[3][2] It is not clear at present whether the basal paragroup K2b1* is carried by any living males.

K2b1 is a direct descendant of K2b – known previously as Haplogroup MPS.

K2b1 is strongly associated with the indigenous peoples of Melanesia (especially the island of New Guinea) and Micronesia, and to a lesser extent Polynesia, where it is generally found only among 5–10% of males.

Studies of indigenous Australian Y-DNA published in 2014 and 2015, suggest that, before contact with Europeans, about 29% of Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander males belonged to downstream subclades of K2b1.

That is, up to 27% indigenous Australian males carry haplogroup S1a1a1 (S-P308; previously known as K2b1a1 or K-P308),[4] and one study found that approximately 2.0% – i.e. 0.9% (11 individuals) of the sample in a study in which 45% of the total was deemed to be non-indigenous – belonged to haplogroup M1 (M-M4; also known as M-M186 and known previously as haplogroup K2b1d1).