The Book of Mormon and DNA

Hugh Hewitt had a segment today about this piece in the LATimes citing DNA studies on American Indians concluding that they have no DNA markers linking them to the Middle East. It's not really news here in Utah. This has been going on for the past couple of years. The LDS Church issued a press release linking to several articles by LDS scientists who point out problems with the claims that these studies disprove the Book of Mormon.

I'm up to understanding all the science involved, but there are a number of points that make sense to me. First, the Book of Mormon recounts the story of two families who left Jerusalem about 600 B.C. who intermarried and were lead to this hemisphere. The ability to track their DNA is limited by what's called a "bottleneck" where many DNA traits in a larger population fail to get through to subsequent generations when the transmitting group is limited to a small sample.

Another point is one raised in the book 1491 - New revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. It discusses the fact that the Indians living in the Western hemisphere reduced by up to 95% of their precolumbian population, mostly by diseases which spread through them in advance of the Europeans themselves. They not only had no immunity, they didn't have the genetic diversity to develop immunity to some of these diseases. Smallpox, measles, etc. literally swept them off the land. The Book of Mormon contains a prophecy to that effect, but I had never realized that it was so vast and came upon them often before most of them ever saw a European. The point about the lack of genetic diversity struck me as supportive of the Book of Mormon claims.

Third, the idea that all Indians are descendants of these two families from Israel hasn't been my belief for many years. The Book of Mormon actually discusses three groups, the Jaredites who came about the time of the tower of Babel, the Lehi party, and the Mulekites who left Jerusalem about the same time, 600 B.C., but unbeknownst to the Lehi descendants and were discovered by them later on. No other people are described, but there is nothing in the Book of Mormon than would exclude other groups, like the Eskimos. There is insufficient data in the Book to place its geography definitively. Most Mormons seem to believe they were in Northern South America and Central America, but some think they were in the Great Lakes region.

Suffice it to say that the DNA evidence can't prove the Book of Mormon true or false. The Book has been under attack since its first publication with all kinds of scientific claims that have fallen by the way, and like the Bible, which describes many events not found in historic records, endures despite the number of doubters.

I am constantly being impressed by the patterns in the Book that are replicated in modern experience, particularly the ability of secret societies, criminal or terrorist, to undermine a nation. There are always going to be criticisms and attacks. That's why it's called faith.