Hi Alex,

Welcome to R-DF98! Our little haplogroup contains some of Europe's biggest names, but only a few percent of its population. From ancient DNA, we can be pretty certain it arose in the Unetice Culture, in or near the modern Czech Republic, a little over 4000 years ago. However, to fill in the subsequent 4000 years, we really would need higher resolution tests, and to explore more-detailed haplogroups where we are also less certain about the haplogroup's origins.

How any individual R-DF98 line ended up in Ireland is therefore a question we can't answer. Even with a complete Y chromosome test, we can only provide an answer for some people. So for the moment, all we can say are generalisations.

In between R-DF98 and R-U106 is the intermediate group R-Z156, other parts of which probably also share Unetice descent. While I can be most detailed about R-DF98 (because, being also my haplogroup, I've studied it most closely), we can also draw from other parts of R-Z156 too to get better statistics.

I have yet to see a R-U106 line in Ireland that can be definitively traced back to before the Norman conquest (the R-Z156>S5520 MacMillan group is probably the best contender). The earliest evidence we have for any R-U106 in the British Isles is two circa 3rd century AD Roman burials (possibly gladiators) in York, which are R-Z156>DF96 and R-Z156>DF98. None of this precludes R-U106 being in Ireland or Great Britain before these dates - indeed several R-U106 lines probably were in the British Isles before these dates - but there must have been much less R-U106 than there is today.

Much of the R-U106 we see in Ireland today (and indeed most of the R-DF98 in particular) comes from the Ulster Scots Plantationers. However, these tend to be in historically Protestant families. There is a possibility of a "not the parent expected" event, such as an Ulster Scot having an illicit fling with one of your Irish ancestors, then running away!

Before the Plantation, the few R-U106 lines we can trace in Ireland probably have their roots in Scotland. The back-and-forth nature of these migrations probably brought a lot of the pre-Plantation R-U106 lines to Ireland. Scottish R-U106 comes from a variety of sources. R-DF98 in particular seems to come mostly from the late medieval settlement of southern Scotland by the Normans, but there is scant evidence in most cases and only a handful of sources to choose from.

And there is also a lot we can't trace. There are many opportunities over the last 4000 years to bring a R-DF98 line into Ireland, and many routes that we probably have yet to see documentary evidence for. So, really, any possibility is open. We can't be more clear than some of these vague possiblities with just a DF98+ call.

We could tell more with further testing: this could be a sequencing test in the future or, if you are sure you don't want to order a sequencing test in the future, you could go for an SNP pack test. This could align you with some existing families, but more likely it will provide a limiting date for the earliest your family is likely to have arrived in Ireland. That could be very recent, or a long time in the past.

Cheers,

Iain.