Some friends heard about my leaving the church (I had kept it a secret for quite some time) and they gave me a copy of the DVD called "DNA Evidence for Book of Mormon Geography". The speaker in the DVD (and researcher) is some scientist named Rod Meldrum. Supposedly, this new DVD proves that all of the other "proof" that the DNA came from Asians, not Native Americans, is false. This guy is trying to show that we just didn't wait long enough or study "by faith", etc., to get the true and accurate picture.

For some reason, I can't get the search feature on the forum to work for me (anyone else had this problem?)...because surely, I felt, somebody has had to have written about this DVD on this forum. Since I can't get the search engine to work, I had to ask here.

So, if somebody has written about the DVD on this forum or elsewhere, can you please post the links to those comments, and if not, has anybody seen the DVD and do you have things you can tell me about it?

I watched about 45 minutes of it tonight and it was very hard to understand because so much stuff was thrown out all at once. The people who gave me the DVD are very good people and I can't come back at them in a rude way (they are long time friends). But I definitely don't believe the church is true and this DVD hasn't made me think any differently. I just don't really know what to say to the friends about it. :o( But one thing I can say, is even IF the DNA thing proved to be in favor of the LDS church (which I still see no evidence of), they still have no answers for all of the other lies.

Can anybody help?

thanks!

LDS apologists have already denounced his DVD. Here's the link.

http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/MisguidedS.html

but the "bottom line" is that ALL mainstream geneticists conclude that Native American populations are descended from Siberian Asians, and that these ancestors arrived thousands of years before the beginning of the BoM timeline. No link with ancient Hebrew/Semitic populations has ever been found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas


SL Cabbie posts frequently on this board and often addresses controversies and claims made by Mormons who attempt to show "evidence" contradicting the mainstream view. See this link for a recent discussion:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,9460,9489#msg-9489


You could spend many hours and days trying to educate yourself on all the science regarding Native American population genetics, but it's unlikely any response you make to your Mormon friends will be met with an open mind; however, the science is very compelling (and interesting, if you like that kind of thing!), so the time invested may be worth it to you, personally.

Best of luck!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2010 04:17AM by Fetal Deity.

I think this stuff should keep "Anon" busy for awhile, and now, I'm going to get some sleep...

And though I did an extensive return-and-report last spring when Meldrum was promoting his video at the South Town Exhibition Center, I couldn't find a copy of it. Since I just stumbled in from a cab shift and a quick "Howdy" at the Exmormon Conference, I'll just shorthand some of this; I have no wish to engage in any personal attacks or ad hominems, but basically Rodney Meldrum's claims amount to such utter nonsense that most scholars would ignore them (as Wayne May's "Ancient American" is similarly disregarded) and suggest a few tinfoil hats would be in order if anyone gives thoughts to believing them.

BTW, if anyone archived my post, I would be grateful if the information was posted here...

Meldrum's video amounts to a selectively edited mix of legitimate scholars and others who represent the "diffusionist fringe" of archaeology. There are extensive claims of pre-Columbian Old World/New World contacts for which the evidence is sparse to non-extistent.

Moreover, there's a claim of a "Grand Conspiracy" that began with the Smithsonian in the 19th Century when the great Civil War Hero and explorer, John Wesley Powell, was named to head the Bureau of Ethnology. Powell's "co-conspirator" is identified as Lewis Henry Morgan, who headed the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_H._Morgan

>Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist, and one of the greatest social scientists of the nineteenth century in the United States. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois. Due to his study of kinship, Morgan was an early proponent of the theory that the indigenous peoples of the Americas had migrated from Asia in ancient times.

At the root of Meldrum's claims is that Book of Mormon events took place in the Great Lakes area, and that the Hopewell Indians were part of the BOM people.

This contrasts with the "Limited Geography Theory" that has found favor among Mormon apologists and orginated with John L. Sorenson. Here's a piece of mine demonstrating Sorenson's utter lack of critical understanding on subjects of elementary science and resorting to sheer fantasy in stretching information to fit his beliefs.

http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon606.htm

As I note, though, Meldrum's ideas are equally gonzo. The only potential genetic evidence in favor of a Hebrew/Native American connection rests with the "X Haplogroup" of mitochondrial DNA (which is passed on maternally). X is a very old lineage, found in Europe as well as in Siberia, among the Altai people. The sequences among the Altai are much more closely related to Native American mtDNA than the ones in Europe, which is overwhelming evidence that it arrived via the Beringia land bridge and not on a transoceanic voyage (an absurdity in and of itself in the days before the development of the maritime compass).

The conspiracy claim suggests that evidence of Native American's Hebrew ancestry was suppressed to provide "scientific justification" for "Manifest Destiny," which included the displacement of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and the resultant genocide.

Unfortunately, all of the "evidence" they point to has proven to be archaeological frauds that have been repeatedly debunked by legitimate scientists. These include the Kensington Runestone (claimed to be proof of Viking presence in Minnesota, never mind that the St. Lawrence river was unnavigable until modern times), the Bat Creek Stone, and the "Newark Holy Stones."

Here's a sample article describing the "Newark Holy Stones" as discussed by a legitimate archaeologist...

http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20080505/NEWS01/805050301/Hoax-thrust-area-into-slavery-debate

Meldrum, who's a former used car salesman, insists that there's a controversy over their authenticity (see "Intelligent Design" and the "Wedge Approach" for another example the M.O.)

There is none, however, and as I recall, Meldrum (and May) also cite the "Michigan Relics" which were also recognized as frauds by none other than James Talmage.

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/48151-the-michigan-relics/

Note that this one is from the "Mormon Apologetics and Discussion Board." Hey, even a stopped clock is right once in a while...

Finally, here's a link to a couple of posts Simon Southerton made that were archived in the Short Topics section. This one pretty much reviews the major issues...

http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon534.htm

<YAWN!>

If you need more, I may have more to say after a night's sleep...

Best wishes,

SLC

There is no genetic evidence for any of the claims of the BoM, despite what Meldrum says - and his credentials speak for themselves. The great hope for the apologists was Haplotype X2A which does indeed have a focal point around the Great Lakes. But it has been in the Americas longer than any timeframe claimed by the BoM. And its route to the Americas is via Asia and Siberia. This was work done by an LDS scientist, no less (though he was prob on the hunt for lamanite DNA. More recent work not relying on mitochondrial DNA has substantially hardened these conclusions.

Bottom line is this: don't look to genetics to bolster the claims of the BoM - it does not help. Nothing published in any peer-reviewed journal has ever given any support to the notion that lamanites ever existed - and there's an awful lot of evidence to suggest they didn't.

Believers have faith lamanites existed. But given the lack of scientific support for any of it, their faith has to be defined as blind, notwithstanding the work of a used car salesman.

The BoM has Hagoth's ships leaving from the coast on the "west sea" (one of the Great Lakes) and never being heard from again.

Meldrum's principal sources for his theory, other than his DNA claims, are the statements of Mormon prophets. (In this respect, he should be much more believable to TBMs than the Limited Geography guys.)

But Mormon prophets have identified the Pacific Islanders as Hagoth's descendants.

Meldrum's lame explanation is that Hagoth's ships went down the St. Lawrence (and from there to the Pacific?). But, as Cabbie points out, the St. Lawrence was not navigable until modern times.

DNA is a hugh nail in the coffin of BoM credibility. It joins the nails of archeaology, anthropology, linguistics, etc. Even if the DNA evidence could be explained away, the rest of the monolith against the possibility of the BoM being what it claims remains.

They're trying to confuse the picture by going off on a tangent. Here's a brief summary of how DNA is used:

1) We inherit our DNA from both our parents, roughly half from each.. BUT there are TWO major exceptions

2) Our Y-DNA (from father to son) is passed straight on, and is NOT diluted.

3) Our mt-DNA (from mother to BOTH sons and daughters) is also passed straight on and is NOT diluted eiher.

4) Both Y-DNA and mt-DNA are subject to occasional mutations which are passed on to descendants. These markers are used both to identify people descended from the same ancestor, and are also used to group people descended from a common ancestor. Based on the number of markers used you can go from the present (siblings) to tens of thousands of years ago (e.g back to mankind's common ancestors).

5) This is the basis of DNA genealogy. These sets of mutations are used to group sets of population that share them together. They are known as Haplogroups.

6) There's a set of Haplogroups for Y-DNA and another one for mt-DNA

7) Occasionally a new mutation will arise, on top of the ancestral ones, which will show that one group is descended from its parent group.

8) No matter how many thousands of years pass, or how many male descendants I have, they will ALL inherit my sets of Y-DNA markers (plus the occasional mutation), no matter where they live or who they marry and they will show as my descendants, just as my own Y-DNA can be traced back to my ancestors. Likewise with their mother's mt-DNA.

For instance my own Y-Haplogroup is "I1". This is a variant found mainly in Scandinavia. A slight variant "I2" is found mainly in part of the Balkans. Both groups are descended from the parent group which is "I", and is found mainly in Europe. In turn, "I" is descended from its parent group "IJ", etc., all the way back to "A" the ancestral group of ALL modern humans, back in Africa.

This how scientists for instance determine the peopling of the Americas. Based on their Y-DNA and mt-DNA the various native populations can be placed in certain haplogroups, and their distant ancestry traced back.

THIS CAN BE DONE FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL.

There is much more to it than can be covered here. A good place to start is to check "Haplogroup" somewhere like Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup (scroll down to the section called Haplogroup population genetics and below for more info)

Either there is a conspiracy by nearly every DNA researcher, scientist, archeologist, paleo-linguist, most serious LDS academics, etc,, and they are ALL lying their teeth off, or else Mr Meldrum is wrong. I know which one is most likely.

Rudi

Nuclear DNA, also known as "autosomal DNA," is vastly more complex because the strands are so much longer but it is still succumbing to analysis and classification that shows where and when the same sort of mutations arise. Thus, even though it is subject to "recombination" and "dilution" because of the contributions of two parents, we can essentially pinpoint where alleles (pairs of genes) arose because of their frequency in different populations (that's vastly simplified, but essentially accurate).

Simon Southerton notes elsewhere if Hebrews had actually made it to the New World, we would find remnants of their DNA; the fact that we can't means they didn't make it here.