country and surname reporting is included.
R1b-Z290>L21 Tree

R1b-DF49 Descendant Tree

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R1b-DF49 Tree

R1b-L1335 Descendant Tree

An overview of the early and major branches.

PDF downloadable version of the Tip of the Iceberg Descendant Tree. This file has more resolution for better visibility with zooming and panning.
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FTDNA's full haplotree has many more branches. Country and surname reporting is included.
R1b-L1335 Tree

R1b-L513 Descendant Tree

An overview of the early and major branches.

PDF downloadable version of the Tip of the Iceberg Descendant Tree. This file has more resolution for better visibility with zooming and panning.
Downloadable PDF file

FTDNA's full haplotree has many more branches. Country and surname reporting is included.
R1b-L513 Tree

Ancient Ancestry and Prehistory

The deep ancestry of R1b-L21 people is linked to ancient people called Indo-Europeans that came into Western and Central Europe during the Bronze Age. By the time descendants of the early Indo-Europeans reached Western Europe they became a part of The Beaker Folks.  Archaeologically, they are associated with a bell shaped pottery, but there were many more items in the Bell Beaker package, including horse riding, archery, jewelry, specific burial patterns in mounds, bronze tools and weapons. The sketch below is by B. Richter.



Wolfgang Haak study confirmed that a strong Pontic and Caspian Sea Steppes genetic influence spread across Europe from east to west during the Bronze Age: "By ~6,000–5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ~4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ~75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ~3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe."  Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe by Haak, et al., 2015  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14317.html

The 2016 Cassidy identified Bronze Age men in Ireland as R1b-L21. His research says that Irish DNA was melded together during the Bronze Age: "Three Bronze Age individuals from Rathlin Island (2026–1534 cal BC), including one high coverage (10.5×) genome, showed substantial Steppe genetic heritage indicating that the European population upheavals of the third millennium manifested all of the way from southern Siberia to the western ocean. This turnover invites the possibility of accompanying introduction of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic, language. Irish Bronze Age haplotypic similarity is strongest within modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh populations, and several important genetic variants that today show maximal or very high frequencies in Ireland appear at this horizon. These include those coding for lactase persistence, blue eye color, Y chromosome R1b haplotypes, and the hemochromatosis C282Y allele; to our knowledge, the first detection of a known Mendelian disease variant in prehistory. These findings together suggest the establishment of central attributes of the Irish genome 4,000 y ago."  Neolithic and Bronze Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome by Cassidy, et al., 2016  http://www.pnas.org/content/113/2/368.full.pdf

The 2017 Olalde paper breaks new ground, noting: "Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier."  The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe by Olalde, et al., 2017  http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/09/135962

Celtic Tribes of the British Isles

The British Isles transitioned from the Bell Beaker cultures of the early Bronze Age to a network of trade and exchange called the Atlantic Bronze Age. During this period of time it is believed that groups of people formed that might be considered Celtic. By the end of the Bronze Age Celtic tribes were spread all over Western Europe. The Celtic tribe maps below are derived from the reports of the Greeks and the Romans during the Classical time period. Please see the Ancestral Journeys web site developed by "Blood of the Celts" author Jean Manco.