To be clear, the Book of Mormon tells us that the Americas were not populated and had been preserved for these chosen people. God tells Nephi the following:

"it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance...and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves" (2 Nephi 1:8-9)

God told the Jaredites that he would send them to “that quarter where there never had man been,” to a land of promise “reserved for a righteous people.” (Ether 2:5-7). As a small aside, here Ether is actually referencing the apocryphal book of II Esdras, written about 2000 years after the Jaredite story, which used this phrase to describe the destination of the Ten Tribes. (2 Esdras 13:41) The book of Esdras was in the 1769 version of the King James Bible, which also happens to be the version that Joseph Smith owned when producing the Book of Mormon.

Helaman makes it even more clear, telling us that the original population was responsible for populating the entire Americas:

“And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east” (Helaman 3:8)

It becomes quite inescapable when reading these passages that they are intentionally not leaving any room for additional, larger populations that would be responsible for effectively negating the DNA of Lehi and his descendents.

Let’s go a bit further in looking at what the Book of Mormon does tell us. From 1 Nephi:

“And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men.” (1 Nephi 18:25)

Again, if there were established civilizations in the Americas, they would mention them. Ignoring the anachronisms in the animals that the Book of Mormon lists here for now, if there were buildings, structures, or roads, the Book of Mormon would mention them. The only reason to argue otherwise is out of necessity to find a way to make the Book of Mormon’s problems go away.

Looking beyond the Book of Mormon, here is Joseph Smith’s description of how the Americas were populated in the Wentworth Letter:

“In this important and interesting book the history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country.” (The Wentworth Letter, Ensign, July, 2002)

That is incredibly straightforward and matches the Book of Mormon exactly as you would expect it to. I am just not sure how else to put it – the Book of Mormon and the prophets who claimed to receive revelation from God all tell us that the Native Americans were the descendents of the Lamanites. Here are just a few examples that Joseph Smith recorded as revelation from God:

D&C 54:8  And thus you shall take your journey into the regions westward, unto the land of Missouri, unto the borders of the Lamanites.

D&C 19:27 Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.

D&C 3:18  And this testimony shall come to the knowledge of the Lamanites, and the Lemuelites, and the Ishmaelites, who dwindle in unbelief because of the iniquity of their fathers

D&C 28:8 And now, behold, I say unto you that you shall go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them

When you read these revelations (and there are others beyond these four examples that we will cover below), it becomes clear that Joseph Smith was being told by God that the Lamanites were the Native Americans in Missouri. This is inescapable, and we now know those Native Americans have absolutely nothing to do with Book of Mormon lineage. It simply does not get much clearer than this – the revelations that Joseph Smith claimed were from God are wrong.

The church has released videos telling Native Americans and Polynesians that they are Lamanites such as the video called People of Destiny released in 1988, which is stealing their actual, rich history from them, and even told them their skin will turn “white and delightsome” if they join the church and remain faithful. We will cover the issue of racism later in these overviews, but it just further shows that the church’s prophets believed without hesitation that God revealed to them who the descendents of the Lamanites are.

But don’t take my word for it. From Apostle Mark E. Petersen:

"If there had been large numbers of other peoples here when the Jaredites came, or when Lehi arrived, certainly the Book of Mormon would have said so. The land was reserved for the Lord’s purposes and for His peoples, and the Book of Mormon provides their histories." (Children of Promise, Bookcraft, 1981).

This is a claim that both the Book of Mormon and all of the church’s prophets, seers, and revelators have made, and we are now able to test this theory using archaeology, migration studies, and DNA. It is undeniable that the Book of Mormon’s claims are simply not true. Not only are the Native Americans completely unrelated to the story of the Lamanites, but they arrived tens of thousands of years prior to the Book of Mormon.

As we talked about in the biblical scholarship sections, not only does the Book of Mormon’s claims of being a historical record fall apart when we look at the Tower of Babel or global flood stories, but the Book of Mormon’s own claims simply cannot hold up to the evidence we now have.

Apologetic Response to the DNA Problem:

Because I believe this is such a cut and dry problem that completely undercuts the entire premise of the Book of Mormon, I want to spend more time on the apologetic responses because I want to show that they simply do not hold up to scrutiny. While many want you to believe that you can’t possibly understand DNA and therefore shouldn’t worry about it, I want to show you that our brains can understand it, and can understand why it shows that the Book of Mormon is not a true, historical record.

I want to focus mainly on the church’s essay on DNA, because that was approved by the First Presidency, but I’ll also briefly cover another commonly cited response as well at the end.

What the church has done in the last few decades is to effectively rewrite the Book of Mormon, telling members that the science is tentative and that there were other populations when Lehi arrived. Both of these do not hold up to the evidence, and that’s what we want to cover here.

From the church’s essay:

“Basic principles of population genetics suggest the need for a more careful approach to the data. The conclusions of genetics, like those of any science, are tentative, and much work remains to be done to fully understand the origins of the native populations of the Americas. Nothing is known about the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples”

First, as I mentioned above the essay continues to use words that are designed to put doubt into the reader with regards to what science can tell us. In this section they tell the member that they need a “more careful approach” that aligns with the church’s views, and that the science is “tentative” about what it can and cannot tell us. This goes against what any non-LDS geneticist will tell you. The idea that DNA is a settled science is of course never going to be 100% true, but as geneticist Jamie Hanis Handy, a member of the church, said:

“If you're looking at DNA and Book of Mormon and the ethnic long term history of indigenous populations, the picture is just like watching a photo load, right? It starts blurry, it starts to get clearer, it starts to get clearer, and we are just getting clearer and it [the church’s claim about Lamanites] is still not jiving.” (Mormon Stories, Three Geneticists Respond to DNA Essay)  

This is the problem for the apologetic claims seeking to push aside DNA evidence – the technology is getting better every day, and as the picture becomes more clear there is not only no major changes in the current views, but the new evidence is further pushing out any possibility of the Book of Mormon as a historical text.

Other People Living Alongside the Book of Mormon Populations

The most common apologetic as scientific advances have made clear that the Native Americans and Polynesians have no connection to the Book of Mormon narrative is to state that there were other populations that lived alongside the Book of Mormon populations. From their essay:

“The Book of Mormon provides little direct information about cultural contact between the peoples it describes and others who may have lived nearby. Consequently, most early Latter-day Saints assumed that Near Easterners or West Asians like Jared, Lehi, Mulek, and their companions were the first or the largest or even the only groups to settle the Americas. Building upon this assumption, critics insist that the Book of Mormon does not allow for the presence of other large populations in the Americas and that, therefore, Near Eastern DNA should be easily identifiable among modern native groups.”

The reason that the Book of Mormon provides “little direct information about cultural contact between the peoples it describes and others who may have lived nearby” is because there is none. Any why would anyone expect there to be any information such as that when it was meant to be clear that the Book of Mormon’s Lamanites were the ancestors of the Native Americans.
Understanding the Basics of DNA

First I want to state that I highly recommend listening to the Mormon Stories episode called “Three Geneticists Respond to the LDS Essay on DNA and the Book of Mormon,” because it is a discussion between three geneticists with one of them being a former member and another a current member.

The reason that podcast is so important is because they both understand and can explain what the church states in their essay, which is to imply that DNA is just too confusing and difficult for members to understand, so that it’s not something we should be worried about. It is about 90 minutes long, and if you listen to it at 1.5x it will just be an hour that you’ll be glad you spent understanding this topic.

From the church’s essay:

“A brief review of the basic principles of genetics will help explain how scientists use DNA to study ancient populations. It will also highlight the difficulty of drawing conclusions about the Book of Mormon from the study of genetics.”

Right away the church is telling you that DNA is too complicated to be able to draw conclusions about the implications for the Book of Mormon. Much of their essay about DNA itself is well written, but is framed as an overview for members to give reasons why there’s still an outside chance the Book of Mormon can still be historical.

Our annotated essay on DNA and the Book of Mormon includes the following example, which is exaggerated and silly on purpose:

 

“Let’s imagine that the senior director of NASA once claimed that the moon is made of green cheese, but when astronauts landed they found none. The obvious conclusion would be that the moon is not, nor ever was made of green cheese. Now suppose NASA hired some lunar apologists to write an essay to explain away the embarrassing discrepancy.

This essay would consist of a series of convoluted explanations and arguments about how, although today we know the moon is made of minerals, we should nevertheless give credence to the director’s authoritative claim that the moon’s chemistry was once predominated by dairy products. They would then proceed to give you several hypotheses about how the cheese might have transmuted into something else or otherwise disappeared.

They would use some sciency talk to help you feel comfortable that people smarter than you are on top of the cheese problem and that, if you just change your expectations about what the NASA director actually meant by “green” and “cheese” you will be able to satisfy yourself that the complete absence of cheese is somehow just what the really smart people should have been expecting all along, and that you should let your personal feelings inform your belief about the long ago presence of moon cheese. You might even be shamed for naively expecting to find cheese on the moon today, and criticized for lacking the faith to believe it really was there when the director made the claim.”

Again, this example is meant to be over the top, but it is exactly what the church does with their essays, because they are aware enough that the evidence is so overwhelmingly against them that they changed the introduction to the Book of Mormon.

From the essay:

“At the present time, scientific consensus holds that the vast majority of Native Americans belong to sub-branches of the Y-chromosome haplogroups C and Q14 and the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups A, B, C, D, and X, all of which are predominantly East Asian.15 [This endnote merely confirms that Native Americans arrived from Siberia and populated the New World long before Book of Mormon times] But the picture is not entirely clear. Continuing studies provide new insights, and some challenge previous conclusions. For example, a 2013 study states that as much as one-third of Native American DNA originated anciently in Europe or West Asia and was likely introduced into the gene pool before the earliest migration to the Americas. This study paints a more complex picture than is suggested by the prevailing opinion that all Native American DNA is essentially East Asian."

This one is easy to respond to, and the church gives you the answer in the paragraph. When they say “before the earliest migration to the Americas,” they are admitting that these people came to America long before the Book of Mormon times and then somehow survived the global flood and were already a large, widespread population when Lehi arrived.

Furthermore, full disclosure in this essay would have revealed that this same DNA is shared with ancient Siberians, and that much of this DNA is also shared with all humans, regardless of where they live. Again, this example has been used to reassure LDS people that there really is Western Eurasian DNA in the Americas, but it really works against the Book of Mormon’s narrative because it predates both the Jaredites and Nephites.

Back to the church’s essay:

“While Near Eastern DNA markers do exist in the DNA of modern native populations, it is difficult to determine whether they are the result of migrations that predated Columbus, such as those described in the Book of Mormon, or whether they stem from genetic mixing that occurred after the European conquest.”

According to geneticist Simon Southerton, who discovered this information while serving as a believing bishop in the church, Native American DNA is 99.6% ancient Asian. The remaining 0.4% has been determined to be Spanish and African post-colonization admixture. (Mormon Stories, Three Geneticists Respond to DNA Essay)

More from the church’s essay:

“This is due in part to the fact that the “molecular clock” used by scientists to date the appearance of genetic markers is not always accurate enough to pinpoint the timing of migrations that occurred as recently as a few hundred or even a few thousand years ago.”

Again, this is a very straightforward declaration that simply does not hold up. From Eric Fairfield , who has a Ph.D. in moleular biology:

“There are thousands of studies showing exactly how accurate it [the molecular clock] is and where it goes slightly faster and slightly slower. You can calibrate the mitochondrial clock for probably all animals on the planet, so it doesn't say down to the second. But it has it within a couple hundred years all the time and sometimes much closer than that.” (Mormon Stories, Three Geneticists Respond to DNA Essay)

The church is trying to use the fact that there is not 100% settled information to cast doubt on everything we do know. This is similar to the approach they take with Joseph Smith’s incorrect translation of the Book of Abraham papyri, when they cite differences in non-LDS scholars while not acknowledging that every single non-LDS scholar says that Joseph Smith unquestionably got the translations wrong.

Back to the essay:

“Scientists do not rule out the possibility of additional, small-scale migrations to the Americas.”

As we said above, what the church is citing here is an article to  the remains of the 24,000 year old Mal’ta boy in Siberia, whose DNA indicates that not only was he ancestral to Native Americans, but that his ancestors have roots in the Near East. This is actually further evidence against the Book of Mormon as it dates the Western Eurasian DNA of ancient Amerians to 20,000 years before Book of Mormon times, so it could not possibly have come from Jaredites or Lehites, and would also imply that the global flood never occurred if that DNA continued through the populations until modern times. This is the problem the church has in this essay – every time they answer a problem, if you look at the citations they are making you can see that it only further disproves the Book of Mormon’s claims of being historical.

This article is also one that is commonly sent by the church’s apologists as proof of the Book of Mormon as it was covered by the National Geographic. The problem is that when members/apologists cite this article, they do not understand that it actually disproves the Book of Mormon in that it happened long before not just the Book of Mormon, but the Adam and Eve story as well.

Back to the essay:

“For example, a 2010 genetic analysis of a well-preserved 4,000-year-old Paleo-Eskimo in Greenland led scientists to hypothesize that a group of people besides those from East Asia had migrated to the Americas.”

 

This is actually a great attestation of the power of population genetics. This Paleo-Eskimo individual dates to Jaredite times but their DNA leaves no mystery about where they came from. What would be amazing, in contrast, would be if we had a Mesoamerican skeleton from Jaredite times with genetic material of Middle Eastern origin, but that has not happened. It appears that the opposite is true, which makes you wonder why the church included this in their essay until you realize that they are hoping that members do not look at the citations they use to make these points.

Back to the essay:

“Commenting on this study, population geneticist Marcus Feldman of Stanford University said: “Models that suggest a single one-time migration are generally regarded as idealized systems. … There may have been small amounts of migrations going on for millennia.”

Marcus Feldman was speaking specifically about Eskimo/Inuit migrations, which can be clearly seen in the DNA of their remains. Again, this is the opposite of what this essay claims about Book of Mormon peoples from the same time period whose specific genetic markers, it claims, were somehow lost. In other words, the church wants you to believe that scientists can show all of these different migrations from DNA, but then also want you to believe that the DNA from Book of Mormon populations simply was lost or vanished.
 

The Church’s Essay and the Founder Effect:
 

“One reason it is difficult to use DNA evidence to draw definite conclusions about Book of Mormon peoples is that nothing is known about the DNA that Lehi, Sariah, Ishmael, and others brought to the Americas. Even if geneticists had a database of the DNA that now exists among all modern American Indian groups, it would be impossible to know exactly what to search for. It is possible that each member of the emigrating parties described in the Book of Mormon had DNA typical of the Near East, but it is likewise possible that some of them carried DNA more typical of other regions. In this case, their descendants might inherit a genetic profile that would be unexpected given their family’s place of origin. This phenomenon is called the founder effect.”

This one again is really easy if you’re not trying to fit a square peg in a circle hole. It is absolutely not true that “nothing is known about the DNA that Lehi, Sariah, Ishmael, and others brought to the Americas.”

The Book of Mormon clearly tells us that Lehi’s family were Israelites from Jerusalem. Is this essay asking us to consider that the Lehites might have actually been the descendants of Siberians who had relocated temporarily to Jerusalem before they built a ship and came to America? An article on LDS.org titled Who and Where are the Lamanites? explains:

 

“In this composite group is the blood of Israel, for we know that Lehi was of the tribe of Manasseh (see Alma 10:3), that Ishmael was of Ephraim (see JD 3:184), and that Mulek was of Judah, being a descendant of King David through Zedekiah.” (Who and Where Were the Lamanites?, Ensign,1975)

Please don’t get sidetracked by the red herring that we don’t have DNA from any individuals from Nephi’s boat. We are not using DNA profiling to identify individuals, but rather looking at population genetics. If we believe the Book of Mormon’s account of its own origins, we know that one of the Book of Mormon founders, Mulek, was the son of King Zedekiah of Jerusalem, a lineage that is well known. What more could you ask for?  Joseph Smith told us that the Lamanites “were principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph.” (The Wentworth Letter, Ensign, July, 2002). We also know that one of the reasons Lehi needed the Brass Plates was that they contained his genealogy. The Book of Mormon tells us that he was a descendent of Joseph, so there is no reason for the church to propose the idea that we’re trying to find some weird, foreign DNA.

Sure, we don’t have the exact remains of Lehi’s family to compare to, but that’s a diversion because we know where Lehi’s family came from. That’s the whole reason that for $99 “23 and Me” can use your DNA to show where your ancestors came from – not because they dug up your great-great-great grandmother’s family, but because of the advancements in population genetics that tell us about their migrations going back to the Neanderthals.

I’m not trying to be harsh here, but I do want to push back strongly here because the authors of this essay are being intentionally misleading in saying that nothing is known. We are specifically given more than enough information by the scriptures to know quite a lot about what we should see in the Native Americans if they are descendents of the Lamanites.

I know this is a long overview, but this next section is important to highlight how unhelpful these apologetic arguments are:

“Consider the case of Dr. Ugo A. Perego [likely the author of this essay], a Latter-day Saint population geneticist. His genealogy confirms that he is a multigeneration Italian, but the DNA of his paternal genetic lineage is from a branch of the Asian/Native American haplogroup C. This likely means that, somewhere along the line, a migratory event from Asia to Europe led to the introduction of DNA atypical of Perego’s place of origin.21 If Perego and his family were to colonize an isolated landmass, future geneticists conducting a study of his descendants’ Y chromosomes might conclude that the original settlers of that landmass were from Asia rather than Italy.”

This example is actually counterproductive for the church, because they would also see the Italian component of his DNA. This is a funny illustration because it is the exact opposite of what this essay is claiming about DNA and Book of Mormon peoples. It turns out that Dr. Perego really does have Asian markers in his paternal line, even though his ancestors arrived in Italy many generations ago.

Dr. Perego was originally laboring under a misconception that he had purely Italian ancestry until genetic testing set him straight. He didn’t need a tissue sample from a distant ancestor to answer the question for him. Why is it that he trusts the science in his own case, and has changed his mind about his ancestry accordingly, but is unwilling to do the same with the Book of Mormon?  His previous belief has been shown to be false and he now accepts the new scientific evidence, just as we do for anything that is not conflicting with a deeply held belief.

Back to the essay to sum up the example from Uro Perego:

“This hypothetical story shows that conclusions about the genetics of a population must be informed by a clear understanding of the DNA of the population’s founders. In the case of the Book of Mormon, clear information of that kind is unavailable.”

The first sentence is absolutely correct, and it underscores the fact that DNA can clarify the question of who founded a population despite what we have always believed or wish to be the case. As we said above, this problem is simply one that the church cannot move away from in a manner that is reconcilable with their own scriptures because they give such specific information as to where Lehi and all Book of Mormon groups originated from.

The book’s title page, penned by Moroni, tells us that it is “written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel.” This title page was said by Joseph Smith to be a direct translation off the gold plates, which means that this is not Joseph Smith’s thoughts, but the word of God.

If the Book of Mormon was written for the Lamanites, then clearly they must still exist. And not only does the Book of Mormon give clues that they are the Native Americans because of their dark skin, but God confirms it in revelations to Joseph Smith.

We highlighted some of these above, but here are a few more just to drive this point home:

D&C 49:24 But before the great day of the Lord shall come, Jacob shall flourish in the wilderness, and the Lamanites shall blossom as the rose.

D&C 28:14 And thou shalt assist to settle all these things, according to the covenants of the church, before thou shalt take thy journey among the Lamanites.

D&C 30:6 ...for I have given unto him power to build up my church among the Lamanites.

D&C 28:9 ...and no man knoweth where the city of Zion shall be built, but it shall be given hereafter. Behold, I say unto you that it shall be on the borders by the Lamanites.

Again, we are told by God that Joseph Smith needs to preach to the Lamanites and where does he go? They go into Missouri, which is where there were Native American settlements. The writings of all church leaders at the time were clear that these were the Lamanites, and they were identified as Lamanites because of the dark skin that the Book of Mormon tells us that they possess. We will get more into the dark skin issue later, but this is how prophets of God identified Lamanites through the history of the church.

Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley confirmed the identity of the native people of the Americas as Lamanites in his dedication of the Ciudad Juarez Temple when he said, “May the sons and daughters of Father Lehi grow in strength and fulfillment of the ancient promises made concerning them.” (LDS Church News, 13 Mar, 1999)

Elder James E. Faust confirmed the identities of the native people when he dedicated the Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico temple: “We invoke thy blessings upon this nation of Mexico where so many of the sons and daughters of Father Lehi dwell.” (LDS Church News, 18 Mar. 2000)

Even President Thomas S. Monson referred to attendees at the Villahermosa, Mexico temple dedication as “children of Lehi” (LDS Church News, 27 May 2000) and President Hinkley said of the members attending the Guayaquil Ecuador Temple that they “have the blood of Lehi in their veins.” (LDS Church News 7 Aug 1999).

President Kimball spearheaded the Indian Placement Program with the intention that the Lamanites among us could have their curse removed and once again become “white and delightsome.” Of this program he said, “The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome,” and “The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.” (The Improvement Era, December 1960, 922-23)

All of this gets even more complicated when you factor in the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, who our prophets and apostles have also claimed to be the descendents of Lehi. This is confirmed by many statements, such as the dedicatory prayer for the New Zealand temple given by President David O. McKay: “We express gratitude that to these fertile Islands Thou didst guide descendents of Father Lehi.”

This opens an entirely different can of DNA worms, one that throws the thesis of this essay entirely out the window. Official church manuals have consistently taught that the native peoples of the Americas and the Pacific Islands are Lamanites: “Great numbers of Lamanites in North and South America and the South Pacific are now receiving the blessings of the gospel” (Gospel Principles 1997, 268). To lump the Polynesians and Native Americans into a single lineage completely destroys any attempts of this essay to explain away the specific DNA problems concerning Native Americans.

The DNA of the Pacific Islanders tells us that they come from an entirely different part of Asia than the American Indians (Nature, 03 October 2016). Additionally, the islands specifically identified by modern prophets and apostles as being populated by Hagoth and his descendants were actually settled long AFTER Book of Mormon times.  Humans made their debut in New Zealand in the 14th century AD, that’s 800 years after Moroni buried the gold plates. We must not assume that this is merely an error of misguided church manual writers; it is established doctrine, beginning with Brigham Young who said, “Those islanders and the natives of this country (United States) are of the House of Israel, of the seed of Abraham,” (Journals of Religious History 8:90-104) and many other leaders have reiterated this idea.

I know this overview is getting long, but it is so important because I want to outline just how problematic the apologetics from the church are regarding DNA and the Lamanites, and to make sure I am clear that there is simply no way around the problems that DNA presents for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient text and, by way of incorrect revelations regarding the Native Americans being Lamanites, Joseph Smith being a prophet of God.

The entire premise of the Book of Mormon is to bring Lamanites to God, yet the church has no idea who the Lamanites are now that DNA has shown what they previously taught is simply incorrect.

The Church’s Essay on Population Bottleneck:

“Population bottleneck is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a natural disaster, epidemic disease, massive war, or other calamity results in the death of a substantial part of a population. These events may severely reduce or totally eliminate certain genetic profiles. In such cases, a population may regain genetic diversity over time through mutation, but much of the diversity that previously existed is irretrievably lost.