R1a1a conquers the world...in a few pulses?

As many of you know around the year 2000 the analyses of Y chromosomal human lineages became a pretty big deal. The reason these lineages are important and useful is that they record the uninterrupted ancestry of males, from father to son, along the Y chromosome. Instead of the complexities of the whole genome, as with mtDNA you have a simple and elegant phylogenetic tree to interpret. The clusters along this tree are defined as broad haplogroups, united by derived states from a common ancestor. One of the largest haplogroups is R1a1a. It happens to be my paternal lineage, as well as Dr. Daniel MacArthur’s and Dr. Zack Ajmal’s.