page_title: Haplogroup L3 (mtDNA)
section_title: Distribution
hierarchical_section_title: Haplogroup L3 (mtDNA) / Distribution
caption_attribution_description: English: Interpolation maps for L3 haplogroup in the sub-Saharan pool observed in each sample.
context_page_description: Haplogroup L3 is a human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup. The clade has played a pivotal role in the early dispersal of anatomically modern humans.
  It is strongly associated with the out-of-Africa migration of modern humans of about 70–50,000 years ago.
  It is inherited by all modern non-African populations, as well as by some populations in Africa.
context_section_description: L3 is common in Northeast Africa and some other parts of East Africa, in contrast to others parts of Africa where the haplogroups L1 and L2 represent around two thirds of mtDNA lineages. L3 sublineages are also frequent in the Arabian peninsula.
  L3 is subdivided into several clades, two of which spawned the macrohaplogroups M and N that are today carried by most people outside Africa. There is at least one relatively deep non-M, non-N clade of L3 outside Africa, L3f1b6, which is found at a frequency of 1% in Asturias, Spain. It diverged from African L3 lineages at least 10,000 years ago.
  According to Maca-Meyer et al. (2001), "L3 is more related to Eurasian haplogroups than to the most divergent African clusters L1 and L2". L3 is the haplogroup from which all modern humans outside Africa derive. However, there is a greater diversity of major L3 branches within Africa than outside of it, the two major non-African branches being the L3 offshoots M and N.
caption: Projected spatial distribution of haplogroup L3 in Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
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