However, the parent clade, R* was present in Upper Paleolithic-era individuals (24,000 years BP), from the Mal'ta-Buret' culture, in Siberia.

[6] The autosomal DNA of the Mal'ta-Buret' people is a part of a group known to scholars of population genetics as Ancient North Eurasians (ANE).

It is now the most common haplogroup after the various Q-M242, especially in North America in Ojibwe people at 79%, Chipewyan 62%, Seminole 50%, Cherokee 47%, Dogrib 40% and Tohono O'odham 38%.

[citation needed] The split of R1a (M420) is computed to ca 25,000 years ago (95% CI: 21, 300–29, 000 BP), or roughly the last glacial maximum.

A large study performed in 2014 (Underhill et al. 2015), using 16,244 individuals from over 126 populations from across Eurasia, concluded that there was compelling evidence that "the initial episodes of haplogroup R1a diversification likely occurred in the vicinity of present-day Iran.

[14] The distribution of M417-subclades R1-Z282 (including R1-Z280)[15] in Central- and Eastern Europe and R1-Z93 in Asia[15][16] suggests that R1a1a diversified within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region.

For instance, the modern incidence of R1b reaches between 60% and 90% of the male population in most parts of Spain, Portugal, France, Britain and Ireland.

Besides these, R1b has appeared in Balochi (8%), Bengalis (6.5%), Chenchu (2%), Makrani (5%), Newars (10.6%), Pallan (3.5%) and Punjabis (7.6%) (Kivisild 2003, Sengupta 2005, and Gayden 2007).

In Southeast Asia, it is present in the Philippines due to Spanish and American colonization where different studies vary as to its frequency; from 3.6% of the male population, in a year 2001 study conducted by Stanford University Asia-Pacific Research Center had European Y-DNA R1b to 13% in an Public Y-DNA Library.