Actually, it doesn't. Of course you're right about DNA studies showing that man originated in Africa. American newspaperman, H.L. Mencken once said, "There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." In your opinion, Silvermoon's analogy is just that: neat, plausible, and wrong. My response is that our critics' claim that "DNA has proven the Book of Mormon to be a fraud" is equally neat, plausible, and wrong.
Let's start by looking at the initial premise. The article in question begins by declaring that it "lays to rest any lingering questions about Native American ancestry: Lehi and his family almost certainly had nothing to do with it." It goes on to say that it has previously been "shown that the Native American population was most likely the exclusive descendants of a group that traveled across the Bering Strait from Severia some 12,000 years ago."
Before I even begin to explain why I believe this statement is incorrect, I can't resist the urge to comment on several phrases in the brief portion of the article which I quoted.
1. This one article claims to "lay to rest" a claim that certainly isn't going to be "laid to rest" for many more years. No scientist worth his salt would be so presumptuous. Conclusions of that sort aren't the end. They're merely the place at which the lazy and biased stop thinking.
2. The claim that has supposedly been "laid to rest" concludes that "Lehi and his family
almost certainly had nothing to do with it." Within a single sentence, the article went from saying that a claim has been conclusively disproven -- almost certainly.
3. The statement that the "Native American population was most likely the exclusive descendants of a group..." is a dangeerous one to make. To describe an entire population as being "the exclusive descendants" of a single group of people is so restrictive that sooner or later it would almost certainly be proven wrong. Hardly any populations anywhere except for the most isolated places in the world could be described as being "the exclusive descendants" of any one group.
Okay, on to my actual response to the claims made in this rather poorly written article...
I would like to think that all were dealing with is a simple misunderstanding. The question to be argued really isn't, "Are today's Native Americans of Middle-eastern ancestry?", but "Is it possible that a small family from the Middle-east could have settled on the already populated American continent 2600 years ago and left no genetic evidence of their existence?" Genetic drift alone would explain how Lehi's haplogroup would almost certainly have disappeared after just a few generations. If Lehi and his family had arrived on an empty continent, it would be a different matter entirely, but we know that wasn't the case.
We don't believe that all, or even most Native Americans are of Israelite descent. If that was our claim, then yes, it would clearly be wrong. Our claim is that it is entirely possible, for a small family from the Middle East to have settled somewhere on the American continent-- that continent being largely populated at the time of their arrival -- and to have left no genetic evidence 2600 years later.
There are a number of reasons why. One of them is Genetic Drift. Since you say youre not an expert in the field, Im going to assume you dont know how Genetic Drift works. (I didnt either, but I made it a point to learn.) The following is an experiment anyone can do to demonstrate the process by which Nephites generic markers could not only easily have disappeared over time, but how they almost certainly would have done:
Put 10 red marbles and 10 blue marbles in a jar. Pick one marble at random and check the color. Let's say it's red. Return the marble to the jar, but also take a marble of the same color from a bottle of spares, and put it in a second jar. The new marble (the one you just put in the second jar) will represent the red lineage. It's the lineage you want to track. Keep repeating this process, picking one random marble each time until the second jar has twenty marbles. (Always return the original marble you picked to the jar you took it from. That jar must always contain 20 marbles.) Of the 20 marbles in the second jar, you might have 8 red ones and 12 blue ones. After you've got 20 marbles in the second jar, start the whole process over again, this time picking marbles from the second jar and adding marbles of the corresponding color from your pile of spares to a third jar. By the time you've got 20 marbles in your third jar, you may have 5 red ones and 15 blue ones. By the time you're working on your fourth or fifth jar, you will likely have only blue marbles. If you have even one red one, though, repeat the process. You are guaranteed to have all blue by the time you get to the sixth or seventh jar. Blue will be fixed and red (the lineage you were trying to trace) will be gone forever.
This is not just a hypothetical explanation. Let's say you have a man from Italy who has five daughters. How many of those daughters would have his mtDNA? None, since mtDNA is passed through the womans lineage, but not a mans. Let's say those five daughters give him 30 grandchildren. If that man had married an African woman, every single one of his grandchildren would be classified as African according to their mtDNA. There would not be a single solitary one who would have his mtDNA.
Other factors are the Founder Effect and Population Bottlenecks. The deCODE Project in Iceland, is an excellent example of the results of a population bottleneck which completely obliterated an entire genetic line in that country. I can explain these in greater detail if youd like. Or if youd prefer, I can just post some links.
The largest group of people whose story is told in the Book of Mormon descended from a small number of Israelites who left Jerusalem in abou 600 B.C. and were led by God to the American continent. (They were not one of the "Lost Tribes.") The leader of this group was a prophet named Lehi. He took with him copies of the words of Isaiah (and possibly other Old Testament prophets) because these words prophesied of a coming Messiah. Lehi and his son, Nephi, also received prophecies about the Messiah. Theirs were considerably more detailed. These prophesies foretold the coming of Jesus Christ and His ministry in the Holy Land (which would be recorded in the New Testament). They also said that He would, at some point after His death and resurrection, visit "His other sheep" in the Americas. All of the Jews expected the same Messiah. The same Messiah who was born in Bethlehem and who was crucified on Calvary later appeared to the Book of Mormon people. I'm not sure if you just aren't familiar with the story line in the Book of Mormon and if that's what's causing the confusion or if it's something else. If this post doesn't answer your question, maybe we're going to have to enlist the services of a "translator."
