Overview
Haplogroup R-Y97561 is a downstream R2a subclade centered on the southern Iranian–Baluchistan–Makran region, one of the oldest sustained corridors of human movement and cultural evolution in Southwest Asia. Its formation coincides with intensified settlement along the Makran coast, where early agriculturalists, fisher–foragers and highland herders interacted continuously. Today, Y97561 appears most prominently in southern Iran and coastal Baluchistan, extending eastward into southwestern Pakistan. These areas form one of the earliest known zones of mixed subsistence strategies in the Near East, with evidence of early irrigation, long-distance shell ornament exchange, and pre-Harappan cultural formations. The lineage’s persistence in these environmentally diverse regions indicates that its ancestral population adapted successfully to both coastal and inland ecological settings. Though no ancient remains have yet been linked directly to this clade, archaeological and genetic signals converge to place its development squarely within the ecosystems tied to early maritime and highland networks of the Arabian Sea corridor.