Genetics and the Book of Mormon

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Map showing the generally accepted model of human spread over the world. Numbers indicate years before present. The indigenous peoples of the Americas are held by modern scientists to descend from the Paleo-Indians, who migrated from North Asia to Alaska via the Beringia land bridge, and not from the Middle East as claimed by the Book of Mormon. Spreading homo sapiens la.svg
Map showing the generally accepted model of human spread over the world. Numbers indicate years before present. The indigenous peoples of the Americas are held by modern scientists to descend from the Paleo-Indians, who migrated from North Asia to Alaska via the Beringia land bridge, and not from the Middle East as claimed by the Book of Mormon.

The relationship between genetics and the Book of Mormon is based on implicit claims in the Book of Mormon about the ancestry of indigenous American peoples, which can be evaluated through genetic research. The Book of Mormon claims that the ancestors of some or all Native Americans were Israelites.

Contents

Scientists have developed techniques that attempt to use genetic markers to indicate the ethnic background and history of individual people. The data developed by these mainstream scientists tell us that the Native Americans have very distinctive DNA markers and that some of them are most similar, among old world populations, to the DNA of people anciently associated with the Altay Mountains area of central Asia. These evidences from a genetic perspective agree with a large body of archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic conclusions that Native American peoples' ancestors migrated from Asia across a land bridge at the latest 16,500–13,000 years ago.

The mainstream scientific consensus about the origin of the ancient Americans is at odds with the claims put forth in the Book of Mormon, though Mormon apologists have made efforts to reconcile these contradictions.

Mainstream perspective

Map of early human migrations based on the Out of Africa theory; figures are in thousands of years ago (kya). Early migrations mercator.svg
Map of early human migrations based on the Out of Africa theory; figures are in thousands of years ago (kya).

The first settlers in the Americas were Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (Paleo-Indians) who entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 19,000 years ago). [2] These populations expanded south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and spread rapidly southward, occupying both North and South America, by 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The earliest populations in the Americas, before roughly 10,000 years ago, are known as Paleo-Indians. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to Siberian populations by linguistic factors, the distribution of blood types, and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, such as DNA. [8] [9]

Analyses of genetics among Indigenous American and Siberian populations have been used to argue for early isolation of founding populations on Beringia [10] and for later, more rapid migration from Siberia through Beringia into the New World. [11] The microsatellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Indigenous American populations have been isolated since the initial peopling of the region. [12] The Na-Dene, Inuit and Native Alaskan populations exhibit Haplogroup Q-M242; however, they are distinct from other Indigenous Americans with various mtDNA and atDNA mutations. [13] This suggests that the peoples who first settled in the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later migrant populations than those who penetrated farther south in the Americas. [14] [15] Linguists and biologists have reached a similar conclusion based on analysis of Indigenous American language groups and ABO blood group system distributions. [16] [17] [18] [9]

LDS perspectives and apologetics

The understanding of Joseph Smith and of traditional Mormonism is that the Book of Mormon reveals that some or all “American Indians” (Native Americans) are descendants of the Lamanites, who descended from Lehi and are therefore a "remnant of the House of Israel," Israelites.

Mormon researchers such as anthropologist Thomas W. Murphy and ex-Mormon plant geneticist Simon Southerton state that the substantial collection of Native American genetic markers now available are not consistent with any detectable presence of ancestors from the ancient Middle East. They have argued that this poses substantial evidence to contradict the account in the Book of Mormon. [19]

Statements from LDS Church leaders on Native American origins

LDS Church leaders long equated Amerindians with Lamanites. In the Doctrine and Covenants, revelations delivered by Joseph Smith refer to native people in the United States as "Lamanites". [20] Smith reported that when the golden plates were revealed to him in New York, an angel told him that the plates contained "an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang." [21] Brigham Young and other 19th-century church leaders generally equated Lamanites with the native Indians of the Americas. [22] Statements from senior LDS church leadership to that effect continued throughout the 20th century. [23] [24] [25]

An introductory paragraph added to the Book of Mormon in the LDS Church's 1981 edition stated in part: "After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians." [26] [27] In a 2006 edition, the statement was altered to indicate that "the Lamanites ... are among the ancestors of the American Indians." The change was discussed in the LA Times. [28]

Limited geography models

Some defenders of the Book of Mormon's historicity, such as John L. Sorenson, have argued that the Book of Mormon peoples from the Middle East formed only a small portion of the population of the Americas, in what is called the limited geography model of the Book of Mormon. [29] Some limited geography model proponents argue that Hebrew genetic heritage may have been diluted beyond what can now be detected. [30]

Critics of the Limited Geography Model say that the Book of Mormon does not make clear reference to any other group of people that may have existed in the Americas alongside Book of Mormon people that would account for the dilution of the Middle Eastern genetic markers in the New World. [31] Therefore, it is argued, a "traditional reading" of the Book of Mormon suggests that "most, if not all" of the ancestry of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas came from this Hebrew migration in ancient times [32]

Advocates of the mound builder setting for the Book of Mormon maintain that native peoples of Central and South America are predominantly of Asiatic origin. [33]

Factors affecting DNA composition of the New World population

Michael F. Whiting, director of Brigham Young University's DNA Sequencing Center and an associate professor in BYU's Department of Integrative Biology, contests that, "given the complexities of genetic drift, founder effect, and introgression, the observation that Native Americans have a preponderance of Asian genes does not conclusively demonstrate that they are therefore not descendants of the Lamanite lineage, because we do not know what genetic signature that Lamanite lineage possessed at the conclusion of the Book of Mormon record." Lastly, he concludes, "[There is] a strong possibility that there was substantial introgression of genes from other human populations into the genetic heritage of the Nephites and Lamanites, such that a unique genetic marker to identify someone unambiguously as a Lamanite, if it ever existed, was quickly lost." and that, "[t]here are some very good scientific reasons for why the Book of Mormon is neither easily corroborated nor refuted by DNA evidence" [30]

Response to West Eurasian origins

In November 2013 Nature published a discovery on an Upper Paleolithic Siberian site linking Western Eurasians in the Middle East and Europe to the indigenous Native American population. [34] [35] [36] [37] According to the study the genomes sequenced show distinct genetic markers that are unique to the indigenous Native Americans and western Eurasia, but with no relation to East Asians. [36] The study indicates that 14–38% of Native American ancestry may originate through this gene flow. [34] One of the authors, Professor Kelly Graf, explained the significance of this, stating [34] that:

Our findings are significant at two levels. First, it shows that Upper Paleolithic Siberians came from a cosmopolitan population of early modern humans that spread out of Africa to Europe and Central and South Asia. Second, Paleoindian skeletons like Buhl Woman with phenotypic traits atypical of modern-day indigenous Americans can be explained as having a direct historical connection to Upper Paleolithic Siberia.

Book of Mormon defenders have responded to the article with reservation. [38] While the descendants of Lehi would carry similar genetic markers, defenders have pointed out that the genome would have already been in the Western Hemisphere far earlier than the Book of Mormon claims. [39]

Additional discussion

In 2004, Simon Southerton, then a geneticist and LDS Church member, published the book Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church. [40] The book uses genetic evidence to examine the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon and related claims about the Lamanite people. Southerton concluded that genetic evidence available up to that time discredited the LDS Church's claims regarding the Book of Mormon.

In 2014, the LDS Church published an essay on its website dealing with the topic directly. [41] The essay argues primarily that:

Since the publication of the essay, however, advances in autosomal DNA analysis have increased geneticists' ability to detect prehistorical migrations and gene flows at small levels. In 2018, scientists published a study in Nature of the autosomal DNA of 6,500 Latin Americans from Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. When the scientists analyzed the DNA, they found the presence of some Semitic DNA, but they concluded it had arrived exclusively at the same time as Spanish DNA, with the conquistadores who had presumably descended from some Jewish conversos. No Semitic DNA from the time period covered by the Book of Mormon was noted. [42]

In 2020, another published study in Nature established the presence of Zenú autosomal DNA in populations in Polynesia. There were a few islands where researchers successfully detected as little as 0.01% Zenu DNA. [43]

Mormon scholars have estimated that at various periods in Book of Mormon history, the populations of civilizations discussed in the book would have ranged between 300,000 and 1.5 million people. [44] The size of the late Jaredite civilization was even larger. According to the Book of Mormon, the final war that destroyed the Jaredites resulted in the deaths of at least two million people. [45]

DNA studies have successfully discerned mixtures of up to 4% of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans; Neanderthals became extinct around 40,000 years ago. [46] [47]

Notes

  1. ↑ Burenhult, Göran (2000). Die ersten Menschen. Weltbild Verlag. ISBN   978-3-8289-0741-6.
  2. ↑ Pringle, Heather (March 8, 2017). "What Happens When an Archaeologist Challenges Mainstream Scientific Thinking?". Smithsonian .
  3. ↑ Fagan, Brian M. & Durrani, Nadia (2016). World Prehistory: A Brief Introduction. Routledge. p. 124. ISBN   978-1-317-34244-1.
  4. ↑ Goebel, Ted; Waters, Michael R.; O'Rourke, Dennis H. (2008). "The Late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas" (PDF). Science . 319 (5869): 1497–1502. Bibcode:2008Sci...319.1497G. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.398.9315 . doi:10.1126/science.1153569. PMID   18339930. S2CID   36149744. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-01-02. Retrieved 2010-02-05.
  5. ↑ Zimmer, Carl (January 3, 2018). "In the Bones of a Buried Child, Signs of a Massive Human Migration to the Americas". The New York Times . Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  6. ↑ Moreno-Mayar, JV; Potter, BA; Vinner, L; et al. (2018). "Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans" (PDF). Nature . 553 (7687): 203–207. Bibcode:2018Natur.553..203M. doi:10.1038/nature25173. PMID   29323294. S2CID   4454580.
  7. ↑ Núñez Castillo, Mélida Inés (2021-12-20). Ancient genetic landscape of archaeological human remains from Panama, South America and Oceania described through STR genotype frequencies and mitochondrial DNA sequences. Dissertation (doctoralThesis). doi: 10.53846/goediss-9012 . S2CID   247052631.
  8. ↑ Ash, Patricia J. & Robinson, David J. (2011). The Emergence of Humans: An Exploration of the Evolutionary Timeline. John Wiley & Sons. p. 289. ISBN   978-1-119-96424-7.
  9. 1 2 Alice Roberts (2010). The Incredible Human Journey. A&C Black. pp. 101–03. ISBN   978-1-4088-1091-0. Archived from the original on 2021-01-25. Retrieved 2019-08-05.
  10. ↑ Tamm, Erika; Kivisild, Toomas; Reidla, Maere; et al. (5 September 2007). "Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders". PLOS ONE. 2 (9): e829. Bibcode:2007PLoSO...2..829T. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000829 . PMC   1952074 . PMID   17786201.
  11. ↑ Derenko, Miroslava; Malyarchuk, Boris; Grzybowski, Tomasz; et al. (21 December 2010). "Origin and Post-Glacial Dispersal of Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups C and D in Northern Asia". PLOS ONE. 5 (12): e15214. Bibcode:2010PLoSO...515214D. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015214 . PMC   3006427 . PMID   21203537.
  12. ↑ Bortolini, Maria-Catira; Salzano, Francisco M.; Thomas, Mark G.; et al. (September 2003). "Y-chromosome evidence for differing ancient demographic histories in the Americas". American Journal of Human Genetics . 73 (3): 524–539. doi:10.1086/377588. PMC   1180678 . PMID   12900798.
  13. ↑ Saillard, Juliette; Forster, Peter; Lynnerup, Niels; et al. (2000). "mtDNA Variation among Greenland Eskimos. The Edge of the Beringian Expansion". American Journal of Human Genetics. 67 (3): 718–726. doi:10.1086/303038. PMC   1287530 . PMID   10924403.
  14. ↑ Schurr, Theodore G. (21 October 2004). "The Peopling of the New World: Perspectives from Molecular Anthropology". Annual Review of Anthropology . 33: 551–583. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143932.
  15. ↑ Torroni, Antonio; Schurr, Theodore G.; Yang, Chi-Chuan; et al. (January 1992). "Native American Mitochondrial DNA Analysis Indicates That the Amerind and the Nadene Populations Were Founded by Two Independent Migrations". Genetics . 30 (1): 153–162. doi:10.1093/genetics/130.1.153. PMC   1204788 . PMID   1346260.
  16. ↑ Wade, Nicholas (12 March 2014). "Pause Is Seen in a Continent's Peopling". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 9 April 2021. Retrieved 24 February 2017.
  17. ↑ Lyovin, Anatole V. (1997). "Native Languages of the Americas". An Introduction to the Languages of the World. Oxford University. p. 309. ISBN   978-0-19-508115-2. Archived from the original on 2021-05-10. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  18. ↑ Mithun, Marianne (October 1990). "Studies of North American Indian Languages". Annual Review of Anthropology. 19 (1): 309–330. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.001521. JSTOR   2155968.
  19. ↑ ( Southerton 2004 ).
  20. ↑ Doctrine and Covenants 28:8–9, 14; 32:2; 54:8.
  21. ↑ Joseph Smith–History 1:34.
  22. ↑ See, e.g., Young, Brigham (1866). "Our Indian Relations—How To Deal with Them". Journal of Discourses . 11: 263–66.; Kimball, Heber C. "Union of the Saints—Authority of the Priesthood—Power of God—Obedience—The Urim and Thummim, Etc". Journal of Discourses . 2: 108.; Woodruff, Wilford. "Preaching the Gospel to, and Helping the Lamanites—Obedience to Counsel". Journal of Discourses . 9: 221–29.
  23. ↑ Spencer W. Kimball, "To You ... Our Kinsmen", Conference Report, October 1959, pp. 57-62.
  24. ↑ Spencer W. Kimball, "Of Royal Blood", Ensign , July 1971.
  25. ↑ Ted E. Brewerton, "The Book of Mormon: A Sacred Ancient Record", Ensign , November 1995.
  26. ↑ Stack, Peggy Fletcher. "Single word change in Book of Mormon speaks volumes", Salt Lake Tribune , 08 November 2007
  27. ↑ Moore, Carrie A. "Debate renewed with change in Book of Mormon introduction" Archived 2008-07-24 at the Wayback Machine , Deseret News , 08 November 2007
  28. ↑ Bedrock of a Faith Is Jolted. William Lobdell, LA Times. Feb. 16, 2006. Accessed Jan. 17 2025.
  29. ↑ Sorenson 1984a; Sorenson 1984b
  30. 1 2 ( Whiting 2003 , pp. 24–35).
  31. ↑ Murphy, Thomas (2003). "Simply Implausible: DNA and a Mesoamerican Setting for the Book of Mormon". Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 36 (4): 109–131. doi:10.2307/45227190. JSTOR   45227190. SSRN   2177709.
  32. ↑ ( Southerton 2004 , p. 156).
  33. ↑ "Olive, P.C." Archived from the original on 2010-04-23. Retrieved 2009-10-06.
  34. 1 2 3 Raghavan, Maanasa; Skoglund, Pontus (20 November 2013). "Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans". Nature. 505 (7481): 87–91. Bibcode:2014Natur.505...87R. doi:10.1038/nature12736. PMC   4105016 . PMID   24256729.
  35. ↑ "Ancient Siberian genome reveals genetic origins of Native Americans". Phys.org. 20 November 2013. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  36. 1 2 ""Great Surprise"—Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins". National Geographic . 20 November 2013. Archived from the original on 5 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  37. ↑ "The Very First Americans May Have Had European Roots". Smithsonian.com. 25 October 2013. Archived from the original on 21 October 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  38. ↑ Perego, Ugo; Ekins, Jayne (2014). "Is Decrypting the Genetic Legacy of America's Indigenous Populations Key to the Historicity of the Book of Mormon?". Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. 12: 237–279. Archived from the original on 14 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  39. ↑ "Book of Mormon DNA". Evidences of the Book of Mormon. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  40. ↑ Southerton 2004.
  41. ↑ Book of Mormon and DNA Studies. churchofjesuschrist.org. Gospel Topics Essays. Accessed January 17, 2025.
  42. ↑ Latin Americans show wide-spread Converso ancestry and imprint of local Native ancestry on physical appearance. Nature. December 19, 2018. Juan-Camilo Chacón-Duque, et al. Accessed January 17, 2025.
  43. ↑ Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Alexander G. Ioannidis, et al. Nature. July 8, 2020. Accessed January 17, 2025. (See supplementary data in the paper)
  44. ↑ Smith, James E (1997), Noel B. Reynolds (ed.), "How Many Nephites?: The Book of Mormon at the Bar of Demography", Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited, Deseret Book Company and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies: 280, ISBN   0-934893-25-X
  45. ↑ Ether15:2
  46. ↑ What does it mean to have Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA? Medline Plus. N.d. Accessed January 17, 2025. (See references at the end of the article for additional scholarly resources.)
  47. ↑ Ancient DNA and Neanderthals. Smithsonian Natural Museum of Modern History. N.d. Accessed January 17, 2025. (See bibliography at the end of the article for additional scholarly references.)

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References

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