We had some interesting discussions with Dr. Perego on the creation of the earth. Is evolution compatible with the Bible?
Ugo: Even if I am a scientist and I like to push boundaries of knowledge, when it comes to things that pertain to the church either you sustain brethren or you don’t. Either you can go with what they are doing or try to see things why they are doing and you accept that or you don’t. In my mind is if the church openly has said that we don’t have an official position on what happened before Adam and Eve, how Adam and Eve came to be as physical beings, we don’t have an opinion or revelation or a position on evolution. We don’t have a position with Book of Mormon geography. We don’t have a position on the Nephites, of the biological population of the Nephites to the American continent, then you are leaving a lot of room open for everything. Everybody can be correct and everybody can be wrong when it comes to their point.
Maybe I’m too naïve but I still don’t understand why some people become so feisty—is that the right word, feisty—about issues where the church has decided not to take a position on it. There must be some reason why they didn’t. I don’t think it is fear. I don’t think they have the answers and they don’t want to tell you.
It doesn’t matter if Bruce McConkie said so and so, if Joseph Fielding Smith said that, if Joseph Smith said that. If the church says today that we don’t have an official position about Book of Mormon geography, that is the final answer. That is it.
Just express your thoughts, share your conclusion, share what evidence that you have about your ideas, but don’t impose them, don’t come to me and say you are wrong because I am right. I am sticking with the brethren. This is my position.
Going to your question, can there have been people living in America 15,000 years ago, pre-flood time, pre-Adam and Eve time? The answer is, why not? Because the [LDS] Church does not have a position about who lived before Adam and Eve. We know through revelation there was an Adam and Eve. We know that we are descendants of them, but the Church has never said there was nothing before. They haven’t said that.
We had an interesting poll a few weeks ago, and while most readers here seem to agree with Dr. Perego’s position, there was one particularly feisty commenter that seemed to disagree. This led to a discussion about evolution and the creation. Dr. Perego points out
Ugo: February 2016, What does the Church believe about dinosaurs?[1] That’s the title of the statement. In October 2016 in the New Era, What does the Church believe about evolution?[2] Church statements, but very clear to me; the one about dinosaurs says you should not take the biblical account as literal. Ok. What is literal and what is not? It doesn’t say in the article. It just says that the account in Genesis is not meant to be taken literally. It does not mention or describe the methods or processes or the time involved with the creation.
The one in October about evolution, it says that nothing about the creation of the body of Adam and Eve has been revealed. We know that they are spirit children of our heavenly father and they have been created spiritually in their likeness, in their image, but we don’t know anything about their physical happenings.
So could it have been that there is some human like individuals under the direction of Heavenly Father as he is involved in the creation of the earth over billions of years? There was some sort of evolving process, the word utilized to create what we have today. At a certain point, a spirit was placed in this already existing physical body. Can God put spirits in bodies? We know that, right? How in the world a child is born from a mortal woman receive an eternal spirit unless there is somebody that makes that happen.
We witness evolution every child that is born. From one cell you have a being. You have a nine month evolution. That does happen. He evolves into a [baby], and then when it is born it takes another 20 years until he evolves into a full adult. So we believe in that process of changing forms. But the point is the spirit goes into the physical body. Enough said. I don’t know the details. I don’t know if it is correct or not, but what I know is that the church is leaving the door wide open to physical, genetic, biological beings being around more than 6,000 years ago. It leaves it open. You can’t deny that. The church leaves that open. They are not taking a stand on that.
[1] Statement can be found at https://www.lds.org/new-era/2016/02/to-the-point/what-does-the-church-believe-about-dinosaurs?lang=eng Retrieved September 13, 2017.
[2] See https://www.lds.org/new-era/2016/10/to-the-point/what-does-the-church-believe-about-evolution?lang=eng
In our second discussion, we talked about why Lamanite DNA is not found in Native Americans. (We got into a surprising discussion about polygamy and concubines.) What does Ugo think about the population numbers cited in the Book of Mormon?
Ugo : Either the numbers are exaggerated or the Nephites and the Lamanites are immediately mingling with people here…people say the Book of Mormon is not historical. It is a fictional production from the 19th century from Joseph Smith. In my mind, that is one way to read it. That’s one way to understand it, but if there were really a lot of people here and Lehi’s group was very small, and there was as it looks like from these Book of Mormon passages that we talk about it, some sort of mixture, intermingling, their DNA would have disappeared within five or six generations.
GT: Really?
Ugo: Yeah.
GT: So here’s something….
Ugo interrupts: Even the ancestry kit that you bought, it’s guaranteed to help you find relatives only up to five or six generations in the past because after that it becomes too diluted. You don’t have all your ancestors DNA with you. The majority of your ancestors are not genetically represented in you.
GT: But I’ve heard that we have Neanderthal DNA in us.
Ugo: Of course.
GT: If we’re dying out in five generations, how are we able to get….
Ugo interrupts: It’s called direct sampling. We are not testing descendants of Neanderthals. We are testing direct samples…Now because we know the anatomy of the Neanderthal, we take the Neanderthal bones and we ran a complete sequence of DNA from those bones, so now we have a Neanderthal reference. How do we know that that’s Neanderthal? How do we know that that’s Neanderthal DNA?
GT: Because we found the bones?
Ugo: Because we have the skeletons. We first classified the skeletons, then we got the DNA from them. Then we compare the DNA of Neanderthal with Homo sapiens, which is us. (I just hit my microphone.) We saw differences between them. We actually found out the average European carries about 2-3% of Neanderthal DNA still today in some of the most conservative areas of our genome….I can find a little tiny piece of bone today in a cave, and not know what that belongs to because anatomically it’s too small to know which species it belongs to, but because now I have the reference of the DNA, I can test the DNA on the little piece of bone and I can tell you if it is Neanderthal or modern human, Denisovan, all these other archaic hominids. With Lehi, we cannot do that because we don’t have his body.
I must say I was pretty surprised to hear that Nephite DNA could have disappeared within 5-6 generations. What do you think? We’ll continue to discuss DNA and the Book of Mormon next week, but what do you think of Perego’s assertions so far? Is this a good explanation for why Native American DNA does not match Israel? What do you think of his positions on evolution and the Bible?
Wheat & Tares 
An official admission of the 19th-century origins of the BoM would do wonders to revitalize the Mormon church.
Well done, this is super interesting stuff. I can’t wait to go listen to the podcast version. I didn’t know about DNA disappearing after 5-6 generations. That seens to support a limited geography understanding of the BoM peoples or Chino’s comment (but not much else). At the same time, I’m not sure saying current natives of the American continent are descendants of the BoM is in any way accurate (not sure the brethern say this, but members sure do).
I’m also unclear how we can then know where the different American tribes do come from, as my understaning is that their DNA is all mapped out (could be I’m wrong). Can we actually trace the DNA back along the arctic land bridge? Or are we comparing current DNA to ancient Asian bones and saying there is a match? DNA is so complex!
Added thought… Mr. Perego said, “It doesn’t matter if Bruce McConkie said so and so, if Joseph Fielding Smith said that, if Joseph Smith said that. If the church says today that we don’t have an official position about Book of Mormon geography, that is the final answer. That is it.”
This line of thinking leaves me flat cold. The logic here is McConkie as an Apostle was wrong. JFS as a prophet wrong. JS as the prophet speaking with God was wrong. But the prophet today is right and that’s the final answer.
Some talk show host in the 90s said something that I’ve never forgotten. It was that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So if all these church leaders of the past were wrong about something, why is the correct assumption that the current leadership is right? It seems much more likely that none of them know what they are talking about and are only giving their best opinions. With this particular issue that actually goes right along with saying the church has no official position. With other issues, it doesn’t work out quite that tidily though.
Maybe I misunderstood the podcast (I read this and listened to it), but I’m calling BS on the “we don’t have Lehi’s body (and thus his DNA) so we can’t test for Lamanite DNA among the natives of the Americas” argument. Granted, I’m no DNA expert, but according to the Book of Mormon, Lehi is a descendant of Joseph (Ephraim and Mannasah), right? Is it being claimed that Lamanite DNA would not include that heritage? All of the people in Lehi’s family, as well as those who came with him, were Israelites. We don’t need their bodies to know that and look for Israelite markers among Native Americans.
Regarding the idea that we’d lose DNA after 5-6 generations, I’d love to hear Ugo’s explanation of the Lemba tribe in Africa. In their case, they claim to be descended from seven Jewish men who married local women 2,500 years ago (approximately the same time Lehi and company left) and were in the middle of a much larger population. Despite such circumstances, they still maintain Jewish ancestral customs and genetic tests have proven their Jewish ancestry. Despite this evidence, am I to believe that Lehi’s small company (larger in number than that of the Lemba tribe’s ancestors) was completely subsumed by a native population, intermarried, maintained their beliefs over 1,000 years, had enough of a population to have massive wars, and yet we have zero genetic (or any other) evidence for that group? Yet we do have evidence of the Lemba tribe’s descent, even though it has similar characteristics (aside from the massive wars).
ReTx, the Church did have an official position regarding the Book of Mormon and it was Joseph Smith’s position: that all the native populations were descendants of Lehi and his little company. Joseph was quite clear on this point many times but evidence has since proven such a view as untenable so Church leaders moved the goal posts and now state that we don’t have an official position. But you’re right, they don’t have an official position because all of their past official positions were proven wrong.
I see your point, Cody. Lehi’s exact DNA is likely lost. But the ancient Hebrew markers would not have been and these markers are known. Put that way, bringing up Lehi’s specific DNA feels like muddying the waters rather than dealing with the actual issue of why no Hebrew DNA is found anywhere in the native Americans.
Hi Cody, Recent research has determined that the the DNA of the Lemba is actually no different than others in the region.
Himla Soodyall; Jennifer G. R Kromberg. “Human Genetics and Genomics and Sociocultural Beliefs and Practices in South Africa”. In Kumar, Dhavendra; Chadwick, Ruth. Genomics and Society: Ethical, Legal, Cultural and Socioeconomic Implications. Academic Press/Elsevier. p. 316. ISBN 978-0-12-420195-8.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=E9icBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA309&dq=Cohen+Modal+Haplotype+Lemba&ots=2qm1JZ6H6M&sig=dl9j_r6piyECuNoE5baX_lU-z44#v=onepage&q=Cohen%20Modal%20Haplotype%20Lemba&f=false
“Can we actually trace the DNA back along the arctic land bridge?”
ReTx, yes Perego does trace DNA back to the Arctic Lang bridge (known as Beringia). We discuss that quite a bit.
” Or are we comparing current DNA to ancient Asian bones and saying there is a match?”
In my next episode (due tomorrow), we’ll get into more details about the Kennewick Man and discussion of bones. So far, Ugo’s position seems to be that Asians came to America via Beringia 20,000 years ago. Population DNA takes a minimum of 5,000 years to change slightly, so there are slight differences between Native Americans and Asians, but he also discusses the Saqqaq people who are clearly Asian in Greenland (if my memory is correct) just 5,000 years ago. Yes DNA certainly is complex.
I agree with this: “The logic here is McConkie as an Apostle was wrong. JFS as a prophet wrong. JS as the prophet speaking with God was wrong.”
But I’m not sure I follow this: “But the prophet today is right and that’s the final answer.”
The prophet today has no position, so I don’t think that is a final answer by any stretch of the imagination. He’s simply leaving it open.
As for the point about moving the goalposts, I wouldn’t find that a fair characterization, but I understand the sentiment. Remember Catholics for years said the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth. Clearly they’ve had to change to match the science. Mormons are doing the same thing, but if we believe in continuing revelation, then we shouldn’t be overly surprised that previous statements were in error.
“I’m calling BS on the “we don’t have Lehi’s body (and thus his DNA) so we can’t test for Lamanite DNA among the natives of the Americas” argument. Granted, I’m no DNA expert, but according to the Book of Mormon, Lehi is a descendant of Joseph (Ephraim and Mannasah), right? Is it being claimed that Lamanite DNA would not include that heritage? All of the people in Lehi’s family, as well as those who came with him, were Israelites. We don’t need their bodies to know that and look for Israelite markers among Native Americans.”
Cody, I believed similarly to you, but my next episode better addresses this issue. The Lemba Tribe in Africa has a similar story to Lehi leaving Jerusalem. I directly asked him about this, and I think Ugo’s position is worth considering. There are questions that only bones can answer, not descendants of descendants.
Rick, I look forward to hearing Ugo’s comments on the Lemba tribe and why we need bones. Great work on the podcast.
Regarding goalposts, you said:
Unfortunately for Church leaders, on this and many other topics, it’s been science acting as the revelator.
Note a big difference between the Lemba tribe and Lamanites/Nephites is that the latter lost their identity by 400 AD whereas the Lemba tribe maintained their Judaism including discouraging intermarriage. Likewise the Nephite group went from being xenophobic fairly early (at the time of Jacob 2-3) to being a heavy proselytizing group intermixing with Lamanites by the time of the Sons of Mosiah. That makes for a significant difference.
To the “prophet is right” I think we have to take seriously the idea that there is no infallibility doctrine. Thus a prophet can always be wrong. (Which is not the same as saying they are wrong) In terms of the current teaching of the Church of course Perego is right. But this gets at the more complex issue that ideal doctrine and doctrine as normative teachings at a given time aren’t the same.
More of less this objection just reduces down to people thinking a prophet should be infallible even if they aren’t. But once you accept fallibility then the problem largely goes away. It may raise a different problem of why one should trust a prophet. But that’s a completely different issue.
To Joseph’s view, I think that’s more complex than presented. We have various Times and Seasons editorials although it’s hard to know how much ghost writing was going on and to what degree they reflect Joseph’s thought. Further they are complex. Say the 15 Jan 1842 editorial “[W]e have found another important fact relating to the truth of the Book of Mormon. Central America, or Guatimala [Guatemala], is situated north of the Isthmus of Darien and once embraced several hundred miles of territory from north to south.-The city of Zarahemla, burnt at the crucifixion of the Savior, and rebuilt afterwards, stood upon this land as will be seen from the following words in the book of Alma”
Or the 15 September 1842 editorial “Mr Stephens’ great developments of antiquities are made bare to the eyes of all the people by reading the history of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. They lived about the narrow neck of land, which now embraces Central America, with all the cities that can be found. Read the destruction of cities at the crucifixion of Christ…Let us turn our subject, however, to the Book of Mormon, where these wonderful ruins of Palenque are among the mighty works of the Nephites:—and the mystery is solved…Mr. Stephens’ great developments of antiquities are made bare to the eyes of all the people by reading the history of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. They lived about the narrow neck of land, which now embraces Central America, with all the cities that can be found. Read the destruction of cities at the crucifixion of Christ, pages 459-60.”
Beyond that we have second hand accounts, such as with the Zelph story,
Of direct statements the closest we have is his “there was a book deposited written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from which they sprang” in the Testimony of Joseph Smith attached to the Book of Mormon. But that simply doesn’t explicitly give a hemispheric interpretation. Next up is the similar Wentworth Letter. But if anything Joseph narrows things there saying “the aboriginal inhabitants of this country.”
While I don’t know all the details regarding the Lemba tribe and their customs, if their priestly clans followed Jewish marriage patterns , they would have a high level of endogamy in their population, helping to preserve those distinct Hebrew markers down the generations. Also, if the present day Lemba number only around 80,000 members, they likely were a small and isolated tribe thru much of their history in Africa, thus upping the chances of endogamy being practiced among them.
If the scenario where Lehi’s family arrive and intermarry with an already large native population, their numbers are going to get diluted after about 5-6 generations without any endogamy occurring. And if we assume that the Nephites did initially practice endogamy among the priestly line, this likely would have stopped during the period of 4th Nephi when according to the narrative the old law was done away among them.That would still provide plenty of generations to dilute out those markers between then and present day Native Americans. And the fact that the Lemba didn’t have major wars, and the Nephites had plenty, ups the chances that the people who had the Hebrew markers all got wiped out eventually.
Of course this all presupposes that the BoM is literal, and I count myself in the figurative camp. But DNA science alone won’t be able to address the issue of Native Americans having or not having Hebrew markers based solely on testing DNA from descendants due to genetic crossover happening over hundreds of generations.
I agree Cody, but as President Kimball once said, “Revelations will probably never come unless they are desired. I think few people receive revelations while lounging on the couch or while playing cards or while relaxing. I believe most revelations would come when a man is on his tip toes, reaching as high as he can for something which he knows he needs, and then there bursts upon him the answer to his problems.”
The reality is that some prophets (or popes) accept science (or other things) kicking and screaming. The Manifesto came about due to pressure from the U.S. government. The pope accepted the Sun was the center of the universe long after Galileo said so. Mormons aren’t unique in blind spots.
There is a very interesting podcast from Radio West that calls Biblical Literalism “a gentile heresy.” Very good podcast I should write about if I have time: http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/biblical-literalism
While I don’t know all the details regarding the Lemba tribe and their customs, if their priestly clans followed Jewish marriage patterns , they would have a high level of endogamy in their population, helping to preserve those distinct Hebrew markers down the generations. Also, if the present day Lemba number only around 80,000 members, they likely were a small and isolated tribe thru much of their history in Africa, thus upping the chances of endogamy being practiced among them.
If the scenario where Lehi’s family arrive and intermarry with an already large native population, their numbers are going to get diluted after about 5-6 generations without any endogamy occurring. And if we assume that the Nephites did initially practice endogamy among the priestly line, this likely would have stopped during the period of 4th Nephi when according to the narrative the old law was done away among them.That would still provide plenty of generations to dilute out those markers between then and present day Native Americans. And the fact that the Lemba didn’t have major wars, and the Nephites had plenty, ups the chances that the people who had the Hebrew markers all got wiped out eventually.
Of course this all presupposes that the BoM is literal, and I count myself in the figurative camp. But DNA science alone won’t be able to address the issue of Native Americans having or not having Hebrew markers based solely on testing DNA from descendants due to genetic crossover happening over hundreds of generations.
I don’t think the Church can remain healthy with half the members believing in OT biblical literalism and half believing in evolution (and other sciences). The chasm between the two groups is too great. Church leaders need to take a stand and the most likely leader to spearhead this effort is Henry B. Eyring, whose father was a brilliant scientist and a counterbalance to the Joseph Fielding Smith cabal. I’m pretty sure this can be accomplished gracefully if handled correctly. Conservative Mormons will come around, like they did after the 1978 revelation. Afterall, their children and grandchildren are learning about evolution in high school and at BYU.
There are two problems with allowing the bifurcation to continue. First, if younger members believe that the Church is in anyway associated with the literalism camp, they will continue to leave the Church in droves. Second, literalism encourages all kinds of anti-science groups including: anti-vaxers, creationist advocates, global warming deniers, LGBTQ discriminators, Last Day obsessions, extreme preppers, etc. The LDS Church needs to be clearly on the side of science. Otherwise, we are just a folk religion.
Smithereens, I, too, am not in the literal camp on the Book of Mormon. I also don’t think DNA science alone will be able to address the issue of Native Americans not having Semitic markers, only because one cannot really prove a negative.
I’ve also got to say, the idea that there were huge populations of natives is not in agreement with the book’s narrative. It isn’t mentioned one time – it’s not even alluded to – yet there are two specific outside groups mentioned: Mulekites and Jaredites (and the Nephites only run across one of them – Coriantumr – why not mention the millions of natives when they first arrived?). And if all the people with Semitic markers were wiped out, leaving no trace, to whom was the book written? How could those who were not of Semitic descent be convinced that they are the children of Israel? We go from all the native people being descendants of Lehi, to the Limited Geography Theory, and, once that theory is struggling in the face of DNA evidence, the move to the Disappearing DNA Theory. With each change the narrative of the book itself and the claims of its translator have to be tossed aside or recast to fit the new narrative.
I hope you can listen to the part about concubines, because I think that is important to the discussion.
Ugo: “In Jacob chapter two is frustrated with the Nephites for taking too many wives and too many concubines. You have got a group of people that are what, 60-70, they are all cousins. Where do you get these concubines from? How are you satisfying your sexual desires with this?…concubines are usually foreign women. They do not have the same status as your family, so you treat them as some sort of wife, there is a legal binding, but they do not have the same status. Could it be that the Nephites were doing the same, some foreign women, some local indigenous women?
GT: Today with ISIS in the Middle East, a lot of times they are taking these Yazidi women and they are basically sex slaves. Is that kind of…?
Ugo interrupts: Sex slaves, that’s another word for concubine. It depends culturally where you are. Sex slaves is probably the worst situation you can have. I mean you are really there only to satisfy sexual pleasure. Concubine has some rights as well. In fact even today with Islam you can have up to four wives and as many concubines as you want but the problem is that when the husband dies, the inheritance only goes to the first four wives. As long as the man is alive, the concubines have the same rights as the women, the same lifestyle or status, but then when the husband dies they don’t get anything. They leave.
What I am saying is that it is interesting that Jacob actually talks about concubines. He doesn’t only talk about wives, and he’s talking about how it’s a widespread problem.”
Despite what many people assume, there are hints that other people were here, and this is just one example.
Andy, your claim isn’t true. The mtDNA is the same, which would be expected since the narrative is that seven Jewish settlers married local women. Y chromosomes were different than the local population and were Semitic in origin. The book you linked to stated this.
Rick, I am very skeptical of that claim about the text in Jacob 2. If I am to understand the argument correctly, is it that the tiny group of Nephites (the minority of Lehi’s descendents) took secular and religious control of an indigenous population in the millions, and a widespread problem among that population is that they justified concubines by appealing to David and Solomon? What is the probability that this indigenous population knew of David and Solomon practicing concubinage and how did they know?
Cody, the argument is that Jewish law allows concubines and the Book of Mormon references David and Solomon. Certainly Nephites knew concubines were acceptable with the law of Moses, and many justified taking foreign women as concubines, which Jacob 2 clearly rebukes. So no, the indigenous population didn’t know about the Law of Moses–they didn’t need to (although clearly Native Americans did practice polygamy, but would have no idea who David and Solomon were.) Jacob 2 clearly refers to Nephites making the justification for concubines, and condemns them for it. The argument is that Nephites took concubines and justified it with David/Solomon, not Native Americans.
As for a smaller population taking over a larger one, that’s been done countless times in the world. In our next interview we talked about the Spaniards taking over Mexico and much of South America. Certainly the Japanese dominated China for a long time. The British captured India, America, Canada, Hong Kong, and many other places that outnumbered them. The French took over large swaths of America, Africa, Vietnam. Portuguese took over parts of South America. Germany took over a large part of Europe before being beaten back. All of these forces were much smaller than native populations.
I am not going to get into a DNA argument again..
I will add this to the discussion. When I was young , in the 1960’s growing up in Utah in a town known as the cradle of the apostles, what was taught in church and in seminary was a western hemispheric setting for the Book of Mormon. All people living everywhere from Alaska to Chile before the arrival of Europeans were descendants of the Book of Mormon people. The land was empty before the Jaredites. It had to be to accommodate a worldwide flood which was required to keep the antediluvian Biblical characters in Missouri and the postdiluvian characters in the middle east.
This would include all the lands of the current Heartland geography and all the lands of the current Mesoamerican geography. It included Lamanites in Ohio for missionaries to be commanded to teach in the D &C. And it included all the Indians of the Plains and those living in pioneer Utah. It included Zelph in the Nauvoo area and it included Moroni dedicating the site of the Manti temple and a number of campfire stories of the appearance of the ghosts of Gadianton robbers that scared me silly as a scout. It included all the peoples of Latin American to whom we taught these aspects of the gospel for over a century. As late as President Gordon B. Hinckley teaching the Saints in Chile they were the people of the Book of Mormon.
Further we had the theology of Hagoth and his ships. The people of Polynesia were taught they were Book of Mormon descendants. Yea, even the forefathers of all those great BYU football players (who got a right good butt whoopingtwice now) including the coach were taught this gospel. Even in Japan where I served a mission in the 1970’s we taught them they were people of the Book of Mormon because there is some evidence that Japanese ancestors came from both China and from the South Pacific.
The scope of this change in doctrine is far more than moving the goal posts. It is more like tearing them down and replacing them with soccer nets, or rather rose gardens.
Chincoblanco: (first comment):
If you think “revitalizing” means cutting tithing payment to about 5% of what it is now then you might be right. Don’t you know the literalists pay a literal tithing and the allegoricalists usually only pay a small token donation?
Rick, by the time Jacob 2 rolls around, aren’t the Nephites something like 100 or so in number? Are you saying that they practiced polygamy among themselves with so few people? Or are you saying they were taking concubines from among a native population? I’m not sure what you are arguing there.
Every example you gave of a smaller population conquering a larger one is an example where the smaller population had a significant technological advantage over the larger one – and maintained it. I have heard this argument about the Lehites coming in and, with their superior technology, swiftly taking command of a much larger population. But then they give up that technology? Because there is zero evidence of such technology in the New World. Why would they give it up if it was how they subjugated a much larger population? And why wouldn’t the Lamanites (a much larger population taken over by Laman and Lemuel, I assume?) have maintained that technology? It’s grasping at straws.
“by the time Jacob 2 rolls around, aren’t the Nephites something like 100 or so in number? Are you saying that they practiced polygamy among themselves with so few people? Or are you saying they were taking concubines from among a native population? I’m not sure what you are arguing there.”
It’s not my argument, it’s Ugo’s. I’m just trying to channel Ugo best I can. Ugo used 60-70 in his number, but to use 100 wouldn’t change his argument much either. He is saying that the Nephites took Native Americans as concubine wives. Perhaps Nephites did took concubines and wives of indigenous peoples (and/or Nephites, but taking concubines of Nephites doesn’t really follow from Jewish tradition, as I understand it.) Does that make sense? In my next interview, Ugo says the numbers in the Book of Mormon don’t make sense. Population growth doesn’t make sense, so either the numbers are exaggerated, or the Nephites and Lamanites combined with existing peoples in order to become large so quickly. See my current interview for more info on population growth: https://gospeltangents.com/2017/09/19/lemba-tribe-vikings-dna-book-mormon-part-2/
As for the smaller population taking over a larger one, yes I agree with you about the technological advantage, although Ugo says that the Native Americans died from diseases brought by Europeans, so that played a significant role as well. There is saying that it was both guns and disease that helped Europeans subdue Native Americans.
To your argument, I do not believe that the swords and chariots fit any American models, and that is a weakness in all of them. (It isn’t a weakness in the Malay Theory, although getting the plates from Malaysia to New York presents a significant challenge too.) So yes I agree with you that it doesn’t make sense for Nephites to bring swords and chariots to America and then abandon them.
Ugo also says that Native Americans welcomed Columbus, the Pilgrims, and even the Spanish (at first.) Nephites probably came in peace and weren’t conquerers like the Spanish, so perhaps Nephites were treated well by indigenous peoples. But I agree that Nephi smelting plates and swords is a big weakness of American theories, so even if Nephites coexisted peacefully with Native Americans, there are still some issues that need to be resolved better than current science shows. People generally don’t abandon superior technologies.
Thanks for the clarification, Rick. Ugo is asserting that Lehi’s group of less than 100 people were, within a few years of Nephi’s death, taking concubines from among a native population that they had subjugated (within a very short time)? That’s unpersuasive and seems like grasping at straws to justify a massive indigenous population (one never mentioned).
The Europeans brought diseases that killed off most of the native American populations. Interesting. This begs another question. How long do populations have to be isolated to become vulnerable to these epidemic diseases?
If we insist on using Biblical chronologies then a few thousand years is not long enough. There should be little difference in the immunity of various populations across the world. This is another evidence of the age of mankind being much more than 6000 years. If we use contemporary archeological chronologies which are on the order of 20,000 years or longer, then we have a problem. The difference between the Nephite (600 BC) and Spanish (1500) immigration is not that much. I seriously doubt that 2000 years is very long.
I would make a case that once a population has extensive exposure to serious epidemic diseases over a few generations, it is going to select for resistance traits and they may not go away for a very long time. What is the selective pressure against resistance to a rarely encountered disease? Not much. And the diseases rarely just go away. (Short of a multi-billion dollar world-wide science -based campaign by the likes of the CDC over decades to eradicate small pox).
Many of these epidemic diseases became widespread following the agricultural revolution when human populations began to live with their animals in larger numbers over long spans of time instead of hunting and killing them quickly. The diseases had ample opportunity to jump across species. A population of Mongolians migrating north then east across the land bridge into Alaska and then south may have NEVER been exposed to the epidemic diseases of agricultural civilizations.
If a small group of immigrants from Palestine, where agriculture has been practiced longer than anywhere else, with their large number of severe diseases were to migrate to anywhere in the western hemisphere within a few hundred years of the birth of Christ, we would expect the native American population to be decimated much the same way it happened when the Spanish came only a short time later. And we would expect that the few survivors would have been able to pass down some of their natural immunity to the descendants who would have been able to muster greater resistance to the diseases of the Spanish invasion than was experienced. Considering the effect of old world disease on new world population decline makes the lack of Nephite DNA an even more glaring problem. Those elusive Nephites, they managed to not pass on any of their identifiable genes and also not infect anyone with their diseases and also not pass on any natural resistance to those diseases to their descendants in spite of mating with their native concubines often enough to explain the huge population size discrepancies.
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One might ask about the Vikings who lived in Newfoundland for a while around 1000 AD. Did they start large epidemics among native Americans? If not, why not? The answer I believe is that they probably were in smaller numbers and died off quickly or were otherwise killed before transmitting their diseases sufficiently to cause an epidemic. One might also consider that a few dozen Vikings lived in one place (maybe a couple of other places) for only a few years and the archeological record of their settlement is hundreds of times more convincing than the sum total archeological evidence for a Nephite/ Lamanite/Mulekite/ Jaredite civilization including millions of people over thousands of years across continents. And the time difference from the last Nephite to the Viking settlement is only 600 years.
To illustrate the magnitude of this discrepancy , the National Geographic magazine (in 2010) described DNA evidence that the Vikings took a single native American woman maybe as a child to Iceland and many of her bloodlines exist there today. And we can’t find the DNA of one of millions of the people described in the Book of Mormon with supposedly hundreds of millions of modern descendants? Just how ridiculous is this gonna get before the morning breaks and the shadows flee?
Mike, there have been some good books on the topic of the impact contact with Europeans had on Native American populations. Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” comes to mind, though it doesn’t focus on Native American populations, and I think some of Jared’s conclusions have been proven to be tenuous, but it’s still a good read on the topic.
Another great one, focused on the Americas before and after Columbus, is “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus”.
“Subjugated” isn’t a term Ugo would use. Ugo makes a point that Nephites likely didn’t come in like the Spaniards and take over. If it was more through love and conversion, and Nephites had perhaps technology (like writing in the case of Mulekites), they would have been welcomed as benevolent leaders (kind of like King Benjamin, although that’s my interpretation of Ugo’s words, not his exact words.)
“How long do populations have to be isolated to become vulnerable to these epidemic diseases?”
Mike I don’t know but Ugo says that Native Americans were separated from Asians for 15,000 years. We know that Europeans had big problems with Bubonic Plague, cholera, etc and if they brought those to a population unfamiliar with those diseases (which is what happened), the Native Americans would have had no immunity. The link in the OP shows Ugo is not a biblical literalist, and my next interview (link posted in comment to Cody) discusses Vikings.
Subjugated with the sword or bathed with love and conversion- it wouldn’t matter. They would still be exposed to the diseases. In fact you would probably have a lower risk if a vicious Spanish marauder infected with smoldering plague coughed on you once before hacking up about 10 of your fellow tribesmen as you ran off; in contrast to if a lovely soft Nephite maiden with smoldering plague frolicked with you in your hut for a couple of weeks while teaching you how to write and pray and repent.
Native Americans were separated from Asians for 15,000 years before the Spanish subjugation. This is a huge problem! This suggests the latest possible Nephite arrival to have been at around 13,500 BC. But the text of the Book of Mormon says Christ was born and there was a day-night-day with no darkness and it was 600 years since Lehi left Jerusalem. See 3 Nephi 1:1. That is nearly a 13,000 year discrepancy!
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You know, I used to be concerned by a 9 year discrepancy, over Zedekiah’s first year of reign when Lehi left Jerusalem and exactly 600 years up to the birth of Christ. Here is that complex argument:
1. The birth of Christ is now believed to be around 6 BC. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_birth_of_Jesus). The Romans being worshipers of the stars and keepers of accurate records documented many astrological events to which their history can be tied, down to the day in many cases by modern astronomers. (Beware of the Ides of March or March 15, 44 BC the assassination of Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman republic) Herod the Great, an important ruler described in Roman records and mentioned in the Christmas story by the evangelist gospels as being rather alive at the birth of Christ was in Roman records definitely dead by 4 BC.
This Herod ordered all the Jewish boys 2 years and younger killed. That is a pretty big waste of resources even if they were only slaves. I don’t think he would waste an extra year of newborn slaves and double his losses, whether they be slaves or horses or sheep, for no good reason. The birth of Christ cannot be directly dated with astrological clocks as it was not recorded by the Romans and linked to any events in the stars. But it was probably 6 BC and had to be no later than 4 BC. (Wiki article above describes two more Roman events mentioned by the evangelists in the gospels that tie the birth of Jesus to this time frame).
And to collaborate this time frame, Chinese astrologers recorded the appearance of a new star for a few months in 5 BC although this event is not included in Roman records that I have encountered. (second-handed of course). The new star could also be a myth or exaggeration of something else.
2. Zedekiah began his reign in 597 BC. The Babylonians also were star gazers and their records survive documenting this event although I have read that it could have been in 598 BC.
3. Doing the math: 597 minus 6 equals 591 years. I might be inclined to dismiss that small of a error, only 8-9 years. But the Book of Mormon is obsessed with dates; dozens of dates are given and a consistent chronology accurate to the year is possible for most of it. So that 9 year discrepancy is another problem.
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But now the discrepancy has grown to almost 13,000 years? I was straining at a 9 year gnat all these years but now I must swallow a 13,000 year camel?
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Never fear, out is trotted the idea that the land was not kept from the knowledge of other nations and not preserved from being over run by other nations (contradicting 2 Nephi 1:8 for one example). The land was filled by these ancient Asian immigrants for thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years, never clearly mentioned and contrary to numerous verses in the Book of Mormon and 150 years of modern prophetic exhortation and scholarship. And that is somehow a less faith-destroying solution to the problem?
Which is it? We can’t take what the modern prophets repeatedly say serious? Or we can’t take the restored scriptures serious?
The Nephites supposedly made these Asian women their concubines if not wives to the point that their population exploded. (Or maybe like Joseph Smith they didn’t really have sex with the natives, but just adopted them into their tribes.) Yet through it all, the entire 1000 year saga (with its exhausting hundreds of it-came-to-passes) they managed to not leave any of their DNA behind, and not spread any of their New World diseases around and not leave any natural immunity to these diseases behind either. One might easier swallow the camel than all of that. Prophets or scripture? We can’t take either one of them serious any more.
I don’t take the BoM to be historical, and I think there are a lot of good arguments against BoM historicity, but this argument about the disease they would have carried is not one that I favor. It isn’t unreasonable to me that one small group of people, after a long period of isolation, could be free of deadly diseases upon arrival in the new world, or that if they did bring disease it could die out a in a local isolated community without decimating the continental population. This is far different from the droves of colonists that brought livestock and agriculture in the 1400s.
Rockwell:
You are confusing the prevalence of these diseases in modern populations (and ubiquitous vaccination) with that in ancient populations. Before vaccination the majority of people living in endemic areas would be infected with many of these diseases. Some died, some developed a chronic infection which continued to be spread and some cleared the disease from their body. And there were not just couple of these diseases but several. More than half of children died from them.
So to humbly disagree with you, I find it hard to imagine that a group of at least 20 named adults most of child bearing age in Lehi’s group, along with however many Mulekites and the 8 boat loads of Jardites would fail to transmit even one infectious disease. We also have the problem of the population of Nephites/ Lamanites mushrooming into the thousands too quickly. I read once that Hugh Nibley explained this unaccounted population growth with the idea that perhaps hundreds if not thousands of people from Jerusalem came across with Lehi and his family. This explanation was before the DNA problem made it less reasonable. But what if it wasn’t only 20 people and children mentioned in the text? What if they brought other friends or servants and children making the number of immigrants higher?
I read a couple of articles about trying to isolated DNA from the gut flora of ancient mummified human remains. Even healthy people carry billions of bacteria of hundreds of species in our gut which get unintentionally passed from person to person and from mother to child during or after birth. If these populations of bacteria have specific DNA fingerprints then we will have yet another tool to trace human migrations. At this point I don’t think anyone has definitive results indicating population migration using this method. But it does point out that we are probably going to weather even more powerful hurricanes of evidence against the Book of Mormon in the future if it is not historically true . And if it is then it just might be verified.
Also, I failed to mention that even if the Nephites didn’t bring any of these severe epidemic diseases to the New World, they would still bring genetic resistance to these diseases and even if we can’t find markers of them in current DNA studies they still would have had far greater opportunity to pass down better resistant to the European diseases than was witnessed in the 1500’s when they died off like flies. The markers that Dr Perego and his associates study only number into the several dozen. But the immune response to an infection in a living person probably involves hundreds if not thousands of genes, some of their alleles would be more effective and inherited. Notice that today we are not seeing a continuation of the massive epidemic diseases among Native Americans because so many have acquired some European ancestry and suffered extreme selective pressures and now are partially resistant (and of course they also participate in vaccinations).
Not to mention all of the animals and plants mentioned in the Jaredite and Lehite journies – domesticated cattle, goats, wheat, etc. – none of which were indigenous to the Americas. They, too, had diseases they carried.
I swear Mike is severely obtuse. His rambling statements conflate facts into ridiculous diatribes that make zero scientific sense.