Haplogroup D (Y-DNA) - Overview

Overview

Like haplogroup C, D-M174 is believed to represent the Great Coastal Migration along southern Asia, from Arabia to Southeast Asia and thence northward to populate East Asia. It is found today at high frequency among populations in Tibet, the Japanese Archipelago, and the Andaman Islands, though curiously not in India. The Ainu of Japan and the Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands are notable for possessing almost exclusively Haplogroup D-M174 chromosomes, although Haplogroup C-M217 chromosomes also have been found in 15% (3/20) of sampled Ainu males. Haplogroup D-M174 chromosomes are also found at low to moderate frequencies among populations of Central Asia and northern East Asia as well as the Han and Miao–Yao peoples of China and among several minority populations of Sichuan and Yunnan that speak Tibeto-Burman languages and reside in close proximity to the Tibetans.

Unlike haplogroup C-M217, Haplogroup D-M174 is not found in the New World; it is not present in any modern Native American (North, Central or South) populations. While it is possible that it traveled to the New World like Haplogroup C-M217, those lineages apparently became extinct.

Haplogroup D-M174 is also remarkable for its rather extreme geographic differentiation, with a distinct subset of Haplogroup D-M174 chromosomes being found exclusively in each of the populations that contains a large percentage of individuals whose Y-chromosomes belong to Haplogroup D-M174: Haplogroup D-M15 among the Tibetans (as well as among the mainland East Asian populations that display very low frequencies of Haplogroup D-M174 Y-chromosomes), Haplogroup D-M55 among the various populations of the Japanese Archipelago, Haplogroup D-P99 among the inhabitants of Tibet, Tajikistan and other parts of mountainous southern Central Asia, and paragroup D-M174 without tested positive subclades (probably another monophyletic branch of Haplogroup D) among the Andaman Islanders. Another type (or types) of paragroup D-M174 without tested positive subclades is found at a very low frequency among the Turkic and Mongolic populations of Central Asia, amounting to no more than 1% in total. This apparently ancient diversification of Haplogroup D-M174 suggests that it may perhaps be better characterized as a "super-haplogroup" or "macro-haplogroup." In one study, the frequency of Haplogroup D-M174 without tested positive subclades found among Thais was 10%.