The Book of Mormon and the DNA
Some people say that DNA studies conclude that the Book of Mormon can’t be what it claims to be. This is based on the false premise that the Book of Mormon is the complete history of all people who lived in the Americas. Jill Larsen just posted a great blog about this topic at The Book of Mormon and DNA.
Jill’s blog explains that the Book of Mormon is only a partial history of a few specific groups of people in the Americas; the Book of Mormon shows that other peoples also inhabited the Americas at the same time. Therefore, the entire basis of the argument against the Book of Mormon is null and void. The Book of Mormon never claims to include the entire history of all inhabitants of the Americas.
For more information about the Book of Mormon and DNA, refer to:
- DNA and the Book of Mormon, L. A. Times
- DNA and the Book of Mormon, by David G. Stewart Jr.
- Does DNA Evidence Refute the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon? video by Dr. Michael F. Whiting
- Book of Mormon – DNA, from Journal of Book of Mormon Studies
- Addressing Questions surrounding the Book of Mormon and DNA Research, by John M. Butler
- The Book of Mormon, information from Mormon.org
- The Book of Mormon, information from Mormonwiki
Comments
One Response to The Book of Mormon and the DNA
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Doug Forbes on
Sat, 3rd Feb 2007 8:29 am
Back in 1996 Peter Underhill, a PhD from Stanford University calculated that the most recent common ancestor of most American Indians lived 2147 year ago. He used a mutation rate of 2.1 per 1000; a rate observed in living populations and a generation length of 27 years. He never believed this data and has been trying to explain this by developing an ‘effective’ mutation rate. [1]
The theory is that even though we see Y-chromosome mutations occurring at rates of 2.1 per 1000 (Weber & Wong) and even 2.8 per 1000 (Kayser) in living populations, mutations don’t accumulate that fast over thousands of years. Underhill and a colleague named Zhivotovsky came up with an ‘effective’ Y-chromosome mutation rate of about 0.7 per 1000. This was used in subsequent studies including one on Native Americans led by Zegura in 2004. [2]
Zegura calculated that a common male ancestor of Native Americans in the Q-M3 lineage lived between 10,000 and 17,000 years ago using the ‘effective’ mutation rate. Zegura also calculated that the Q-P36 lineage entered America in roughly the same time frame. In 2006 Underhill and Zhivotovsky, did more work and found that lineage extinction could explain why their ‘effective’ mutation rate was slower than observed rates by a factor of 3 or 4. [3]
However, in the same year (2006) another research team led by Brigitta Pakendorf, used Kayser’s rate of 2.8 per 1000 to calculate the date Yakuts migrated to northern Siberia. Pakendorf said, “… it has recently been proposed that ‘effective’ mutation rates (Zhivotovsky et al. 2004), which are not based on pedigree studies but on archaeologically calibrated migrations, may reflect the true historical processes better than pedigree rates. Using the average ‘effective’ rate of [0.69 per 1000] calculated by Zhivotovsky et al. (2004) results in a much greater age of the Yakut male expansion of approximately 3800 years … However, these older dates are inconsistent with linguistic and archaeological evidence: … the split of Yakut from Common Turkic cannot be earlier than 1,500 years BP.†(Pakendorf et al. 2006) [4]
So Kayser’s mutation rate works just fine in Siberia but when applied to American Indians, it yields a date between 2150 and 2750 for the most recent common ancestor; a date range clearly within Book of Mormon (BoM) times. Since Q-P36 is found in both Jews and American Indians, this represents strong evidence in favor of the BoM.
[1] Underhill et al, 1996, A pre-Columbian Y chromosome-specific transition and its implications for human evolutionary history , Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93, 196-200.
[2] Zegura et al, 2004, High-Resolution SNPs and Microsatellite Haplotypes Point to a Single, Recent Entry of Native American Y Chromosomes into the Americas.
[3] Zhivotovsky LA, Underhill PA, Feldman MW 2006 “Difference between evolutionarily effective and germ line mutation rate due to stochastically varying haplogroup size†| Molecular Biology and Evolution
[4] Brigitte Pakendorf et al. 2006 “Investigating the effects of prehistoric migrations in Siberia : genetic variation and the origins of Yakuts” | Hum Genet (2006) 120:334–353