Mormons: DNA Shows that Native North Americans were Never Jewish. What is your Response to This?

[Katzpur]

By the way, here's how Genetic Drift was explained to me:

Put 10 red marbles and 10 blue marbles in a jar. Pick one marble at random and check the color. Let's say it's red. Return the marble to the jar, but also take a marble of the same color from a bottle of spares, and put it in a second jar. The new marble (the one you just put in the second jar) will represent the red lineage. It's the lineage you want to track. Keep repeating this process, picking one random marble each time until the second jar has twenty marbles. (Always return the original marble you picked to the jar you took it from. That jar must always contain 20 marbles.) Of the 20 marbles in the second jar, you might have 8 red ones and 12 blue ones. After you've got 20 marbles in the second jar, start the whole process over again, this time picking marbles from the second jar and adding marbles of the corresponding color from your pile of spares to a third jar. By the time you've got 20 marbles in your third jar, you may have 5 red ones and 15 blue ones. By the time you're working on your fourth or fifth jar, you will likely have only blue marbles. If you have even one red one, though, repeat the process. You are guaranteed to have all blue by the time you get to the sixth or seventh jar. Blue will be fixed and red (the lineage you were trying to trace) will be gone forever.

Depending upon how heavily the continent was populated when Lehi and his small group arrived, intermarriage between his group and the existing population would have made his mtDNA disappear completely. That's why we should not be surprised if we can't find it now. It doesn't mean it was never there. It's just the way genetic drift works.

 

[Jose Fly]

I'm not sure why that's so important to you. You wouldn't recognize any of the name anyway.

How do you know what names I would or wouldn't recognize?

I don't actually know who wrote it, but it really has no bearing on the topic.

What if it was someone the LDS Church considered to be a prophet?

I asked, "How much do you know about Mitochondrial DNA, haplogroups and how they disapear through genetic drift and the founder effect, and how population bottlenecks work?"

I know those topics quite well.

You might start by explaining how, if we were to assume that there were perhaps 10 women at the most who arrived on the American continent with Lehi, you would expect to see their mtDNA anywhere 2600 years later?

If they have female descendants who survive today, then their mtDNA would be easily detectable. And as the Mormon god said through Joseph Smith and Brigham Young also stated, the Native Americans living just a couple of generations ago were Lamanites. Thus, one would absolutely expect to easily be able to identify their unique genetic markers.

Well this one, for starters:

Quote: Given that the Mormon god, through Joseph Smith, referred to late 1800's Native Americans as Lamanites, why wouldn't we expect to see this reflected in their genetics?

Why on earth would you expect to see it reflected in their genetics? That's just not the kind of question I'd expect to hear from someone with a background like you say you have.

???????? Seriously? So you're saying that if entire races of people, most of whom still exist to this day were of a specific ancestry a handful of generations ago, you wouldn't expect to find any traces of that ancestry in their genetics? Huh?

If the American continent had been empty at the time Lehi and his family arrived here, our critics claims would be correct. That wasn't the case, though.

Except we know that the Mormon god stated very clearly through Joseph Smith that the Native Americans in the western US at that time were Lamanites. Was that wrong?

Besides, so far, only low resolution studies have been conducted. High resolution studies are very expensive and, for this reason, very rare.

There are a handful of nuclear DNA analyses from skeletal remains and extant individuals (EDIT: A little checking turns up more than I was aware of, and none of them indicate anything like a middle eastern ancestry for any Native American group). There are even a few services who claim to be able to identify your tribal heritage from a DNA sample (I can't vouch for those though).

But simply saying "low resolution" doesn't make the data go away. EDIT: It also turns out that even with mtDNA, entire mtDNA sequences have been analyzed, and again, no evidence of middle eastern markers.

In terms of genetic studies on Native American populations, geneticists have studied less than 300 samples. That is next to nothing! How can anyone say it's conclusive is beyond me.

It's called statistical sampling. As long as proper procedures are followed, you can be reasonably sure you're getting a representative sample of the population.

But now you seem to be switching. First you were arguing that the Book of Mormon never claimed a Lamanite ancestry for Native Americans, but here you're hinting that if the data suddenly found evidence of such, that would be great. IOW, no supporting data? Meh, never claimed that anyways. Supporting data? Woo hoo! We were right!!

Depending upon how heavily the continent was populated when Lehi and his small group arrived, intermarriage between his group and the existing population would have made his mtDNA disappear completely. That's why we should not be surprised if we can't find it now. It doesn't mean it was never there. It's just the way genetic drift works.

Except for that inconvenient little thing where your god said via Joseph Smith that the Native Americans around at that time were Lamanites. Not "were descended from" or "were related to" or anything like that. They were Lamanites.

And of course we have a host of declarations from other LDS Church leaders that go even farther. But for now, Joseph Smith's alleged revelations are sufficient.

 

[Yerda]

Well, let's put it this way. For 180 years, people have been claiming that things mentioned in the Book of Mormon did not exist in the Americas prior to the Spanish Conquest. Over time, and particularly within the last 15 or 20 years, evidence that many of these things did exist has turned up. So far, though, no big sign that says, "Welcome to Zarahemla."

Most of the "evidence" for the Book of Mormon's Hebraic origins is linguistic in nature. I'm not going to get into a big debate over any of this, though. In the past, whenever I or any other Mormon has presented evidence (sometimes in considerable detail), people will turn around five posts later and say, "There is NO evidence for the Book of Mormon." It's a losing battle, and it's not because it's an open and shut case on either side. I've just been down that road so many times I'm sick of it. I wanted to respons to msizer's OP because (1) the initial premise is flawed, and (2) it's easy enough to throw out a general negative statement without explaining it in any more detail that he did.

OK. I'm not asking you to justify yourself. Having read a lot of your posts I doubt that your beliefs are a matter of blind acceptance. I'm sure you know what you know and what you don't as well, or better, than most.

 

[Jose Fly]

Katzpur,

One last thing before I go to bed. Where exactly are you getting this idea of a small population of Lamanites? The Book of Mormon describes an extremely large battle between the Lamanites and Nephites and that the Lamanites existed in North America for centuries.

It would seem your argument that we can't detect Lamanite genetic markers because there were so few of them doesn't match up with the book you're attempting to defend.

 

[gnostic]

Do you accept the DNA evidence as refuting the traditional doctrine of the LDS church, or do you think somehow that science is mistaken? If you admit that the DNA evidence must be correct, then how do you uphold any prophetic claims of Joseph Smith?

:help: you mean mormons are one of the many religions that have claimed one thing
only to about face and claim another?

well I never

I think Mormonism gets a lot of flack, because its claims are rather incredible...

The LDS are not the only one that makes incredible claims. There are plenty in mainstream Christianity, Judaism and Islam, claims that can't be substantiated or validated.

Is Joseph Smith deceitful? Probably.



But if "honesty" is really the question, then I have doubt about every single prophet, messenger, saint, priest are too, from all 3 religions.

But if you are referring to spirituality, I must say that many Mormons are just as devout and spiritual as any of them, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc. God (and Jesus) is very important to them. Family is very important to LDS, and that not negative.

To me, if they believe in their prophet and BoM, then that's none of our business. As to the history, from Joseph Smith to present time, I must say that LDS are by far the least violent Abrahamic religion or sect, something that can't be said about Catholicism, Protestants, Anglicans, Jews, Muslims, and that far more important to me, then whether you believe that BoM is historically, archaeological or scientifically correct; because none of the other Abrahamic religious scriptures are.

 

[Autodidact]

By the way, here's how Genetic Drift was explained to me:

Put 10 red marbles and 10 blue marbles in a jar. Pick one marble at random and check the color. Let's say it's red. Return the marble to the jar, but also take a marble of the same color from a bottle of spares, and put it in a second jar. The new marble (the one you just put in the second jar) will represent the red lineage. It's the lineage you want to track. Keep repeating this process, picking one random marble each time until the second jar has twenty marbles. (Always return the original marble you picked to the jar you took it from. That jar must always contain 20 marbles.) Of the 20 marbles in the second jar, you might have 8 red ones and 12 blue ones. After you've got 20 marbles in the second jar, start the whole process over again, this time picking marbles from the second jar and adding marbles of the corresponding color from your pile of spares to a third jar. By the time you've got 20 marbles in your third jar, you may have 5 red ones and 15 blue ones. By the time you're working on your fourth or fifth jar, you will likely have only blue marbles. If you have even one red one, though, repeat the process. You are guaranteed to have all blue by the time you get to the sixth or seventh jar. Blue will be fixed and red (the lineage you were trying to trace) will be gone forever.

Depending upon how heavily the continent was populated when Lehi and his small group arrived, intermarriage between his group and the existing population would have made his mtDNA disappear completely. That's why we should not be surprised if we can't find it now. It doesn't mean it was never there. It's just the way genetic drift works.

Fascinating, and irrelevant to our discussion.

1. There is no mention anywhere in the BoM of anyone being in North America when the fictional immigrants arrived, let alone intermarrying with them.

2. According to the BoM, the immigrants multiply (in a way that's actually impossible) until there are millions of them, filling the entire land from one end to the other, engaging in single battles that leave thousands of casualties. btw, these battles involved horses, chariots, and metal spears, which we also don't find.

3.In your scenario, the BoM people never reproduce. They just die out. So they go from a few hundred to several million to zero?

4. Again, this means that every prophet from Joseph Smith until around 2002, men who are supposed to have received divine revelation, was wrong. That kind of destroys a central tenet of LDS theology.

5. There weren't that darned many Native Americans when the Europeans got here.

6. By wild coincidence, not only did these non-existent immigrants leave no DNA trace, they also left no language, no buildings, no artifacts and no cultural influence. With people with whom they are supposed to have intermarried.

7. And while they were here, they used non-existent animals and grew non-existent crops, also magically leaving no trace of them--not a single skeleton.

8. Did I mention that the ancient Israelites did not have the naval technology to cross the Atlantic Ocean?

Look, here's a simple question. These millions of descendants of these purported immigrants--where did they live?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Penguin,

Here you go...


As you can see, Joseph Smith is giving a revelation from god and refers to the Native Americans in the western US, of his time, as "Lamanites".

Yes, I agree he is, and he certainly seems to be invoking prophetic authority in doing so.

Katzpur or other Mormons: what's your take on this? It seems to me that there have been two explanations alluded to in this thread, but they seem mutually exclusive to me:

- Most modern-day Native Americans aren't "Lamanites". The surviving Lamanites are a small group... if they survive at all today.

- Modern-day Native Americans are "Lamanites", but through intermarriage with the indigenous peoples, their DNA no longer has the markers that were common in ancient Jewish peoples.

It seems to me that only the second explanation can be reconciled with Joseph Smith's statement that Jose Fly gave us.

Sure. Funny though how other reasonable inferences didn't appear until later though.

Well, they'd have no need to look for others until they had reason to think that their original interpretation was wrong. While I do have issues with certain aspects of Mormon doctrine, I don't fault them for re-evaluating their prior assumptions when facts come to light that conflict with them, since this is something that I think all of us do.

Ah, I see. Your problem is you're assuming that my position is merely an assumption rather than a conclusion reached after examining the arguments on both sides of the issue.

That explanation doesn't work with the argument you actually gave, though.

You presented us with a rather involved argument for why we can conclude that Joseph Smith just made up the Book of Mormon. However, in your argument, we can see that you had to take as given Joseph Smith just made up the Book of Mormon.

This is begging the question, since if you're trying to demonstrate that your conclusion is true, you can't assume that it is true in the arguments you use to demonstrate this.

If you've got other reasons for concluding that the Book of Mormon is false, fine, but then this just makes your initial argument a red herring as well, since the real reasons for concluding that the Book of Mormon is false would be the ones you've kept in your back pocket and not the argument that you presented.

I asked, "How much do you know about Mitochondrial DNA, haplogroups and how they disapear through genetic drift and the founder effect, and how population bottlenecks work?"

Any of the above. They're all worth talking about. You might start by explaining how, if we were to assume that there were perhaps 10 women at the most who arrived on the American continent with Lehi, you would expect to see their mtDNA anywhere 2600 years later?

Maybe. It depends how much they bred.

Also, it seems to me that you're arguing two conflicting things, because if the Founder Effect is the reason why modern-day Native Americans don't share genetic markers with Jews, then this implies that they primarily descended from one small original population... which would imply that we should also see a high prevalence of the mtDNA from that original group in the modern-day population.

Let's say you have a man from Italy who has five daughters. How many of those daughters would have his mtDNA? None. Let's say those five daughters give him 30 grandchildren. If that man had married an African woman, every single one of his grandchildren would be classified as African according to their mtDNA. There would not be a single solitary one who would have his mtDNA.

But that's not analogous to the situation in the Book of Mormon, is it?

If we just look at Lehi himself, he had six sons. Each one of his sons would have carried Lehi's Y chromosome. The Book of Mormon says that the Jaredites (i.e. people unrelated to Lehi or the Jews generally) were wiped out and the Lamanites (i.e. people descended from Lehi) took their place.

I realize that there may have been interbreeding over that time, but we'd expect to see something like the genetic evidence for Genghis Khan, wouldn't we? In the area of the former Mongol empire (which had interbreeding with other people, quite similar to what you describe), 8% of men share their Y chromosome with Genghis. Sure, the number isn't 100%, but it's still significant. Wouldn't we expect to see a similar situation in the Americas if the Book of Mormon is correct?

9/10: I gave you quotes from Smith on the subject. Here are some more:

In this important and interesting book the [1] history of ancient America is unfolded, from its [2] first settlement by a colony that came from the tower of Babel, at the [3] confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by [4] two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were [5] destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The [6] remnants are the Indians that now inhabit this country.
[Wentworth letter]
[Saxton letter]

There are more, if you want them.

Question for the Mormons here: what doctrinal weight does the Wentworth letter carry? I looked it up on Wiki and saw that some of the articles of faith were taken from it, but is the letter itself considered authoritative?

I have little or no background in DNA and genetics. That's why I accept the mainstream view of the experts. And of course, these experts aren't out to disprove the BoM, it doesn't enter into their world. They're just trying to learn whatever they can about the people of the new world. And what they have found is no:
artifacts
culture
architecture
language
DNA
or anything else to link them. This is what Katzpur is calling "too little data to prove conclusively which side is correct." There aren't even two sides. There's science, and there's the LDS church, books and teachings. Personally, I accept science.

I'd say that you're moving the goalposts a fair bit here. This thread started with the claim that "DNA shows that Native North Americans were never Jewish". I agree that the things you list are relevant in a larger discussion about the BoM, but in this case, it's only DNA evidence that's relevant... and it's not enough to simply say that the DNA doesn't show a link (i.e. negative evidence), because the thread is based on the claim that DNA shows there isn't a link (i.e. positive evidence).

 

[Jose Fly]

That explanation doesn't work with the argument you actually gave, though.

You presented us with a rather involved argument for why we can conclude that Joseph Smith just made up the Book of Mormon. However, in your argument, we can see that you had to take as given Joseph Smith just made up the Book of Mormon.

This is begging the question, since if you're trying to demonstrate that your conclusion is true, you can't assume that it is true in the arguments you use to demonstrate this.

Er....um....what? Sorry, but you're going to have to show exactly where I did that.

 

[Autodidact]

If the American continent had been empty at the time Lehi and his family arrived here, our critics claims would be correct. That wasn't the case, though.

Of course not, since there was never any such person. It's odd though that the fictional individuals who came here never remarked on finding anyone here.

Besides, so far, only low resolution studies have been conducted. High resolution studies are very expensive and, for this reason, very rare. When people make statements such as the one in the OP, it's as if they are assuming we're at the end of population genomics, when in fact we've really just scratched the surface of it. mtDNA contains 16,569 pieces of genetic information. The reason mtDNA works well for tracing populations is that it doesn't recombine with other DNA every generation. When it does, though, and when there is a genetic mutation, it will be passed on to the next generation. In terms of genetic studies on Native American populations, geneticists have studied less than 300 samples. That is next to nothing! How can anyone say it's conclusive is beyond me.

While you, on the other hand, are assuming we're at the beginning, that we know nothing about the subject at all, that scientists haven't been doing very good and hard work to find the truth, have discovered nothing, and the question is still wide open. It will remain open as long as whatever we do find fails to correspond with the BoM.

Furthermore, we don't know anything through archeology, either, haven't excavated and studied thousands of sites from Alaska to Argentina, found millions of artifacts and remains of ancient cities--none of that counts, we don't know anything, until either (1) we find something that corroborates something in the BoM or (2) we've dug up every square inch of the Americas, including the ground under New York City.

In fact, paleontology doesn't work, and we don't know anything at all about what animals did and didn't live here before the Europeans got here--just a blank slate till Europeans came to examine it with their own eyes.

Of course, once they did, they didn't observe anything described in the BoM either, no Hebrew speaking Indians, no chariot riding, wheat growing Indians, but they were just unobservant, apparently.

So Mormon leaders have gone from "archeology (genetics, linguistsics, etc.) supports the BoM" to "we don't know."

What we're left with is a people who managed to immigrate, proliferate and die out, all without leaving a trace of doing so.

Or--it didn't happen.

 

[Autodidact]

I'd say that you're moving the goalposts a fair bit here. This thread started with the claim that "DNA shows that Native North Americans were never Jewish". I agree that the things you list are relevant in a larger discussion about the BoM, but in this case, it's only DNA evidence that's relevant... and it's not enough to simply say that the DNA doesn't show a link (i.e. negative evidence), because the thread is based on the claim that DNA shows there isn't a link (i.e. positive evidence).

No, moving the goalposts is when I make a claim, someone shows that claim to be false, so I then change the claim. I haven't changed anything. The original claim is correct--the DNA evidence shows that modern day Native Americans are not descended from Middle-Eastern people. In addition (not instead) the archeological, palentological, anthropological and linguistic evidence all supports that claim.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Er....um....what? Sorry, but you're going to have to show exactly where I did that.

I already did, but here it is again:

The other part of the equation that no one has touched on yet is that Joseph Smith referred to the Native Americans of his time a "Lamanites"....many, many times. Brigham Young did as well.

Add this in and it starts to become pretty clear that the ancestors of Native Americans were Israelites was exactly what the BoM and Joseph Smith meant.

By using Joseph Smith's opinions as the basis for your interpretation of the intent behind the Book of Mormon, you imply that the BoM is false generally. Then, you use this as part of the basis for your argument that the BoM is false on the issue of the "Lamanites". This is begging the question.

It's also contradictory. Once you assert the premise that Joseph Smith's opinion influenced the content of the Book of Mormon, you've already taken as given that the book is false. Your post above was made in the context of a discussion about what DNA evidence we should expect to see if the BoM is correct. When we're trying to answer this question, we can't use premises that assume the BoM is false to decide what the answer is.

IOW, "what Joseph Smith meant" has absolutely no value in figuring out what evidence we would expect to exist if the BoM was true.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, moving the goalposts is when I make a claim, someone shows that claim to be false, so I then change the claim. I haven't changed anything. The original claim is correct--the DNA evidence shows that modern day Native Americans are not descended from Middle-Eastern people. In addition (not instead) the archeological, palentological, anthropological and linguistic evidence all supports that claim.

Ah. So you were merely off-topic. My mistake.

 

[MSizer]

Why has nobody responded to my post #10? Have all you brilliant minds absolutely nothing to say to it? I am not going to waste my time exploring any further tangents. Msizer made a claim. I asked him to substantiate it. He has not done so and neither has anyone else. If you have nothing to say pertaining to the OP, don't expect a response from me.

EDIT: I'm rewording this first sentence from "I'm letting you win" to "I'm throwing in the towel". I just realized what it sounded like, and I didn't mean it that way.

...because it's not worth my time anymore. If you honestly can ignore the absence of DNA, cement buildings, weapons of war, cities and the altering of interpretation of the texts, I already know that your wall of credulity is unbreakable. I hand victory over to you.

 

[Autodidact]

Ah. So you were merely off-topic. My mistake.

Yes, in a way. Happy to start another thread on the subject of all the evidence, if you like. I think our Mormon friends will enjoy that one even less.

What I mean is, science seeks consilience, which is when all the data from all the different disciplines all point in the same direction. That is what we have for the geographic origin of American Indians. LDS has the opposite--no data from any source that supports their claim, while lots of data from a variety of fields that supports the DNA evidence. Especially, since their argument is that we don't have enough knowledge from that source, then it becomes very valuable to look at what we're finding from other fields to see whether it supports what they see (the experts don't, but they assert) are tentative findings. And lo, they do. That is important and useful.

So, in summary, the best evidence from every relevant discipline: DNA (all different kinds, mitochondria, etc.), other genetics (blood groups, etc.), archeology, anthropology, linguistics, paleontology all point in the same direction: The BoM is not factual.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

Told you how I just love this stuff. I said a lot of this a long time ago in many other threads and it is just incredible.... the denial of evidence in order to uphold ones dogmatic position.....

 

[Autodidact]

If the American continent had been empty at the time Lehi and his family arrived here, our critics claims would be correct. That wasn't the case, though.

Besides, so far, only low resolution studies have been conducted. High resolution studies are very expensive and, for this reason, very rare. When people make statements such as the one in the OP, it's as if they are assuming we're at the end of population genomics, when in fact we've really just scratched the surface of it. mtDNA contains 16,569 pieces of genetic information. The reason mtDNA works well for tracing populations is that it doesn't recombine with other DNA every generation. When it does, though, and when there is a genetic mutation, it will be passed on to the next generation. In terms of genetic studies on Native American populations, geneticists have studied less than 300 samples. That is next to nothing! How can anyone say it's conclusive is beyond me.

Here is a report of a recent study of mtDNA that shows that Native Americans descended from a single wave of immigration from Siberia.

Merriwether's DNA sample includes 1,300 Native Americans representing more than 40 populations throughout the Americas, along with 300 samples from teeth, bone fragments and mummified tissue at three burial sites, one each in North, Central and South America.

Still nothing from the Mid-East, all from Siberia via Alaska. How many people do we have to test with what methods until Katzpur is satisfied?

 

[Just_me_Mike]

Look at the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. On the face of it, they cannot both be true. Many Christians "resolve" this difficulty by claiming that Luke's genealogy preserves the lineage of Mary, that is, by claiming that both accounts are still "true" because one of them means something entirely different from what it says. Others, more honest but no less determined, cooked up a web of Levirate marriages that contrive to explain how both lines can be what they claim to be -- the paternal lineage of Joseph. Only after many centuries did some of them finally throw up their hands and say, "Oh, well, the important thing is that Joseph was of the tribe of Judah and the house of David, and that's all the gospels are really trying to convey. The details aren't important." But at no point did any significant number of them look at the data and say, "Hey, look at this! Our religion is a bunch of crap!"

Off Topic, but I have heard of a rather convincing theory about these two lineages.

It is common in the bible to skip parents and refer to grandparent or even great grandparent when discussing lineage. So, when a list says so and so from so and so, it doesn't always have to men "direct" next in line linkage, but can skip.

Of course that can be an excuse and apologetic technique as well, but if you research the lines in those verses again, I have found they make much more sense.

Just wasn't sure if you ever looked at it like that before. I didn't want to hijack the thread, so if you want more details let me know.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Still nothing from the Mid-East, all from Siberia via Alaska. How many people do we have to test with what methods until Katzpur is satisfied?

Well, if you're going to have a test, you need to be testing for the right thing. Exactly what does the Book of Mormon claim happened, what test result would indicate that the claim is necessarily correct, and what test result would indicate that it's necessarily incorrect.

I think it would be useful to step through the assumptions in your approach so we can explicitly evaluate them to see if they're valid.

To begin with, what does the Book of Mormon actually say? AFAICT (and anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), it says that:

- circa 600 BC, a group of Jews from Judea established themselves in the Americas. - this group of Jews contained eight (?) women: Sariah, plus Ishmael's seven (?) daughters (note: I'm focusing on the women because we're talking about mitochondrial DNA).
- one of these women (Sariah) had no further children after arriving in the Americas.
- two of these women (the daughters who married Sam and Nephi) have no descendents who survived to this day (since the BoM says they were all wiped out by the Lamanites.

IOW, you have a total of five women from whom to derive whatever mitochondrial DNA you're looking for. And as Katzpur pointed out, it seems plausible that these children would intermarry with the indigenous people.

Since mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother, any time it happens that a couple has no daughters, that branch of the "mitochondrial DNA tree" for those original five women ends... which isn't to say that they wouldn't have any living descendents, only that there wouldn't be any matrilineal-line descendants - there would be at least one boy somewhere in the chain.

So... given all that, even if we were to assume that the Book of Mormon is entirely correct, would we necessarily expect to see widespread mitochondrial DNA from those first five women when we look at their descendants today?

IOW, is the prediction so definitive that if we don't find this, we can exclude the possibility?

 

[Autodidact]

Well, if you're going to have a test, you need to be testing for the right thing. Exactly what does the Book of Mormon claim happened, what test result would indicate that the claim is necessarily correct, and what test result would indicate that it's necessarily incorrect.

I think it would be useful to step through the assumptions in your approach so we can explicitly evaluate them to see if they're valid.

To begin with, what does the Book of Mormon actually say? AFAICT (and anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), it says that:

- circa 600 BC, a group of Jews from Judea established themselves in the Americas. - this group of Jews contained eight (?) women: Sariah, plus Ishmael's seven (?) daughters (note: I'm focusing on the women because we're talking about mitochondrial DNA).
- one of these women (Sariah) had no further children after arriving in the Americas.
- two of these women (the daughters who married Sam and Nephi) have no descendents who survived to this day (since the BoM says they were all wiped out by the Lamanites.

IOW, you have a total of five women from whom to derive whatever mitochondrial DNA you're looking for. And as Katzpur pointed out, it seems plausible that these children would intermarry with the indigenous people.

Since mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother, any time it happens that a couple has no daughters, that branch of the "mitochondrial DNA tree" for those original five women ends... which isn't to say that they wouldn't have any living descendents, only that there wouldn't be any matrilineal-line descendants - there would be at least one boy somewhere in the chain.

So... given all that, even if we were to assume that the Book of Mormon is entirely correct, would we necessarily expect to see widespread mitochondrial DNA from those first five women when we look at their descendants today?

IOW, is the prediction so definitive that if we don't find this, we can exclude the possibility?

That's just the beginning of the story. Remember, again, strangely silent on the mention of people already here, intermarriage or anything like that. Then they multiply like yeast, until there are millions of them. No mention of intermarriage, just lots and lots of babies.

Oh, and you left out the earlier groud, the Jaredites and Mulekites.

And the nature of the revelation the prophets receive, including Joseph Smith--all wrong.

And the entire rest of the book, the battles, weapons, money, crops and animals.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That's just the beginning of the story. Remember, again, strangely silent on the mention of people already here, intermarriage or anything like that. Then they multiply like yeast, until there are millions of them. No mention of intermarriage, just lots and lots of babies.

Well, who did they have babies with? All the women on the boat were sisters, so all the children of that initial group would have been first cousins.

Oh, and you left out the earlier groud, the Jaredites and Mulekites.

No, I didn't. I was thinking of the Jaredites when I talked about the people who were already there, and AFAIK, the Mulekites were supposed to have been wiped out with the Nephites, so we wouldn't expect to find them today anyhow.

And the nature of the revelation the prophets receive, including Joseph Smith--all wrong.

If you say so, but on this issue, how do you know?

Is it valid to conclude that if no Jewish mitochondrial DNA is found in a living population, then the population necessarily does not contain descendents of a group of a couple dozen Jews more than 2 millenia ago?

And the entire rest of the book, the battles, weapons, money, crops and animals.

... are all tangential to the immediate question of whether DNA evidence shows that the Book of Mormon is false.