This thread needs some updating. After realising that G2a probably came to Europe along with the Indo-Europeans during the Bronze Age, I now think that it would make more sense to list G2a as Indo-European too, along with R1a and R1b. It's actually Caucasian, but since the limit between the steppe, north Anatolian and Caucasian cultures isn't clear, and the two groups were obviously very connected, it's not a bad idea to merge them. In that case, the most Indo-European countries based on Y-DNA percentages are :
- Wales 88%
- Ireland 83%
- Scotland 81.5%
- Poland 75%
- Spain 74%
- England 73%
- France 68.5%
- Belgium 67.5%
- Germany 65.5%
- (Southern-Central Russia 65%)
- Iceland 65%
- Portugal 64%
- Slovakia 64%
- Switzerland 63%
- Netherlands 62%
- Czech Republic 61%
- Italy 58.5%
- Denmark 58%
- Ukraine 58%
- Austria 57%
- Norway 56%
- Belarus 55%
- Hungary 54.5%
- Russia 53%
- Latvia 52%
- Georgia 51%
- Romania 45%
- Sweden 45%
- Lithuania 43%
- Estonia 40%
- Croatia 38%
- Turkey 33.5%
- Bulgaria 33%
- Iran 33%
- Greece 27.5%
- Albania 27%
- Syria 26.5%
- Serbia 23%
- Cyprus 21%
- Iraq 20.5%
- Bosnia 19%
- Lebanon 14.5%
- Finland 11%
Russia ranks low because it has a significant Uralic population (N1c1). Ukraine and Georgia rank low because of of the Middle Eastern influence (J2, E1b1b, T) but also Central Asian haplogroups (Q, P, K, F, C3). Ukraine, Belarus and Russia also inherited from a lot of Carpathian I2a2, which I think could have come from the integration of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture to the Corded Ware culture. Poland is therefore more representative of the Bronze-Age northern steppe population.
Now that I have added the frequencies for
mtdna U subclades I would like to rank countries by percentage of Indo-European haplogroups. The problem is that many mtDNA haplogroups are found both in Paleolithic Europeans and Indo-Europeans, since after all they are all Europeans. This is the case of haplogroup H, V and U5. Besides K and T were surely part of the main IE haplogroups, but also among Neolithic immigrants from the Near-East. The only haplogroups for which we can be relatively (but not absolutely) confident that they are of Pontic-Caspian and/or Caucasian (i.e. Indo-European) origin are U2, U3, U4, I, W and X2. The ranking below will be based on these 6 haplogroups, but is therefore lower than the real percentage of Indo-European origin. H, V and U5 can
potentially add over 50% to the total of each country (more likely something like 20 to 30%).
- (Adygea/North Caucasus 43%)
- (Bashkirs/Volga-Ural 27%)
- Latvia 23%
- Bulgaria 22.5%
- Denmark 17.5%
- Finland 17.5%
- Slovenia 17%
- Serbia 16.5%
- Lithuania 14.5%
- Russia 14%
- Poland 13.5%
- Macedonia 13.5%
- Czech Republic 13.5%
- Netherlands 13.5%
- Portugal 13.5%
- Sweden 13%
- Scotland 12.5%
- Estonia 12.5%
- France 12.5%
- Italy 12.5%
- Ireland 12%
- Croatia 12%
- Ukraine 11.5%
- Austria 11.5%
- Romania 11%
- Norway 11%
- England 10.5%
- Switzerland 10.5%
- Greece 10.5%
- Germany 10%
- Spain 10%
- Albania 10%
- Wales 8.5%
- Belgium 8%
MtDNA is much more evenly widespread and patterns do not emerge based on this selection. It will in all likelihood be clearer once H, V, T, U5 and K subclades can be taken into consideration. Furthermore the data for whole countries is not always reliable. There are huge regional variations in countries that have been studied in detail like Spain, Croatia or Russia.
The data I found for the subclades of U is based on small sample size (hence prone to bias) for most countries except Ireland, the Balkans, Poland, Latvia and Finland. Data was particularly sparse for Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria and the Czech Republic, and I couldn't find anything at all for Hungary.
The
Bashkirs of the Volga-Ural region (where horses were first domesticate and the war chariot invented) have 18%. However they have 34% of Mongoloid mtDNA (A, C, D, F1, G, M7, M8a, N9a, Y). On the Y-chromosome side, the Bashkirs have 73% of R1 (R1a1a + R1b1b1 + R1b1b2) and 25% of Mongoloid haplogroups (C3, N, O). In other words, if we exclude the later Mongoloid admixture, the Y-DNA is almost 100% R1a and R1b, with just a little bit of I, G2a, E1b1b, J2 and T. Applying the same process to mtDNA (multiplying by 3/2) the percentage passes from 18% to
27%, including 22.5% of U4.
The Republic of
Adygea in the North Caucasus (matching roughly the geographic location of the
Maykop culture) would rank first in the list with 37.5% of the 6-haplogroup admixture. They have one of the highest percentage of mtDNA T (16%), also linked to the Indo-Europeans. If we recalculate the percentages by excluding the 15% of Mongoloid and Central Asian mtDNA, the Adygei would have
43% of the U2-U3-U4-I-W-X admixture.