[2] This group is found frequently in New Guinea and Melanesia, with a moderate distribution in neighboring parts of Indonesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

An extreme geographical outlier was apparently identified in a 2012 study, which reported a Hazara individual from Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, with M1 (among a sample of 60 males from the mentioned area).

It is also found with moderate frequency in neighboring parts of Indonesia (Maluku, Nusa Tenggara) and throughout Papua New Guinea, including offshore islands.

[1] The subclade M1b1 (M104_1/P22_1, M104_2/P22_2) is found frequently in populations of the Bismarck Archipelago and Bougainville Island, with a moderate distribution in New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, East Futuna, and Samoa.

[9][1] Prior to 2002, at least seven different naming systems for the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree were used within academic literature, leading to considerable confusion.