Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church

Enter DNA. With the advent of molecular genealogy, scientists now have a tool to test hypotheses about Indian origins, previously based on skull shapes, blood types, linguistics, and cultural studies. By means of DNA genealogy, Native Americans have been traced to an area surrounding Lake Baikal in Siberia before their migration to the New World over 14,000 years ago. The evidence is definitive and unequivocal.

What do Latter-day Saint scientists have to say about this? Is it possible that a few, not all, Native Americans could be of Israelite origin? Could Polynesians represent an admixture of Southeast Asian and Israelite heritage? Professors at Brigham Young University are proposing a radical new reinterpretation of the Book of Mormon to accommodate this new field of science.

Explaining the scientific and theological issues in this debate is Dr. Simon Southerton, a molecular geneticist from Australia. He particularly responds to the issues raised by the BYU professors such as the implications of the mysterious lineage X, absent in Mesoamerica, and supposed anomalies in the genetic picture such as Kennewick Man and even the genetic history of the lowly sweet potato. Having been raised Mormon, Southerton knows the theological side of the issue as intimately as he knows the science.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Good book, factual, apologists nightmare, 2008-08-23
Good book. A must read. Southerton seems to have his facts straight. The more I compare his writings to those of the apologists, the more impressed I am with him. He doesn't have to stretch his facts to fit his thesis, whereas the LDS apologetics always seem very strained.

Couple of observations on reviews of Southerton's book that bear some comment:

1) A main criticism from LDS apologists of Southerton's book is they feel he has set up a straw man and doesn't address their Limited Geography Theory (LGT) and more specifically their ELGT (Extremely LGT...my new term), the one in which they posit Lehites immediately inter-marrying with their hypothetical "others" of Asian DNA, thus leaving no trace of Semitic DNA. This ELGT seems to be the last holdout of the apologists...a last ditch effort to obfuscate the church's unsupportable position. In reality, Southerton has not set up any straw man and he did a great job showing that in his book. Rather, it is the apologists who have set up a straw man and it's called the LGT. (The problem here is that arguing with a person over religious dogma is an exercise in futility since they will rarely concede a point to you even when you have long since objectively and solidly proven them wrong. They simply move or obfuscate the target so I feel Southerton's pain.)

Regardless, let's assume their beloved LGT for sake of argument since they seem to believe it saves them from the lack of DNA evidence supporting the Book of Mormon.

I maintain that it is actually their worst option because it doesn't really rescue them and all it really does is make their doctrine appear even more racist than the common Book of Mormon "dark skin is cursed" doctrine. Here's why:

If we assume the LGT model and accept the idea that the Lehites encountered "others" who were of Asian genetic background and with whom they intermarried, then we must accept the idea that the "curse" of the Lamanites is Asian genetics. Why? Because the church's leaders have consistently labeled Native Americans all over the continent as Lamanites and have ascribed their "dark" skin as the curse of their fathers. Since we now know these people are of Asian descent, the insult extends beyond just the Native Americans to all Asians. If this dark skin is the curse and they hypotheical Lehites and their descendants got the way they are by intermarrying with "the others", then the logical conclusion is that the Lamanite curse, according to Mormon apologist logic, is Asian DNA. As Southerton has stated before: 'The church has already insulted the Africans and the Native Americans, must it also insult the Asians.'

But that's not all...it gets worse. If both the Lamanites and Nephites intermarried with the "others" (as the Mopologists argue in a vain attempt to minimize Lehite DNA impact in America), then the Nephites would have also taken on the "curse" and gained the "dark and loathsome" skin color and genetic characteristics. Of course, this violates the Book of Mormon's own statements which say Nephites remained white.

So, either the Nephites intermarried with "others" and brought "the curse" upon their children, an idea impossible within Book of Mormon constraints, or they didn't intermarry and thus would have developed into a significantly large nation of Semitic DNA whose DNA signature would have certainly persisted to the present.

So, since Seminitc DNA is not present, the only argument left to Mopologists is that the Nephites took on the "curse" of Asian DNA through intermarriage.

Either way, they are in a box they have no way of obfuscating their way out of.

2) One reviewer, Track Mom, had several incorrect statements:

2a) In her second to last paragraph on DNA and neighboring tribes, she quotes an article at http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/14-5nativeidentity.html as such: "One quote from this article says "Another issue is the widespread belief that genetics can help determine specific tribal affinities of either living or ancient people. This is quite simply false. Neighboring tribes have long-standing, complex relationships involving intermarriage, raiding, adoption, splitting, and joining. These social-historical forces insure that there cannot be any clear-cut genetic variants differentiating all the members of one tribe from those of nearby tribes. At most, slight differences in the proportions of certain genetic variations are identifiable in each group, but those do not permit specific individuals to be assigned to particular groups.""

Problem is that Trackmom misunderstood and misapplied the quote. It does not apply to Southerton's book. It refers to groups of people living side by side and interacting, not two groups developing for thousands of years separately. It also is merely stating the obvious, that a child of an inter-racial marriage cannot be assigned to only on of it's parents' races. The quote does not say that we can't determine the child has characteristics of each.

I'll simplify using an analogy. If I take one glass strawberry juice (SJ) and one glass banana juice (bj) and then mix part of them in a separate glass thoroughly, I'll get a juice mixture. True, it would be impossible to assign the mixture to only one of the two, either SJ or BJ. But that's not what Southerton's book is doing. Rather, he's saying the Native Americans are a totally different DNA than the Semitic people from which Lehi came and that DNA allows us to clearly see the difference.

So, let's say Semitic people are likened to Whole Milk (WM) and Skim Milk (SM), while Native Americans (who are of Asian descent) are SJ and BJ. Regardless of how much I mix SJ and BJ, I still know they are NOT milk of any variety or mixture. And if I pour some quantity of milk into a juice mix, the milk may not be visible to the eye, but a chemical analysis would reveal the milk in the juice (see Lemba tribe studies for DNA exmaple of this.)

2b) On her comment about the need to search for Lamanite DNA ANYWHERE on the continent, she's wrong. The study sampled DNA up and down the continent and covered the spectrum. No evidence of Semitic DNA has been found. Since the LDS prophets have claimed Lamanites to be all over the continent (in their revelations, books, conference statments, the Lamanite Program, temple dedications, even patriarchal blessings), we must expect to find Semitic DNA all over the place, but we do not. Minimally, LDS apologists have to admit that LDS leaders have spent nearly a couple of centuries making claims that seemed prophetic, but have turned out to be completely erroneous. From this, they must accept that the statements of LDS leaders are so fallible as to be frequently worthless or even dangerous.

But even giving apologists the benefit of the doubt on the LGT, we find the LGT is denied by the Book of Mormon itself:

a) The Book of Mormon in its sub-book, "The Book of Moroni", says Moroni stayed at the one hill Cumorah (in New York) and watched the final fighting. Specifically, it says he finished his writing on the plates and expected to perish by the Lamanites, but instead he wasn't killed. The implicit intent of this is to say, "I buried the plates thinking I'd never return and they'd stay buried until the latter days when some prophet would get them". He then wrote more stuff while watching his people get killed. This scripture proves he didn't start wandering from Mexico to New York as hypothesized by apologists. Moroni's character specifically said he intended to bury the plates on the hill where the wars took place, which according to Joseph Smith and other leaders, is in New York. Mopologists really should read their book better.

b) Joseph Smith and all other prophets said the Hill (including the battles) was in New York, and they specifically negated attempts to place it elsewhere (see comments from Joseph Fielding Smith and GBH's office). Their statements were directed at Mormon apologists who were inventing LGT ideas that placed Book of Mormon events somewhere besides in New York.

There really is no good option for the church on this issue. Whatever curse...er...course they choose, the leaders are shown to be prophetically wrong and the book is shown to be wrong. And the apologists are left flapping their gums in vain attempts to confuse members and shield them from the truth.




0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Temple for the educated, 2008-03-04
I am intrigued by the detail that was included in this writing. This man has changed the history of the church. His attention to detail is impeccable and I have done the research to make sure! Much of what is written is dry stats and not always engaging . But this is the point. Numbers do not lie. This guy did his homework. I am not a practicing Mormon, I am a theologian, working to discover the truth. I abide by many of the Mormon tenets and therefore look to seek truth. Good book, slow read.


2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Sound, engaging, fascinating, enlightening, 2008-01-19
This book is so well written, so clearly explained, and so carefully reasoned. I learned a tremendous amount about Mormon beliefs -- and the science that soundly refutes these beliefs. This book is a model of fine argumentation and popularized science. A must-read for anyone interested in understanding Mormon beliefs, genetics, human migratory patterns, and the truth about what modern science teaches us about all three.


1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Very.. Very Good, 2007-12-25
The author covers this superbly, although his charts of their family history left me mistified (I am not used to family charts, X chromosone charts etc..) I have read this twice since I purchased it and learn more each time.


12 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

Simon Says!, 2007-04-11
Simon says the Book of Mormon is false and all the anti-Mormons line up to say "Yeah! Yeah!" Some other reviewers prove their blatant anti-Mormon bigotry with statements like "Joseph Smith will go to hell."

One anti-Mormon said that if the Book of Mormon is disproven the Mormon tithing money will come to a halt! [He contradicts himself because he says once the Book of Mormon is proved false the tithing will stop, then he claims it has been proved false--but the tithing has increased!]

They say Simon is a nice ex-Mormon without an agenda; nonsense! Simon wants to convince others that the Book of Mormon is false; its just that simple. The only people he's convinced are anti-Mormons who want desperately to prove it false. Most of them have never actually read the Book of Mormon. They continually misrepresent the claims of both the Church and the Book of Mormon.

This book no more proves the Book of Mormon false than the old Spaulding theory did over 100 years ago! Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! The Book of Mormon is more complex than Simon represents it to be. The history of ancient America is also more complex than he represents it to be!

Regarding the science and dna testing; you can always count on science to present new ideas and new facts as time goes along. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

Right now the story is simple: Mormon-haters keep hating and Mormons keep believing; and each year there are about 400,000 more believers.

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