Overview
Haplogroup R-Y41 is a mid Holocene branch of R-M73 that emerged among forager communities inhabiting the riverine transition zone between the western Altai foothills and the upper Ob basin. These environments offered rich seasonal resources and provided stable refugia during postglacial climate oscillations. The early groups carrying Y41 likely practiced a mixed subsistence strategy combining upland hunting, intensive fishing and extensive exploitation of riparian environments. Archaeological parallels from the region demonstrate fine microlithic industries, bone fishhooks, composite hunting tools and evidence of seasonal dwelling sites that align with the inferred demographic profile behind Y41. The phylogenetic structure of this lineage shows modest differentiation, indicating long term continuity within small, semi isolated forager groups who remained largely unaffected by the dramatic demographic changes that reshaped Inner Asia during the Bronze Age. In the present day, R-Y41 is rare and appears only in small frequencies in regions across southwestern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Its persistence points to deep rooted population continuity and the survival of lineages that predate the expansions of steppe pastoralists, Indo European migrations and later Turkic and Ugric demographic waves.