Lamanitish genetics

Posted by Walker on May 12, 1998 at 01:00:41:

I've been searching for someone who could make some type of authorative statement on the Jewish-Lamanite connection in terms of genetics.

My search led me to the URL I have attached.

Mr. Vishniac states clearly that he is not a geneticist but he is a professor of astronomy with great personal interest in genetics. That's the best I've been able to do in terms of authorative response to direct questions about the Book of Mormon and genetics.

Anyway, here is the letter he wrote to me in response to some questions I asked him. I thought you all might find it interesting.

Dear Alan,

I grew up in upstate New York, so I'm more or less aware of the claims Mormons make regarding the Americas.

>Lehi's descendants supposedly became
>(or contributed to the gene pool of) today's American Indians.

This is impossible.

East coast American Indians show signs of significant European ancestry. This has an obvious explanation in terms of conventional history.

As you move away from urban centers in Latin America, and away from the east coast of the US, the amount of European ancestry shrinks to a negligible amount (excepting cases where the recent history of someone's family includes European ancestry. This also is consistent with conventional history. I'll leave it to someone else to decide whether or not it's consistent with Mormon beliefs.

>Using Sforza's book, "History and Geography of Human Genes", we have
>established that the American natives are genetically closely related to
>northeast Asian, consistent with the Siberian land bridge theory of the
>origin of the Americans.

Yes.

>Mormons in the group contend that the Jewish population over the years has
>so diluted their gene pool that there is no way to establish what exactly
>their gene makeup was at the time Lehi left Jerusalem in 600 BC. Therefore
>there is no way to determine what percentage of today's American Indians
>are descentants from those Jews.

Nonsense. By early Roman times the Jews were indeed extremely mixed, but that means that they had ancestors from all over the fertile crescent. The genetic evidence for this is that modern Jews are predominantly of Eastern Mediterranean origin, with some local admixture depending on the community and its location, but the E. Med ancestry is too mixed to be purely the inhabitants of Judah and Israel.

`Mixed' in this context means:

>Sforza places Israelites as being closely related to groups of people who
>are geographically close to them like Turks, Iranians, Arabs.

It does not mean Central Asians, or Siberians, or Europeans, or South Asians (Indian subcontinent).

>Are we certain that the Jews of 600 BC were more closely related to other
>middle-easterners and caucasians of that time and today than they were to
>the Northeast Asians and Native Americans?

We are certain that *no* population living in the Eastern Med at that time, including that ancestral to modern Jews, could be mistaken for the ancestors of Native Americans. If you want to get picky and say `could Jews have contributed some small amount of ancestry to Native Americans' the answer becomes `maybe'.

I guess I'd be surprised if your friends gave much weight to this evidence. Most people I know who are convinced of things for religious reasons do not change their minds in the face of any amount of contrary evidence. I have known a few young-Earth creationists who have thrown in the towel and conceded that they were wrong, but not many.

Cheers

• Jewish genetics and Astronomy