I have a TBM @ work who was elated today at lunch explaining that Druze (I think this was a Semetic tribe) DNA is proven to exist in only a few places, including Palestine and the great lakes.

I think he's caught wind of a fraud in the works, but wasn't familiar enough with the DNA data to put up an argument.

He says further that this is proof that people came from the Near East to the Americas, but doesn't go into explicitly mormon stories on the migration.

Anyone got the lowdown on Druze DNA?

There's so much nonsense being circulated, it's difficult so say anything more.

Start with Simon Southerton's blog if you want an overview of DNA, Native Americans, and the Book of Mormon...

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2013 12:38AM by SL Cabbie.

Thanks

The Druze are a very secret offshoot of Islam, and they became a community around the early 1000s (C.E.).

They come from the area which is now Syria/Lebanon/Israel/Jordan. There are now expatriate Druze communities in some places around the world, including North America.

The Druze allow no conversion in or out of their community, and intermarriage with any other group is forbidden.

Although this doesn't (of course) mean that there is no Druze DNA floating around in the non-Druze world (not all sex, and not all pregnancies, involve marriage), it does mean that Druze DNA outside of the Druze community would be very small.

Also very recent: as a community, the Druze are only about a thousand years old. This is, comparatively speaking, an "instant" in biological time, and any proven DNA "sharing" would likely be VERY recent (such as a contemporary pregnancy between a Druze and a non-Druze).

Google Druze...read the Wikipedia article...then see what YOU think.

Thanks Tevai. I was about to post pretty much the same thing. The Druze only became a distinct genetic group after about 1000 AD when, as you say, they shut themselves off from the world genetically speaking. Before that, they were like the other incredibly mixed people in Palestine at the time...

Tom in Paris

Oops, I just realized that this thread dates from 2013. Never mind, my comment stands :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2018 01:04PM by Soft Machine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_X_%28mtDNA%29

I take it it's a bit of a genetic surprise with a couple of theories. There are a some problems trying to tie this to the BoM though. The Druze are ethnically closer to Arabic and Persian. The religion is closer to Islam. The dates I can find on various sites for the estimated arrival of the genes to the Americas seem to range between 10,000-30,000 years ago. It would have shown up long before Lehi.

The most I see Mormons getting out of it is the notion that IF a trans-Atlantic migration possibly happened once, it could have happened again. However, wouldn't we see some evidence of that if we are noticing older anomalies?

Few mainstream scientists other than Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley give any credibility to the "Solutrean hypothesis." The X haplogroups of mitochondrial DNA among Native Americans are not closely related to the X variations found in Europe, and genetic analysis of the X2a and X2g hg's has demonstrated they entered this hemisphere at approximately the the same time as the other four haplogroups (all of which are found in the southern Lake Altai region in Siberia near Mongolia).

Okay, I found the information on the Druze, and the only "relevance" is they have a high concentration of X1 and X2 hg's (but not X2a or X2g) in their population. That's consistent with "genetic drift" via a "founder effect."

Here's a credible archaeologist discussing the "Solutrean Solution":

http://archaeology.about.com/od/skthroughsp/qt/solutrean_clovi.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2013 04:47AM by SL Cabbie.

This is interesting My 6th great grandmother was 100% Druze and I was looking into the Druzs people to learn more about them this summer I came across a some writings about the Druzs DNA or X dna in a it seems based on my readings X dna started and Africa and the Middle East there is small amount in European people but the question when did the Druze get here has been a range between between 4000 and 40,000 years they are a mixture of many different people groups found in the middle east and north Africa I don’t know what they called them selves before calling themselves Druzs or Receiving there religion of coarse but people were there before that from what I read the Druzs have a Refigium of the X the Druze x have also been linked to the stroud of Turin Do anyone know how old it Was

"when did the Druze get here"

Not sure what you mean by "here". Are you asking when they got to the Americas?

The Druze only became a distinct genetic group after about 1000 AD when, as Tevai pointed out above, they shut themselves off from the world genetically speaking. Before that, they were like the other incredibly mixed people in Palestine at the time... Just think of all the different conquering armies who went through there. All those genes were in there too.

So, not Jaredites or Nephites or earlier. They didn't EXIST as a group until the 11th century. The idea that "druze" DNA might be found in Native Americans and might thus prove something about mormonism is just silly - although that doesn't seem to put off most mormon apologists ;-)

Tom in Paris

“would have shown up long before Lehi”

So Jaredites. The Mormons always have an out. All they have to do is believe in magical wooden submarines, anachronistic technologies, and physically impossible narratives.

Kennewick Man's DNA analysis shot that one down. Haplogroup X2a was in the Americas before Adam and Eve.

Along with SL Cabbie's and other's comments and links, the Druze and haplogroup X were discussed in the Skeptical Inquirer article that refuted the Lost Civilizations of North America DVD.


"the forms of haplogroup X found in the Galilee Druze (and elsewhere in the Near East) are not closely related to the particular form of haplogroup X found in Native Americans."
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizations_lost_and_found_fabricating_history_-_part_three_real_messages/

Mormons are grasping at straws.

...and didn't the Phoenicians get around pretty good, what with having the most advanced sea vessels of that age and what not?

Even if taken at face value, uncritically, the TBM is grasping at straws.

If the Book of Mormon were literally true, there would be no need to become elated at the possibility that there might be some tiny evidence of semitic DNA in North America. If the Book of Mormon were literally true, the amount of evidence available would be about equal to the amount of evidence that exists with regard to the Roman Empire. Coins, ruins, roads, place names, evidence of great battles, words engraved on stone...

Nothing like that exists for the Book of Mormon. They can't even decide where the "Hill Cumorah" really is because the place that Joseph Smith, their Prophet, declared to be the Hill Cumorah turns out to have exactly ZERO evidence of any great battle where more than a quarter of a million people, equipped with steel swords, chariots and all that crap, fought and died.

Briggy once claimed that there was a secret chamber inside the NY Hill Cumorah with all kinds of gold and sheet. Of course, it's mysteriously hard to find now, having been seen with spiritual eyes and such, and being prone to having the same kind of slipperiness that all treasures previously hunted by Joseph had as their main attribute.

I have a plausible answer for this. Okay, more plausible than Mormonism.

The ancient Nephites and Lamanites were actually little hobbit people. Their tiny little artifacts, like the swords used to hold sandwiches together, quickly decayed. Their horses were large rodents. On occasion they would tame Cureloms (ground hogs) although they were surly and unwieldy beasts.

Rod Meldrum is blabbing the idea that Algonquin Native Americans are genetically related to the Druze. He is not a scientist. Ugo Perego, the LDS Geneticist, says that he is wrong, and so does every other Geneticist who has looked at this. That doesn't stop Mormons from proclaiming all over YouTube that the DNA connecting our mythical Lehi to his AmerIndian descendants has been found!

I "crossed swords" with Rodney Meldrum on one blogsite and sent Simon Southerton a heads-up. I would characterize Simon's reply as "rhetorical blood atonement," seriously. Meldrum got particularly nasty when Simon addressed his "Creationist Views" and claimed the Earth was only 13,000 years old.

From Simon's blogsite:

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/2013/09/meldrums-x-lineage-good.html

He's titled this one "The Good," and and the other two, "The Bad," and "The Ugly" can be referenced from links on Simon's site.

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/2016/01/response-to-rodney-meldrums-incredible.html

>>In the video Rodney Meldrum claims there is DNA evidence that proves the Book of Mormon is true. He boldly claims there is now concrete DNA evidence linking Native Americans to Jewish populations in the Middle East.

This is nonsense, of course. Native American DNA has been proven to have "arrived here" from Berengia from a population in the Siberia/Mongolia region.

>>Rodney Meldrum presents himself as a scientific authority who has worked on a university-level science textbook. The truth is Rodney Meldrum has no scientific qualifications and the unpublished textbook he was working on was a Creationist textbook masquerading as science. Meldrum entered the DNA apologetics arena in about 2003 after first learning of the Book of Mormon DNA issue.

>>In the video Meldrum claims that North American Indians from the Algonquin language group carry high proportions of Jewish mitochondrial DNA. This DNA carries five unique “markers” that only appear in Jewish populations. While not stated in the interview, the mitochondrial DNA Meldrum is referring to is lineage X2a. (Mitochondrial DNA is widely used by scientists to track related populations. It is passed from mothers to offspring, much like a molecular maiden name.)

As I've posted here numerous times, the oldest example of H2A in this hemisphere is that of "Kennewick Man," whose skeleton is 9,000 years old.I had the pleasure of e-mailing Simon with that information several years ago. DNA science hasn't changed in that time, honest.

I guess I would characterize this thread as a "Golden Oldie" someone decided to resurrect while board participation is down.