According to the Book of Mormon, it is recorded that 3 groups of people came to the American Continent.
A group called the Jaredites came from "Babylon" area around the time of the tower of Babel.
A group called the Mulekites came from Jerusalem area around 600 B.C.
A group that split between Nephites and Lamanites but from one two families - Lehi and Ishmael, with a friend that tagged along - Zoram. All from Jerusalem around 500 B.C.
We don't know the heritage of the Jaredites or if it was mixed.
We don't know the heritage of the Mulekites or if it was mixed.
We have a decent idea of the heritage of the families of Ishmael and Lehi, although we are guessing that Lehi's wife, and Ishmael's wife were Jewish or Israelites.
Lets assume for arguments sake that everything in the Book of Mormon is as it says it is, and as I believe it is. Even with this in mind, the whole DNA issue is not simple and will take either luck or "help" to pin anything down even. Also like Colton said, this is just for "fun" and will probably not affect anyone believing, or disbelieving the Book of Mormon or anything associated with it.
Well, actually. . . . it's not all that simple, even.
I have been in old caves where humans lived ten thousand years ago along the shores of the ancient Lake Bonneville, including a cave that "caved in" at the entrance so nobody knew about it until a few years ago. It was a huge cave, big enough to park a few tanks in and with a ceiling that was thirty feet high. Horse bones, comparable in size to modern mustangs, were found there. The original bone was replaced by minerals were strewn across the floor, quite probably from horses that were holed up in there during some heavy rainy season when the entrance was covered with a mudslide. . . . In other caves pterodactyl bones were found, along with camel and saber tooth tigers and woolly mammoth remains. Below the caves, on the old shoreline near an ancient river, large amounts of flint and obsidian flakes and tools and weopon points were found, which were scientifically determined to be from "imported" rock from about four hundred miles away in distinct deposits that were obviously traded by boat-faring folks since the intervening terrain was a huge lake with many high mountain "islands", and no land route because the site itself was an isolated island.
Except for the recently-discovered cave, these findings were published in professional peer-reviewed research journals fifty years ago.
Recent research is demanding a review of the scientific consensus that early Americans came here by land during a short "window" of low seas and an ice-free corridor from northeast Siberia, "Beringiea", some eleven thousand years ago. Many earlier sites have been studied across the Americas. From Brazil, dated thirty thousand years ago, and Chile to sites on the Channel Islands off Los Angeles and San Diego, and in Texas. To even older human evidence in Pennslvania and other East Coast locations dated around twenty five thousand years ago.
The first Americans were likely European seafaring folk who worked their way across the Atlantic in small craft along the receding ice shelf, fishing and hunting along their way. The East coast remains have similarity to contemporary findings in France. The Brazil findings suggest a possible African migration across the Atlantic. The SoCal and Chilean findings have contemporary commonalities with fishing cultures from Japan.
Some researchers contemplating the tigers and bears prevailing during those times state that the Americas were perhaps the most inhospitable place in the world for humans, who would have been subject to bone-chilling depredations. . . . But humans were here, all through those ages.
The genetic claims now being made for a unique Siberian origin for all early Americans will eventially be discredited as scientists begin to comprehend the statistics of inheritance better. And the extent of seafaring travel throughout the ages. . . . and the obvious likelihood of a migration from America into Siberia being just as likely as the reverse. . . . especially since it's alreading proven people were here well before that small "window" of the claimed migration.
A Mormon mathemetician who understands statistics and probability and the simple genealogical charts he sometimes tries to extend will run into the math sooner or later.
If you have an average maternal age of thirty for mothers of newborn humans, a very high estimate considering the lifespan of the average human across the eons before modern medicine. . . . you have to find over one thousand progenitors living approximately three hundred years ago. . . . and if you go back six hundred years you're looking for a million. . . . and a billion human ancestors living just nine hundred years ago.
These statistics are overwhelming. A single person living 2000 years ago would likely have something like most of the human race in his "family". . . .. Or none at all. . . .
In fact the scientists who are studying the origins of human life have stated that in following the maternal-specific inheritance of messenger DNA which is always from the mother, we have just a few women from some one hundred thousand years ago who have any female representatives left living on the earth today in the required continuos line of mother to daughter transmittal of that mRNA. Genes are lost in various ways. And a population living in a continuous culture across thousands of years, such as exist in India and China and the outback of Australia, can undergo a complete transformation of any particular genetic marker you might try to look for over a few thousand years' time.
But back to the Book of Mormon. The BoM states as well that some of its people migrated back into the ocean, the Pacific?, and found new lands in the sea. Mormons have believed the Polynesians were these remnants. . . . but their language family extends through the Pacific Islands into Taiwan and Japan, and even to Madagascar off the coast of Africa. One linguistic student spent his life developing understanding of the writing systems used throughout this wide area, and believed they came from North African sources influences by Greek culture, as he listed many "cognates" between Greek and Polynesian languages, and found their writing system derived from Egyptian. It is known historically that Egypt operated mines in Indonesia for gold over three thousand years ago, and one Egyptian mariner made it all the way to Easter Island remotely isolated off the coast of Chile. He caluclated from Astronomical observations the correct circumference of the eath, too.
Well, obviously, whoever wrote the BoM didn't believe humans have been here for tens of thousands of years, and anyone who believes in the Book of Mormon will ultimately come to some sort of idea that ancient writers living in the context of commonly held ancient belief systems just can't be expected to anticipate better understanding which we might come to from extensive scientific research of many types.
And the Book of Mormon itself contains a statement from "Mormon" that he felt inadequate to the task and realized there might be many mistakes in his work, and implores the reader to, well, cut him some slack.
There's plenty of room for people to either believe or disbelieve the Book of Mormon on some kind of intelligent intellectual rationale. . . . and I think whether you set out with present materials, sources, and research to prove the case either way, it won't take two hundred years for your explanations to start looking pretty wrong. . . . .
