The Atlantic Modal Haplotype is the most common variation of R1b. It is defined by the

six basic marker values below.

(DYS # 19/388/390/391/392/393)

This and related R1b haplotypes originated in Europe during the Paleolithic. During the Ice Age,

the carriers of R1b wintered in the Pyrenees. When the Ice Age ended, these carriers radiated across

Western Europe. They became the pre-Roman population of Spain, France, the British Isles, and large

portions of the Rhineland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Northern Italy.

Although the Celtic language itself has roots in Asia, the indigenous people of Western Europe

became its primary speakers. They comprised the largest proportion of those people we know from history

as "Celtic", and remain so today. Traditional areas of Celtic settlement are Ireland, Wales, Scotland,

Cornwall, Brittany, and Galicia in Northern Spain. Celtic culture is epitomized archaeologically by the La Tene

settlement, which existed near Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland during the Iron Age.

The Paleolithic population of Europe also became one of the earliest components of the Spanish,

Italian and German peoples, and were among the first speakers of the the Romance languages and the

Teutonic languages, even though the Indo-European source of these languages, too, lay elsewhere.

The Basques, who are perhaps the purest "Paleolithic" population in Europe, do not speak a

Celtic language and are not Celts, even though they are ancestrally related to those who are.

R1b does not mean "Celtic". And, even though R1b is found everywhere in Western Europe,

no country in Western Europe is entirely R1b, or has been so for a very long time.

Atlantic Modal Haplotype #8

The highest frequencies for the haplotype below fall mostly in Iberia and

Latin America, along with Zeeland and Ireland.

This haplotype most likely came to Britain with the prehistoric Iberians

or the later Celts.

The presence of Zeeland and Brazil in the top frequencies suggests

that an origin among Flemish immigrants of either Celtic or Sephardic

ancestry might also be possible, if not likely.