Most European Men are Descended from just Three Bronze Age Warlords, New Study Reveals

The majority of European men are descended from just a handful of Bronze Age male ancestors, says a new genetic study in the journal Nature.

The presence of genetic material from just a few men in the Y chromosome sequence resulted from a population explosion several thousand years ago, researchers said. The team of scientists found that there was a huge increase in the population 2,000 to 4,000 years ago, in a band from Greece and the Balkans to the British Isles and Scandinavia.

Europe in the late bronze age of about 1100 BC. (Map by Xoil, Wikimedia Commons)