All About Mormons

A DNA Molecule

A remarkable study published this month in the prestigious scientific journal “Nature” has provided genetic evidence in favor of the Book-of-Mormon narrative. First a little context:

What People Used to Believe

Scientists used to believe that the ancestors of Native Americans traveled from East Asia across the Bering Straight to the Americas. They generally rejected the idea that some Native-American ancestors may have come from the Middle East. Whenever DNA evidence was found in modern Native-American populations that matched Middle-Eastern DNA, scientists automatically assumed the evidence was “contaminated” with the DNA of people who came to the Americas after Christopher Columbus.

Mormons believe several Middle-Eastern groups came to the Americas in addition to the East Asians. The Book of Mormon describes the Jaredites and the Lehites/Mulekites, who came to the Western Hemisphere around 3000 BC and 600 BC, respectively. Mormon scholars have argued that there is little genetic evidence of a Middle-Eastern influence in the Americas because these groups were relatively small compared to the vast Asian-derived populations already present.

Anti-Mormons, ignoring the nuances of both the science and Mormon theology, have suggested that DNA evidence “proves” the Book of Mormon is false. This was never actually true. It’s especially not true now!

What Scientists Now Believe

Scientists recently found two sets of bones in Siberia, one from a three-year-old boy who lived 24,000 years ago, and one from someone who lived 17,000 years ago. When they analyzed the DNA from these bones, they discovered something very surprising. Some of the genes from these ancient individuals are similar to genes found in Europe and the Middle East (i.e., “Eurasia”), and some are similar to genes found in Native Americans. But their genes didn’t match those from East Asia. So somehow, genes from Eurasia managed to get to the Americas without going through the East-Asian population that was thought to constitute the sole ancestors of modern Native Americans. These genes must have arrived in the Americas through a second founding population. The researchers now estimate that up to a third of Native-American genes actually come from Eurasia, rather than East Asia.

Native Americans from Colombia

Strictly speaking, a number of scenarios could explain these results. Perhaps the descendants of the Siberians described in these studies mingled with East-Asian descendants to produce Native Americans. Perhaps distant cousins of the Siberians who shared similar genes (from the Middle East, for example) are the ones who contributed to modern Native-American populations. The mixing of Eurasian and East-Asian genes could have happened in the Old World or the New World. The genetic evidence cannot yet provide these details.

An additional interesting detail is that the scientists compared the ancient Siberian DNA to that of 48 separate Native-American populations. No single Native-American population was a “closest match”; all were equally well matched. This suggests the Eurasian DNA has been circulating among Native-American populations for a long time, since it takes a while for new genes to become equally distributed among all subpopulations. Many factors determine how quickly gene frequencies reach “equilibrium,” including things like mating behavior, migration, etc. Assuming a generation is 25 years long, it’s been about 200 generations since the Jaradites came to the Americas, and about 100 generation since the Lehites/Mulekites came. Is that long enough for Eurasian genes to have spread across the Americas, or were they of necessity introduced earlier? It’s hard to say.

Regardless, the idea that at least some of the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans are from the Middle East just became much more probable. Whether the Eurasian DNA detected in modern Native Americans came from Book-of-Mormon peoples or others, clearly the assertion that DNA “proves” the Book of Mormon false is not sustainable.