Book Summary:
The Book of Mormon narrates voyages to the Americas by ancient Israelites. "2 Nephi 1:9 Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; [The Americas] and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves" The descendants of these ancient seafarers are said to be the tribes of Native Americans who were on hand to greet Columbus, the Spanish Conquistadors, and the Pilgrims. Israelites are also said to be the ancestors of the Polynesians. Enter DNA. With the advent of molecular genealogy, scientists now have a tool to test hypotheses about Indian origins, previously based on skull shapes, blood types, linguistics, and cultural studies. By means of DNA genealogy, Native Americans have been traced to an area surrounding Lake Baikal in Siberia before their migration to the New World over 14,000 years ago. The evidence is definitive and unequivocal. What do Latter-day Saint scientists have to say about this? Is it possible that a few, not all, Native Americans could be of Israelite origin? Could Polynesians represent an admixture of Southeast Asian and Israelite heritage? Professors at Brigham Young University are proposing a radical new reinterpretation of the Book of Mormon to accommodate this new field of science. Explaining the scientific and theological issues in this debate is Dr. Simon Southerton, a molecular geneticist from Australia. He particularly responds to the issues raised by the BYU professors such as the implications of the mysterious lineage X, absent in Mesoamerica, and supposed anomalies in the genetic picture such as Kennewick Man and even the genetic history of the lowly sweet potato. Having been raised Mormon, Southerton knows the theological side of the issue as intimately as he knows the science. |