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Central Europe, dawn of the Bronze Age: Corded Ware culture → Bell Beaker culture → Únětice culture

At the turn of the Copper and Bronze Ages two horizons spread across Europe: Corded Ware and the Bell Beakers. Corded Ware men are 66% R1a, Beaker men 82% R1b, and the two share only 24%. The Early Bronze Age Únětice culture has both: it is 39% R1b and 28% R1a, and it shares 42% with the Beakers. Ancient DNA studies find that in Bohemia at least 40% of the population was renewed at the start of the Bronze Age.

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Central Europe, dawn of the Bronze Age: Y haplogroup shares of cultures that followed one another
How to read the chart

Each sample is cut to its ancestor at the chosen depth; a sample whose test did not reach that deep stays on its own branch. An asterisk: in this culture the branch also has samples further down. “A → B” is the share of A's samples with a branch of the same line in B: the same branch, its ancestor or a branch under it. A sample whose test stopped higher could belong to any branch under it, so it matches them. The frequency overlap sums the smaller share of every shared branch, such a sample's share split among the branches under it by their shares in both cultures together; it is less swayed by single samples. By age, a sample moves up to the ancestor whose branch had already split off by the chosen year (branch ages are Discover estimates), so every letter is cut at the same time. “Auto” takes the time of the oldest culture chosen, or earlier if a column would not read otherwise. Maternal lines follow the Mitotree tree of FTDNA Discover.

The chain in numbers #

Y-DNA, tree depth 12. Similarity is the overlap of branch frequencies with the culture before.

The chain in numbers
Culture Samples Leading groups Similarity with the previous
Corded Ware culture 64 R1a 65.6%, R1b 26.6%, I2b 4.7% —
Bell Beaker culture 147 R1b 81.0%, I2a 5.4%, G2a 5.4% 23.8%
Únětice culture 117 R1b 39.3%, I2 29.1%, R1a 28.2% 42.0%

Other chains