[3] It has also been speculated that the possible location of this lineage's first expansion and rise to prevalence appears to have been in the Indian Subcontinent, or somewhere close to it, and most of the descendant subclades and haplogroups appear to have radiated outward from The Persian Gulf and/or neighbouring parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

For example, subclades of F-M89 were discovered in ancient DNA samples from Sudan, which were associated with both Meroitic and Post-Meroitic [1] Archived 2022-08-25 at the Wayback Machine burials.

By comparison, cases of the paragroup F(xG,H,I,J,K) – that is, either basal F* (M89) or the primary subclades F1 (P91; P104), F2 (M427; M428) and F3 (M481) – are relatively rare worldwide.

A lack of precise, high resolution testing in the past makes it difficult to discuss F*, F1, F2* and F3* separately.

ISOGG states that F(xG,H,I,J,K) has not been well studied, occurs "infrequently" in modern populations and peaks in South Asia, especially Sri Lanka.

However, the possibility of misidentification is considered to be relatively high and some cases may in fact belong to misidentified subclades of Haplogroup GHIJK.

[11][12] F1 (P91), F2 (M427) and F3 (M481; previously F5) are all highly rare and virtually exclusive to regions/ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, South China, Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam.

All these Loloish-speaking members of F*-M89 in northwestern Thailand have been found to be quite closely related in the paternal line, with the TMRCA of their Y-DNA estimated to be 584 years before present.

[14] There is also evidence of westward Paleolithic back-migration of F(xG,H,I,J,K) from South Asia, to Iran, Arabia and North East Africa,[15][16] as well as subclades of haplogroup K to South-East Europe.

[23] Xi'an (1/34),[23] Haplogroup F-M89 has also been observed in Northeast Africa among two Christian period individuals, who were excavated on the Nile's Fourth Cataract and on Meroe Island.

[24] The remains of the Bacho-Kiro cave prehistoric individual F6-620 / AA7-738, from Initial Upper Paleolithic, dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 calibrated years before present, carry also the basal lineage of the Y chromosome haplogroup F-M89.

[27] The newly defined and rare subclade F3 (M481; previously F5) has been found in India and Nepal, among the Tharu people and in Andhra Pradesh.

A draft tree that shows emerging science is provided by Thomas Krahn at the Genomic Research Center in Houston, Texas.

[citation needed] Prior to 2002, there were in academic literature at least seven naming systems for the Y-Chromosome Phylogenetic tree.