Line R1b among Kazakhs: more often steppe than West European
The fifth largest paternal line among Kazakhs is R1b: 6% of the corpus. Half of the men of Western Europe have the same line, but among Kazakhs it is mostly a different branch, the steppe one: it separated from the West European one long before the latter spread across Europe.
Two branches of one letter
R1b is the main line of Western Europe, of the Basques, the Irish and the French:
| People | Line share |
|---|---|
| Basques | 86% |
| Irish | 82% |
| French | 62% |
| Bashkirs | 34% |
| Uyghurs | 8% |
| Turkmen | 7% |
| Kazakhs | 6% |
Almost all of it is the West European branch, 6,400 years old. R1b has another large branch too, the steppe one, 8,400 years old: today it is found in the Steppe and the Urals — among Bashkirs 14%, among Nogais 12%.
Which R1b the Kazakhs have
Among Zhetiru 70% of the tested R1b carriers stand on the steppe branch, the rest on the West European one. Inside the West European branch Kazakhs have both of its halves: the eastern, as among Bashkirs and the peoples of the Caucasus — among Naiman and the Kozha estate, and the western — among part of Kypshak.
Kypshak is the tribe with the highest share of R1b, and inside the steppe branch it has a branch of its own, 800 years old.
Tribes on line R1b
R1b dominates in one tribe, Kypshak, and is notable in a few more:
| Tribe | Line share |
|---|---|
| Kypshak | 52% |
Notable: Kozha 17%, Naiman 12%, Zhetiru 11%, Kongyrat 8%, Ysty 7%, Suan 6%, Kangly 6%.
Sources
Khussainova et al. 2022; Zhabagin et al. 2020, 2021, 2024; Zhunussova et al. 2025; open Y-DNA data.
Your R1b — the steppe branch or the West European one, and whom does your tribe converge with inside the branch?
The full tree of a line with the ages of all its branches, the distribution of clan lines inside each tribe, and comparison of tribes with one another — in the app.