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

[simon southerton]

And this is what brought me to ask this question. If DNA is being ‘replaced’, what does that process look like? I assumed that this was the action of reproducing within a large enough pool of individuals to end up seeing DNA from any given individual eventually being booted, for lack of a better way to put it. Which means that the Church presumably claims that all of the 3 early Mormon civilizations were so completely extinguished as to not be able to keep adding any DNA to the population pool. Hence the switch years ago regarding the origination claim about Native Americans, and Perego’s bind of trying to make this DNA question work somehow.

Where the apologists mislead people is claiming that a small population just gets absorbed and their DNA disappears. That's scientifically extremely unlikely, especially with autosomal DNA. With the Native American (Zenu from Colombia) DNA in Polynesia example I gave, that fraction of a percent of DNA may be derived from just one or a handful of Zenu who sailed back out into the Pacific on board Polynesian outrigger canoes. Its a scenario very similar to the Book of Mormon. But autosomal DNA detected the small amount of ancestry very easily and conclusively. I asked the author of the paper if they knew how many Zenu founders brought the DNA. He told me they don't have enough genomic DNA sequence to be able to answer that question conclusively. There was so little Zenu DNA they would need to sequence the DNA of several thousand more Polynesians from the islands with 4% Zenu DNA to figure out how many founders came across.

If Lehi's descendants intermarried with Native Americans they would pass Middle Eastern DNA to their offspring. Over the generations Middle Eastern DNA would spread further and further into the indigenous population. This spread of DNA would act to preserve Lehi's signal. Unless Middle Eastern DNA caused a higher rate of death in the population (extremely unlikely), it would be preserved in the local population.
It's pretty hard to argue for DNA extinction when the descendants of Lehi led massive New World civilisations for 1000 years. And this same weak argument must also be applied to the Jaredites and Mulekites.

What would be the odds of a group of Middle Easterners (1) sailing half way around the world, (2) building a major civilisation and mixing with local populations and then (2) their DNA going completely extinct? There has been no comparable migration, colonisation and extinction event in the history of the world. Lets assume the odds of this event occurring were 1 in 1000. I think that's being extremely generous. The odds of this happening three times would be 1 in 1000 x 1000 x 1000. Or 1 chance in 1 billion. And that's being extremely generous.

[The Before]

So the Book of Mormon isn't historical.

Problem solved.

[tapirrider]

Where the apologists mislead people is claiming that a small population just gets absorbed and their DNA disappears. That's scientifically extremely unlikely, especially with autosomal DNA. With the Native American (Zenu from Colombia) DNA in Polynesia example I gave, that fraction of a percent of DNA may be derived from just one or a handful of Zenu who sailed back out into the Pacific on board Polynesian outrigger canoes. Its a scenario very similar to the Book of Mormon. But autosomal DNA detected the small amount of ancestry very easily and conclusively. I asked the author of the paper if they knew how many Zenu founders brought the DNA. He told me they don't have enough genomic DNA sequence to be able to answer that question conclusively. There was so little Zenu DNA they would need to sequence the DNA of several thousand more Polynesians from the islands with 4% Zenu DNA to figure out how many founders came across.

If Lehi's descendants intermarried with Native Americans they would pass Middle Eastern DNA to their offspring. Over the generations Middle Eastern DNA would spread further and further into the indigenous population. This spread of DNA would act to preserve Lehi's signal. Unless Middle Eastern DNA caused a higher rate of death in the population (extremely unlikely), it would be preserved in the local population.
It's pretty hard to argue for DNA extinction when the descendants of Lehi led massive New World civilisations for 1000 years. And this same weak argument must also be applied to the Jaredites and Mulekites.

What would be the odds of a group of Middle Easterners (1) sailing half way around the world, (2) building a major civilisation and mixing with local populations and then (2) their DNA going completely extinct? There has been no comparable migration, colonisation and extinction event in the history of the world. Lets assume the odds of this event occurring were 1 in 1000. I think that's being extremely generous. The odds of this happening three times would be 1 in 1000 x 1000 x 1000. Or 1 chance in 1 billion. And that's being extremely generous.

Thank you for making things so clear.

[drumdude]

So the Book of Mormon isn't historical.

Problem solved.

I’m sure there are many non-Mormons who believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Dozens probably.

[Marcus]

So the Book of Mormon isn't historical.

Problem solved.

I’m sure there are many non-Mormons who believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Dozens probably.

Now there's a population where it is increasingly likely 0+ generations forward that there will exist no such belief at all.

[I Have Questions]

And this is what brought me to ask this question. If DNA is being ‘replaced’, what does that process look like? I assumed that this was the action of reproducing within a large enough pool of individuals to end up seeing DNA from any given individual eventually being booted, for lack of a better way to put it. Which means that the Church presumably claims that all of the 3 early Mormon civilizations were so completely extinguished as to not be able to keep adding any DNA to the population pool. Hence the switch years ago regarding the origination claim about Native Americans, and Perego’s bind of trying to make this DNA question work somehow.

Where the apologists mislead people is claiming that a small population just gets absorbed and their DNA disappears. That's scientifically extremely unlikely, especially with autosomal DNA. With the Native American (Zenu from Colombia) DNA in Polynesia example I gave, that fraction of a percent of DNA may be derived from just one or a handful of Zenu who sailed back out into the Pacific on board Polynesian outrigger canoes. Its a scenario very similar to the Book of Mormon. But autosomal DNA detected the small amount of ancestry very easily and conclusively. I asked the author of the paper if they knew how many Zenu founders brought the DNA. He told me they don't have enough genomic DNA sequence to be able to answer that question conclusively. There was so little Zenu DNA they would need to sequence the DNA of several thousand more Polynesians from the islands with 4% Zenu DNA to figure out how many founders came across.

If Lehi's descendants intermarried with Native Americans they would pass Middle Eastern DNA to their offspring. Over the generations Middle Eastern DNA would spread further and further into the indigenous population. This spread of DNA would act to preserve Lehi's signal. Unless Middle Eastern DNA caused a higher rate of death in the population (extremely unlikely), it would be preserved in the local population.
It's pretty hard to argue for DNA extinction when the descendants of Lehi led massive New World civilisations for 1000 years. And this same weak argument must also be applied to the Jaredites and Mulekites.

What would be the odds of a group of Middle Easterners (1) sailing half way around the world, (2) building a major civilisation and mixing with local populations and then (2) their DNA going completely extinct? There has been no comparable migration, colonisation and extinction event in the history of the world. Lets assume the odds of this event occurring were 1 in 1000. I think that's being extremely generous. The odds of this happening three times would be 1 in 1000 x 1000 x 1000. Or 1 chance in 1 billion. And that's being extremely generous.

Are we able to know/speculate clearly what Lamanite etc DNA we should expect to find in their ancestors living at this stage of earth’s history if they were a real people living in the Americas at the time the Book of Mormon states they were, and in the reported quantities that the book claims? Is there a comparable population who were living in the Americas at that same time for whom the DNA record is still showing up in today’s ancestors?

The apologists have wandered into DNA in an effort to answer the “numbers” problem within the Book of Mormon. That is, for the population numbers within the Book of Mormon to work there must needs be an indigenous population added in. By solving that problem they’ve created the DNA problem. Perhaps it would have been better sticking with the Lamanites etc as isolated populations who didn’t interact with others. Their eradication in the Book of Mormon then removes the DNA problem (because they never interbred with native populations) and just leaves them with silly population numbers to spin away. These apologetics, in my opinion, make the Church look worse, not better.

[Limnor]

I’m sure there are many non-Mormons who believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Dozens probably.

Now there's a population where it is increasingly likely 0+ generations forward that there will exist no such belief at all.

Maybe the haplogroups took a detour through Nahom on the way to Zarahemla and came out Native American.