Book of Mormon DNA
From MormonWikia
The Book of Mormon contains the story of a family that came from Jerusalem to the Americas about 600 B. C., along with stories of other groups that came to the Americas. In Mormon belief, Modern Native Americans are descendants of the family that came from Jerusalem. Critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claim that DNA evidence refutes the Book of Mormon’s claim that people from Jerusalem came to the Americas and that their posterity lives here now. DNA samples from Native Americans today primarily match DNA of Asian origins with a smaller component of Middle Eastern origin. Anti-Mormons use incomplete facts to say that the Book of Mormon is not a true historical record since they erroneously claim that Native Americans do not show a DNA connection to the people in the Jerusalem area that the family of Lehi came from.
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[edit] Lehi’s DNA
[edit] Other Inhabitants of the Americas
There are many reasons why the DNA claim does not disprove the Book of Mormon, the simplest being that the Mormon Church does not claim that the family of Lehi are the sole ancestors of Native Americans—that would require immense inbreeding. At some point, Lehi’s posterity would have begun to intermarry with other people in the Americas. Modern Book of Mormon Geography theories favor the view that Lehi’s family inhabited a limited area, at least at first. The Book of Mormon itself records that Lehi’s family and descendants were not the only inhabitants of the Americas, and it is even more likely that people not mentioned in the Book of Mormon inhabited these areas as well. Neither the Book of Mormon nor Mormon doctrine has ruled out any of these possibilities.
[edit] Intermarriage and Diverse Heritage
In the time of the Book of Mormon and afterward, it is highly likely that descendants of Lehi intermarried with other inhabitants of the Americas. Lehi lived and had adult children around 600 B. C. That means that over 2.5 millennia have passed since he lived and had posterity. Population genetics show that if we traced our family trees 3000 years back, we would find that we are related to almost every person alive back then (and through them everyone alive now). Everyone has a massive number of ancestors, and almost all are the same: everyone who lived and had continuing posterity in that generation.
In other words, by intermarriage, every Native American is likely to have descended from Lehi on some branch of his family tree. Again by intermarriage, Lehi’s blood and ethnic ancestry (Middle Eastern DNA) may play only a small part in the heritage of any Native Americans. On the same token, modern Middle Easterners have experienced the same kind of mixing and mingling and dispersion of blood. The Book of Mormon’s claim is that the DNA of Middle Easterners, in some portion (likely relatively small in comparison to the other groups in the Americas) combined with the DNA of other groups in the Americas, and the descendants of these combinations are modern Native Americans. Can we expect the result of this mixing to compare to the result of millennia of mixing, intermarriage, and changes in DNA on another continent? Of course not.
The FAIR LDS article on Book of Mormon DNA says it concisely:
“The Middle East is located at the crossroads of three continents, and has seen a great deal of immigration, mixing, and intermarriage. To use modern Middle Eastern DNA as the "standard" against which to measure what Manasseh and Ephraim (Lehi’s family) DNA must have been like 2600 years ago is extraordinarily sloppy science.”
[edit] Problems with DNA Heritage Studies
The DNA tests in question are indeed scientific and valuable in the study of DNA heritage. However, it is crucial not to apply the results further than they really go. There are several types of DNA testing. The type of testing that doesn’t show correspondence between Native American DNA and Middle Eastern DNA (mitochondrial DNA testing) also didn’t show any connection between Jewish groups, while Y-chromosome testing did show connections in the Jewish groups. Y-chromosome testing and mitochondrial DNA testing are both limited, since Y chromosomes are only inherited to men from their fathers, and mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from mothers.
The frailties of the testing, including small sample sizes and DNA inheritance issues, are many. On top of the technical problems faced in the studies themselves, populations have gone through many changes, including “survival of the fittest”-type decreases in population. For example, when Europeans populated North America, about 90% of Native Americans died. Assumably, their genetic makeup did not provide for the creation of resistance to the European diseases, while the surviving 10% did have the necessary resistance. In other words, certain genetic types are likely to have been wiped out, especially after 2,600 years.
[edit] Conclusion
While DNA studies show only a smaller correspondence between modern Middle Eastern DNA and Native American DNA, they certainly do not preclude the possibility of the Book of Mormon account and LDS beliefs being absolutely true. The DNA studies used to try and “prove” the Book of Mormon to be false are weak and rather inconclusive when it comes to proving anything, especially about one family coming from Jerusalem 2,600 years ago. All that has been proven is that Native American mitochondrial DNA is largely of Asian origins with a smaller Middle Eastern component; any other conclusions drawn from those results are still hypotheses.
While the conclusions are hypothetical, it could possibly make one wonder about the validity of Joseph Smith's work, especially since some believe they contradict many biblical teachings and doctrines.
