Male line information: Y-group O

All members of Y-group O can trace their Y-chromosomes back to one man, who is thought to have lived about 35 thousand years ago. This man belonged to a group of hunter-gatherers, who were descendants of the first modern humans to migrate from Africa to Eurasia and may initially have made their home in Western Asia and later migrated to East Asia, perhaps Western China. Later, the male-line descendants of this man spread throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia and into the South Pacific. These migrations may have been part of the expansion of rice farming groups in Asia a few thousand years ago or may have been even earlier.

The legacy of the male ancestor of Y-group O is quite astounding, as the majority of all males in East and Southeast Asia are members of Y-group O, for example, 70 percent of Chinese and Korean males, 50 percent of Japanese males and 70 to 80 percent of Southeast Asian males and over 95 percent of indigenous Taiwanese males. The ancestor of Y-group O therefore has hundreds of millions of descendants in the direct male-line.