Around 1500 BCE a man was born somewhere in the area of the Low Countries / North-Western Germany. We know next to nothing about him except two rather specific facts. First, he carried a distinct set of mutations on his Y-chromosome which presently is classified, in scientific terms, as haplogroup R1b-U198. Second, he begat at least one son who reached maturity. We are certain of this since the distinctive Y-chromosome mutations carried by that man had been passed on. And this happened again and again for 3500 years down to the present time. In fact, the number of men descended from the 1500BCE progenitor has grown steadily over all that time to reach tens of thousands. It will be our mission here to reconstruct as much of this process and the history of this specific group as possible.