A brief history of the lies of Ugo Perego: the author of the Church’s Book of Mormon and DNA Studies essay.

[simon southerton]

During the last 70 years the historicity of the Book of Mormon has come under sustained attack because of advances in science. Mormon apologists, John Sorenson and Ugo Perego, have played a major role in defending the book in the face of this onslaught. But only one of them has wilfully lied in their apologetics.

John Sorenson was the leading defender of the Book of Mormon for half a century. He was also Professor of Anthropology at BYU for many years. But Sorenson was an academic nobody in the anthropology community outside of BYU. His publication record in peer-reviewed academic journal is virtually non-existent. Sorenson was first and foremost an apologist. He may not have been right, but he was consistent.

When DNA arrived, Ugo Perego became the leading apologetic authority on DNA and the Book of Mormon, and he was the principal author of the Church’s 2016 DNA essay. Unlike Sorenson, Ugo Perego has an impressive academic record. He has published over 30 scientific papers in the field of human population genetics, many in leading scientific journals. He is an authority on the ancestral origins of Native American mitochondrial DNA lineages.

But over the last 15 years I have noticed a disturbing trend in Perego’s apologetics. He says one thing for a scientific audience, and something completely different when he is writing for ordinary Mormons. Perego fully accepts humans first evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago and that Native Americans first entered the Americas over 20,000 years ago and are descended from Asians.[1] Clearly, Ugo Perego does not believe Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden in Missouri just 6,000 years ago, or that there was a global flood 4,500 years ago. But when Ugo is speaking to regular Mormons, especially in the DNA essay, he not only conceals these beliefs, he deliberately misleads.

Here are some examples of the duplicitous work of Perego.

1. Claimed Lehi’s mtDNA could be one of the five Native American founding lineages
In 2014 in the shoddy Interpreter magazine, Ugo Perego, claimed “It is possible that the DNA of Lehi’s group is one of the most prominent lineages in the American continent but that we do not recognize it as such due to lacking knowledge of their mtDNA profile.”[2]
By the time this claim was made, Perego knew for a fact that all 5 mitochondrial DNA lineages (A, B, C, D and X) found in Native Americans had been in the Americas for close to 20,000 years. Perego’s own research from as early as 2009 helped demonstrate that fact.[3] There are no other prominent lineages. You simply cannot reconcile his scientific and apologetic writing. He knew the claim he was making in Interpreter was false.

2. Fuelled the false X lineage lies of Rodney Meldrum
Most Mormons have heard the false X lineage claims that Rodney Meldrum makes. But few would be aware that Ugo Perego’s own speculation about the origin of the X lineage once fanned the flames of these false claims. In a 2011 BYU publication[4] Perego went to great lengths to point out the absence of the X lineage in Asia and its presence among the Druze near Israel. He also claimed there was uncertainty about the accuracy of the molecular clock used to date mitochondrial DNA. These are now Rodney Meldrum’s main arguments for his spurious X lineage claims.

In 2009 Ugo Perego knew that the X lineage had been in the Americas for just as long as the A, B, C and D lineages (about 15-17,000 years). So why was Perego even hinting at the possibility the X lineage could possibly be evidence to support the Book of Mormon? Perego knew the presence of the X lineage predated the Book of Mormon by well over 10,000 years. He only publicly changed his tune after the X lineage was discovered in the 9,000-year-old remains of the Ancient One (Kennewick Man) in 2015.

3. Promoted idea that one third of Native American DNA came from Europe or West Asia.
In the Church’s DNA Essay, Perego wrote “as much as one-third of Native American DNA may have originated anciently in Europe or West Asia.” The claim is based on a 2013 discovery by Raghaven that one third of the DNA of a 24,000-year-old Siberian child originated in West Asia or Europe[5]. While Perego clarifies in the essay that this ancestry reflects migrations across Asia “millennia before the events described in the Book of Mormon”, most uneducated readers will assume this could be evidence for a Near Eastern contribution to Native American ancestry.

Perego knows the Raghaven paper makes perfect sense in the context of humans colonising Europe and West Asia over 40,000 years ago and then migrating into Asia 30,000 years ago. Perego knows perfectly well this paper is irrelevant to the ancestry of Book of Mormon people, so why even mention it? He includes the reference to prop up faith, even though he knows it provides no evidence for the Book of Mormon.

4. Suggests Lehi’s DNA may be Asian rather than Jewish
In the Church’s DNA Essay, Perego suggests that Lehi’s genetic lineage may be atypical of the Near East, thus hinting at the possibility that his DNA may in fact be Asian. This is utter nonsense. The canonized title page of the Book of Mormon says it was “Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel. The Book of Mormon text describes Lehi as Jewish, ‘a descendant of Manasseh, who was the son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt’ (Alma 10:3). Lehi’s DNA was undoubtedly Jewish.

5. Panders to Creationist views in the Church
In the Church’s DNA essay, Perego is deliberately vague about how long Native Americans have lived on the American continent. He says “Scientists theorize” the migration to America occurred “in an era that predated Book of Mormon accounts”. Perego knows many Mormons believe all people alive today are descended from the family of Noah who stepped off the ark after the universal Flood 4,500 years ago.

Yet, from his own research Perego knows humans have lived continuously on the Eurasian continent for at least 40,000 years and in the New World for about 20,000 years. He uses vague wording in the essay so as not to offend countless members who hold Creationist beliefs.

6. Undermining the power of autosomal DNA
Perego’s area of expertise is mitochondrial DNA, not autosomal DNA. He has repeatedly tried to downplay the power of autosomal DNA studies to trace human ancestry. He has claimed that a person’s genome only retains DNA from about 12 percent of their 1,024 genealogical ancestors at ten generations[6] and “It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA in your genome at all from many of your ancestors in that generation.”[7] The first claim is false and the second claim is misleading. According to distinguished Harvard professor David Reich, who discovered Denisovan DNA, we are likely to carry DNA from about 500 of our 10th generation ancestors and from all 64 of our 6th generation ancestors.[8]

Perego focusses attention on the loss of autosomal DNA while overlooking that we lose over 99.9% of our ancestor’s mitochondrial DNA over the same 10 generations! We only carry mitochondrial DNA from 1 of our tenth-generation ancestors. On this metric alone autosomal DNA is 500 times more powerful than mitochondrial DNA. Perego’s 12% figure comes from speculative numbers spread around the internet by DNA genealogy influencers, and is not grounded in fact.

7. Claims mitochondrial DNA is better than autosomal DNA for tracing deep human ancestry
In 2025 Perego claimed mitochondrial DNA is better suited for “making ‘long-distance’ associations into the deep levels of generational inheritance” because recombination “complicates attempts to trace genetic signals back through the generations because one parent’s signal gets merged with the other parent’s”.[9] No modern geneticists would agree with these assessments. He also asserts that natural selection and genetic drift (bottleneck and founder effects) can often lead to autosomal DNA signals being lost. However, mitochondrial DNA is far more susceptible to extinction due to these forces than autosomal DNA, largely because recombination allows autosomal DNA variants to spread much further within populations.[10]

Perego is plainly being dishonest with his Mormon audience. In a paper he coauthored with John Lindo in 2017 he has acknowledged the superiority of autosomal DNA in population genomic studies.[11] Mitochondrial DNA analysis had previously suggested significant population replacement or external gene flow in Pacific Northwest populations during the last 10,300 years. However, analysis of autosomal DNA from four ancient individuals revealed the population had been relatively stable over that period.

There are many examples of the extraordinary power of autosomal DNA research to shed new light on “deep levels of generational inheritance”. Whole genome studies have revealed our Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry[12], traces of the DNA of Iberian Jews throughout Central and South America[13] and minute traces of Indigenous American (Zenu) DNA scattered across several Eastern Polynesian islands.[14]

8. Falsely claims that I deliberately hurt Scott Woodward’s career at BYU
When I was struggling with the DNA evidence in 1998, I briefly corresponded via email with BYU Professor Scott R. Woodward. Scott told me he had tested the mitochondrial DNA of about 5,500 Native Americans from Peru and found that 98% were derived from Asia. He defended the Book of Mormon on the basis of the Limited Geography Theory that was accepted by some scholars at BYU. A few months later I shared this correspondence with an Area leader who had requested a copy.

In 2003 President Gordon B. Hinckley personally intervened to shut down Scott Woodward’s entire research program at BYU and Scott lost his full professorship. He was deeply hurt by this. On a FAIR blog created in 2009, Ugo Perego, who worked with Woodward at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (now closed), made the following false claim.
“Woodward’s emails from 1998 were eventually edited by Southerton and forwarded to LDS Church leaders in Utah, with the objective of hurting Woodward’s teaching position at BYU. This event greatly upset Woodward.”[15]

Given Ugo Perego’s track record of lying to protect the church, it is easy to see what really happened. The only person to blame for Scott’s removal from BYU was the prophet of the church. President Hinkley clearly didn’t want researchers at his university uncovering evidence against the Book of Mormon. So he personally intervened to close Scott’s research group and move it off campus into the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, an organisation funded by James Sorenson, a close friend of President Hinkley’s.

Conclusion
There is a very disturbing and consistent pattern in Ugo Perego’s work. He frequently says one thing in a scientific setting and the complete opposite in a Mormon setting. Perego is an apologetic chameleon. He has demonstrated over the last 15 years that he is prepared to sacrifice his scientific and personal integrity on the altar of Mormon apologetics. Ugo Perego is quite prepared to lie for the church.

Simon Southerton

References
[1] Ugo A. Perego, “The Book of Mormon and the Origin of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 171–217. https://rsc.BYU.edu/no-weapon-shall-pro ... standpoint
[2] Ugo A. Perego and Jayne E. Ekins, “Is Decrypting the Genetic Legacy of America’s Indigenous
Populations Key to the Historicity of the Book of Mormon?” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 12 (2014): 237-279. https://scholarsarchive.BYU.edu/cgi/vie ... nterpreter
[3] Perego, Ugo A., Alessandro Achilli, Natalie Angerhofer, Matteo Accetturo, et al. 2009. "Distinctive Paleo-Indian Migration Routes from Beringia Marked by Two Rare mtDNA Haplogroups." Current Biology 19 (1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.11.058.
[4] Ugo A. Perego, “The Book of Mormon and the Origin of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 171–217.
[5] Raghavan M, Skoglund P, Graf KE, Metspalu M, et al. Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans. Nature. 2014 Jan 2;505(7481):87-91. doi: 10.1038/nature12736. Epub 2013 Nov 20. PMID: 24256729; PMCID: PMC4105016.
[6] Perego, Ugo A. 2016. "Finding Lehi in America Through DNA Analysis." In A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History, edited by Laura Harris Hales, 173–89. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book. https://rsc.BYU.edu/reason-faith/findin ... a-analysis
[7] Butler, John M., and Ugo A. Perego. 2025. Let's Talk about Misconceptions with DNA and the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company. https://www.deseretbook.com/product/605 ... ZzTrBXU48k
[8] Reich, David Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past Oxford University Press UK, 2018. https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/publication ... human-past. See also: https://gcbias.org/2013/11/11/how-does- ... over-time/
[9] Butler, John M., and Ugo A. Perego. 2025. Let's Talk about Misconceptions with DNA and the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company. https://www.deseretbook.com/product/605 ... ZzTrBXU48k
[10] Hagelberg E, Hofreiter M, Keyser C. Introduction. Ancient DNA: the first three decades. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 Jan 19;370(1660):20130371. https://doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0371. PMID: 25487324; PMCID: PMC4275880.
[11] Lindo J, Achilli A, Perego United Airlines, Archer D, et al. Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Apr 18;114(16):4093-4098. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1620410114. Epub 2017 Apr 4. PMID: 28377518; PMCID: PMC5402414.
[12] Nielsen R, Akey JM, Jakobsson M, Pritchard Jenn Kamp, Tishkoff S, Willerslev E. Tracing the peopling of the world through genomics. Nature. 2017 Jan 18;541(7637):302-310. doi: 10.1038/nature21347. PMID: 28102248; PMCID: PMC5772775.
[13] Chacón-Duque JC, Adhikari K, Fuentes-Guajardo M, Mendoza-Revilla Jet al. Latin Americans show wide-spread Converso ancestry and imprint of local Native ancestry on physical appearance. Nat Commun. 2018 Dec 19;9(1):5388. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07748-z. PMID: 30568240; PMCID: PMC6300600.
[14] Ioannidis AG, Blanco-Portillo J, Sandoval K, Hagelberg E, et al. Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Nature. 2020 Jul;583(7817):572-577. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2. Epub 2020 Jul 8. PMID: 32641827; PMCID: PMC8939867.
[15] https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blo ... -lamanites

[drumdude]

Mormon apologists have retreated into parallel-o-mania since all of the evidence refutes the idea of a historical Book of Mormon.

The Mormon hypothesis has no explanatory value. The Book of Mormon isn’t used as a guide to the pre Colombian Americas because it is at odds with all of the evidence. The Book of Mormon is as useful for understanding the ancient Americas as The Hunger Games is for understanding the American Appalachian culture.

[Gadianton]

Thanks for this summary Simon, you ought to publish this in Interpreter.

It's truly next level to make the claim "scientists have been wrong before" (like you-know-who does) but in this case he himself is the scientist making the claim that he says "might be wrong"! They aren't a savvy science bunch over at SeN, but as you point out, Dr. Perego knows better by his own publication record. I had no idea Sorenson was so "overlooked" and then, the LGT wasn't even original. What a pat on the back that would have been if the Ziggurat would have been built with a fancy office for him.

Saying that you were responsible for that professor getting the shaft is absurd, and this is the same kind of nonsense that goes on in right-wing politics. "Who has been misleading our president" because they can't own the president would do something they disagree with.

If I write to the prophet and lie about some professor at BYU having a research program contrary to the church's teachings the professor will get immediately fired right?

[Dr. Shades]

This is MASTERFUL, Dr. Southerton. Thank you so much for posting it for us!!

[Dr Moore]

Thank you, Simon. Some of these issues might not otherwise have seen the light of day. The devil is in the details, as they say.

I think we all appreciate that Ugo is following the example of church leaders when he tells lies for the kingdom. I mean, look no further back than 2023 when the SEC settlement showed the world that the first presidency encouraged routine acts of criminal perjury in service of a scheme to hide church wealth. I learned through some little birdies that when the SEC began investigating their scheme, every investment professional at Ensign Peak was required to retain their own, separate criminal legal counsel. It was well understood they had broken the law and that the perjury committed was criminal. The settlement saved not only the church and Ensign Peak from fines, criminal charges and sanctions, but dozens of complicit working professionals as well. Anyway, the lying is not surprising to see here. What is surprising, or maybe entertaining is the appropriate word for me at this point, is the level of creativity involved in crafting his chosen acts of professional perjury. He didn’t make mistakes or word something wrong. The confusion his writings cause isn’t accidental or innocent. He chose to deceive.

[The Before]

I think there are some fair questions here about how Ugo Perego has presented the genetic evidence, and I don’t think Latter-day Saints should be afraid of examining those questions carefully. If Perego has made scientific claims that are inaccurate or outdated, they should be corrected.

Where I think this goes too far is the repeated conclusion that Perego is lying. A lie isn’t simply a statement we think is wrong, misleading, poorly qualified, or apologetically motivated. It requires knowing that a claim is false and deliberately presenting it as true. That is a much harder case to establish than showing that two statements appear to be in tension.

For example, saying that Lehi’s lineage could theoretically fall within a lineage already present in the Americas is not the same as claiming that one of the founding Native American haplogroups originated with Lehi. If a lineage existed thousands of years before Lehi, that obviously means the lineage itself cannot be evidence for Lehi. But a later immigrant could still possess that same broad haplogroup. Whether that possibility is useful apologetically is another question.

Likewise, the ancient West Eurasian ancestry found in Native Americans isn’t evidence for the Book of Mormon, and the Church’s essay actually acknowledges that this ancestry entered the Native American gene pool thousands of years before Book of Mormon times. We can debate whether mentioning it was helpful or potentially confusing, but that seems different from concealing what the science says.

I also wouldn’t say that the Book of Mormon requires Lehi to have a uniquely identifiable “Jewish” genetic signature. The text gives Lehi an Israelite ancestry, but ancient Israelites were populations, not genetically uniform categories, and genealogy and genetic inheritance aren’t interchangeable. After thousands of years, identifying the DNA of one particular Israelite family would be an extraordinarily difficult proposition.

There are also worthwhile technical questions here about mtDNA versus autosomal DNA. Autosomal DNA is enormously powerful for reconstructing ancient population history, while mtDNA has particular advantages because it follows a single maternal lineage without recombination. Neither observation makes the other marker universally “better.” I would want to read Perego’s statements in their full context before concluding that he was deliberately misrepresenting population genetics.

More broadly, I don’t think the scientific evidence presently demonstrates that Native Americans generally descend from Book of Mormon peoples. The overwhelming evidence places the principal ancestry of Indigenous Americans in populations that entered the Americas thousands of years before the Book of Mormon period. A responsible LDS position should simply acknowledge that.

The narrower historical model defended by many LDS scholars makes a different claim: that a relatively small Near Eastern population could have entered an already populated hemisphere and eventually left little or no clearly identifiable genetic signal. That proposition shouldn’t be confused with positive genetic evidence for the Book of Mormon. It is an argument about what the existing genetic evidence can and cannot exclude.

So I think you raise questions worth discussing, and some of your scientific criticisms may well deserve serious engagement. But I would separate those questions from accusations about another person’s integrity. Showing that Perego was mistaken, inconsistent, overly apologetic, or insufficiently clear would be one thing. Demonstrating that he knowingly lied is another, and I don’t think the examples presented here establish that conclusion by themselves.

I’d rather discuss the strongest scientific arguments on their merits without assuming bad faith on either side.

During the last 70 years the historicity of the Book of Mormon has come under sustained attack because of advances in science. …https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blo ... -lamanites

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Thanks, Simon, for the devastating critique. Watching Ugo once again perform Olympic level mental gymnastics to lie and misrepresent the facts never gets old. You genuinely couldn't script this kind of absurdity.

[Physics Guy]

A lie isn’t simply a statement we think is wrong, misleading, poorly qualified, or apologetically motivated. It requires knowing that a claim is false and deliberately presenting it as true. That is a much harder case to establish than showing that two statements appear to be in tension.

That’s true, but Southerton is not just showing “tension” or assuming bad faith. He’s pointing out contradictions between Perego’s Mormon and secular publications. He’s claiming to have made that harder case.

Are the contradictions somehow not really there? This is a technical point in Southerton’s professional field. Conceivably he could be wrong, but his accusations can’t be dismissed with generalities about assuming good faith and allowing tension. Perego either contradicted himself or did not. The only defense is to show that Perego’s technical statements don’t actually contradict each other as Southerton says they do.

[Rivendale]

Thank you, Simon. Some of these issues might not otherwise have seen the light of day. The devil is in the details, as they say.

I think we all appreciate that Ugo is following the example of church leaders when he tells lies for the kingdom. I mean, look no further back than 2023 when the SEC settlement showed the world that the first presidency encouraged routine acts of criminal perjury in service of a scheme to hide church wealth. I learned through some little birdies that when the SEC began investigating their scheme, every investment professional at Ensign Peak was required to retain their own, separate criminal legal counsel. It was well understood they had broken the law and that the perjury committed was criminal. The settlement saved not only the church and Ensign Peak from fines, criminal charges and sanctions, but dozens of complicit working professionals as well. Anyway, the lying is not surprising to see here. What is surprising, or maybe entertaining is the appropriate word for me at this point, is the level of creativity involved in crafting his chosen acts of professional perjury. He didn’t make mistakes or word something wrong. The confusion his writings cause isn’t accidental or innocent. He chose to deceive.

This is incredible. If I remember correctly two professionals either refused to sign the forms for the clone companies or they left voluntarily. That means the rest are okay with the church asking them to personally lawyer up. That is what Mormonism does to a person's sensibility.

[The Before]

That’s true, but Southerton is not just showing “tension” or assuming bad faith. He’s pointing out contradictions between Perego’s Mormon and secular publications. He’s claiming to have made that harder case.

Are the contradictions somehow not really there? This is a technical point in Southerton’s professional field. Conceivably he could be wrong, but his accusations can’t be dismissed with generalities about assuming good faith and allowing tension. Perego either contradicted himself or did not. The only defense is to show that Perego’s technical statements don’t actually contradict each other as Southerton says they do.

I think that’s fair. If Southerton can demonstrate genuine contradictions between Perego’s secular scientific publications and his apologetic statements, then those contradictions need to be addressed on their technical merits. I don’t think an appeal to charity or good faith makes a contradiction disappear.

My point is narrower: establishing a contradiction still isn’t identical to establishing a lie. The sequence would have to be something like:

1. Perego says P in his scientific work.
2. Perego says Q in an apologetic context.
3. P and Q actually contradict one another, rather than addressing different questions or using terms differently.
4. Perego knew that Q was false or incompatible with what he knew to be true when he represented Q as true.

If Southerton establishes all of that, then the accusation of dishonesty has real force. But steps 3 and 4 can’t simply be inferred from the fact that Southerton, even as an expert in the field, says there is a contradiction.

So I agree that the useful next step is to get specific. What do you regard as the clearest example where Perego’s secular publication says one thing and his apologetic publication says something technically incompatible with it? Let’s compare the actual statements in context. If the contradiction is really there, I’m happy to acknowledge it.