Genetics and 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. Specifically, the Book of Mormon claims (or strongly implies) that the ancestors of some or all Native Americans were Israelites.

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 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.

LDS apologetics
The understanding of Joseph Smith and of traditional Mormonism is that the Book of Mormon reveals that some or all American Indians are descendants of the Lamanites, who descended from Lehi and are therefore a "remnant of the House of Israel."

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.

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". 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." Brigham Young and other 19th-century church leaders generally equated Lamanites with the native Indians of the Americas. Statements from senior LDS church leadership to that effect continued throughout the 20th century.

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." In a 2006 edition, the statement was altered to indicate that "the Lamanites ... are among the ancestors of the American Indians."

Mainstream perspective
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). 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. 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.

Analyses of genetics among Indigenous American and Siberian populations have been used to argue for early isolation of founding populations on Beringia and for later, more rapid migration from Siberia through Beringia into the New World. 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. 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. 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. Linguists and biologists have reached a similar conclusion based on analysis of Indigenous American language groups and ABO blood group system distributions.

Apologetic response and discussion
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. Some limited geography model proponents argue that Hebrew genetic heritage may have been diluted beyond what can now be detected.

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. 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

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.

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"

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. 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. The study indicates that 14–38% of Native American ancestry may originate through this gene flow. One of the authors, Professor Kelly Graf, explained the significance of this, stating 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. 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.