How do Mormons reconcile American Indian origins?

[pcarthew]

If you really want me to shoot missiles at you guys, I can; because really, I've been holding back. These questions of mine are just soft-balls designed to get a feel for the water and understand how you guys think about these things. I really have no intention of shattering anyone's faith with these.

But if you really want to go down this road, I can certainly accommodate you. For example, I would love to hear your thoughts on the following questions:

PCARTHEW:

If I were able to demonstrate the complete falsehood of the BoM, what difference would it make in your life? Say, for example, I dug up a written confession in the hand of Joseph Smith himself wherein he openly refers to the members as "chumps" and "suckers." How would you react to such a piece of information? Would you still go to Church and pay your tithing? Would you share such information with the other members? What would this mean about your current testimony? Would it negate any confirmation you may have received through prayer? What if others did not believe you when you shared the information?

Be advised that the point of this question is to gauge your integrity. Would you continue on in support of a faith that was demonstrably false, even though it still brings happiness to others? Or would you take it upon yourself to correct the erroneous belief in others? In other words, how much is truth worth to you, and how strongly are you willing to stand up for it? Because I can tell you right now, if you were capable of demonstrating the veracity of your faith to me in a truly compelling manor, I would convert immediately and retract all my objections.

Bring on the missiles. I think your questions have been very well answered. Good luck and God Bless.

[nicolasconnault]

In his great manual "How To Use New FamilySearch Correctly" (which I highly recommend to all LDS!), George W. Scott refers to the Most Recent Common Ancestor study by Joseph Chang, which leads to the following intriguing conclusion:

20% of the entire world

[nicolasconnault]

If I were able to demonstrate the complete falsehood of the BoM, what difference would it make in your life? Say, for example, I dug up a written confession in the hand of Joseph Smith himself wherein he openly refers to the members as "chumps" and "suckers." How would you react to such a piece of information? Would you still go to Church and pay your tithing? Would you share such information with the other members? What would this mean about your current testimony? Would it negate any confirmation you may have received through prayer? What if others did not believe you when you shared the information?

Be advised that the point of this question is to gauge your integrity. Would you continue on in support of a faith that was demonstrably false, even though it still brings happiness to others? Or would you take it upon yourself to correct the erroneous belief in others? In other words, how much is truth worth to you, and how strongly are you willing to stand up for it? Because I can tell you right now, if you were capable of demonstrating the veracity of your faith to me in a truly compelling manor, I would convert immediately and retract all my objections.

What does this have to do with the OP?

Anyway, you make it sound like all you need to find is a single document, or a mysterious "missing link", to demonstrate without any possible doubt that the LDS Church is false. As if a single document would weigh much when juxtaposed with thousands of documents that support the authenticity of the Church! Should I doubt the authenticity of every single piece of evidence, but accept without question the authenticity of such a "written confession"?

You make it all sound so simple, as if, by hanging to our faith, traditions, beliefs and values, we are somehow lacking integrity when faced with what you think would invalidate them all in one convenient little package of truth.

It completely baffles me when people expect to be convinced by others about something, while at the same time doing their utmost to be convinced of the opposite. It makes me wonder if you believe in the naive and primitive idea that some things can be demonstrated in such a way that no one can deny knowing they are true. Would you care to demonstrate?

[Senator]

We just don't call the Native Americans Laminites as they don't like the designation.

Pssst....

It's because we don't believe they are anymore.

Why would they not like the designation, anyway?

[nicolasconnault]

Pssst....

It's because we don't believe they are anymore.

Why would they not like the designation, anyway?

I'd understand if they were called "Laminates" (as I've seen it spelled on some anti-mormon sites...)...

[Somebodyz]

If you really want me to shoot missiles at you guys, I can; because really, I've been holding back. These questions of mine are just soft-balls designed to get a feel for the water and understand how you guys think about these things. I really have no intention of shattering anyone's faith with these.

But if you really want to go down this road, I can certainly accommodate you. For example, I would love to hear your thoughts on the following questions:

PCARTHEW:

If I were able to demonstrate the complete falsehood of the BoM, what difference would it make in your life? Say, for example, I dug up a written confession in the hand of Joseph Smith himself wherein he openly refers to the members as "chumps" and "suckers." How would you react to such a piece of information? Would you still go to Church and pay your tithing? Would you share such information with the other members? What would this mean about your current testimony? Would it negate any confirmation you may have received through prayer? What if others did not believe you when you shared the information?

Be advised that the point of this question is to gauge your integrity. Would you continue on in support of a faith that was demonstrably false, even though it still brings happiness to others? Or would you take it upon yourself to correct the erroneous belief in others? In other words, how much is truth worth to you, and how strongly are you willing to stand up for it? Because I can tell you right now, if you were capable of demonstrating the veracity of your faith to me in a truly compelling manor, I would convert immediately and retract all my objections.

And this is hardball? I didn't join because of Joseph Smith, in fact he was the part I had trouble accepting. How would this show it's false, if we get the truth from God?

Anyone can plant evidence. Personally I came to accept and love our prophet later. The truth isn't found by comparing this theory or that theory, or this persons perspective to anothers. It's found on your knees.

Get the hardballs out, this isn't it!

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

If you really want me to shoot missiles at you guys, I can; because really, I've been holding back. These questions of mine are just soft-balls designed to get a feel for the water and understand how you guys think about these things. I really have no intention of shattering anyone's faith with these.

But if you really want to go down this road, I can certainly accommodate you. For example, I would love to hear your thoughts on the following questions:

PCARTHEW:

If I were able to demonstrate the complete falsehood of the BoM, what difference would it make in your life? Say, for example, I dug up a written confession in the hand of Joseph Smith himself wherein he openly refers to the members as "chumps" and "suckers." How would you react to such a piece of information? Would you still go to Church and pay your tithing? Would you share such information with the other members? What would this mean about your current testimony? Would it negate any confirmation you may have received through prayer? What if others did not believe you when you shared the information?

Be advised that the point of this question is to gauge your integrity. Would you continue on in support of a faith that was demonstrably false, even though it still brings happiness to others? Or would you take it upon yourself to correct the erroneous belief in others? In other words, how much is truth worth to you, and how strongly are you willing to stand up for it? Because I can tell you right now, if you were capable of demonstrating the veracity of your faith to me in a truly compelling manor, I would convert immediately and retract all my objections.

By all means please demonstrate "the complete falsehood of the BoM"

"Say, for example, I dug up a written confession in the hand of Joseph Smith himself wherein he openly refers to the members as "chumps" and "suckers."

Are you claiming you have such evidence? If not then this is pointless.

Define "truley compelling manner"?

[cdowis]

Think long and hard about what you are suggesting. Then look at the age given for haplogroup X. Then look me in the eye and tell me how a 12,000 year-old genetic divergence could possibly correspond to Lehi's group.

I will look you straight in the eye, toe-to-toe.

Several years ago I spoke to Dr. Brown from Emory University, the one who wrote the orignial findings. When I asked him about this dating, he basically admitted that the dating was uncertain based on several assumptions. It was an estimate.

While he does accept this general dating, he admitted that we would not know it for certain until we found the actual founding group.

Toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball, my dear arrogant fellow. I have posted this conversation in detail elsewhere on this forum.

[cinepro]

In his great manual "How To Use New FamilySearch Correctly" (which I highly recommend to all LDS!), George W. Scott refers to the Most Recent Common Ancestor study by Joseph Chang, which leads to the following intriguing conclusion:

20% of the entire world

[katherine the great]

Well, so much for the priesthood ban...

No kidding. Besides, Joseph Chang is a mathematician and I strongly believe that mathematics can't begin to explain human mating habits--especially when you factor in cultural and the unseen "attractiveness" restrictions. I do think he tried to adjust for physical mating barriers, but there are still a handful or remote areas that are largely untouched by outsiders that can't be included in his model.

[cinepro]

That's fine. I don't go around calling Hawaiians, Tongans, Samoans, and Fijians as Polynesian either. However they are referred in mass as such toward as a Pacific culture. Even they themselves self -described.

We just don't call the Native Americans Laminites as they don't like the designation. As they also don't like being called Indian as well. Which btw many in the science field still do. Example Amerind which is American Indian. It's so un- politically correct

Awkward!

[nicolasconnault]

No kidding. Besides, Joseph Chang is a mathematician and I strongly believe that mathematics can't begin to explain human mating habits--especially when you factor in cultural and the unseen "attractiveness" restrictions. I do think he tried to adjust for physical mating barriers, but there are still a handful or remote areas that are largely untouched by outsiders that can't be included in his model.

Granted, every model used for such simulations is bound to have a small to large margin of error. The more the model is flawed, the larger the error will be magnified proportionately with the scale of the prediction. I'm not able to review his model, but I think his conclusions are correct enough to give us a good idea of the big picture. It's evidently flawed in the details.

[nicolasconnault]

Awkward!

Wow I didn't know they'd put the readers online, fantastic! I love those paintings!

Interestingly, the first line says:

"These Indians were also called Lamanites because some of them were descended from the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon."

mmmmh...

[handys003]

Awkward!

Maybe I'm not expressing it right. What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

[cinepro]

Maybe I'm not expressing it right. What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Maybe for some.

But I think there might be other LDS who believe that real descendants of Lehi are given special promises and potential blessings that distinguish them from any other New World inhabitants, and that these alone can be called "Lamanites".

[AntiCitizen]

I would say that this hypothetical confession would have surfaced a long time before now.

Hey, it's not like I'm not trying to say that this is likely to happen.

I'm just trying to drive at the idea of what your reaction would be if confronted with undeniable evidence that what you believe is false. Would you accept the evidence for what it is? Or would you trust in your own subjective experiences over hard data? Better yet, would you view this as an opportunity to grow and understand the world in a better light? Or would you just stubbornly plod along in full knowledge that your beliefs are at odds with reality?

And I would say that it would be very interesting to see an authentic document from the early 19th century that uses the terms "chumps" and "suckers."

It is a metaphor, for Pete's sake!

And I would say that going from concrete facts (DNA tests done on American Indians) to a made-up hypothetical is not exactly going from softballs to missiles.

The fundamental question is really just to gauge one's intellectual honesty and his appreciation for the power of human self-deception.

And I would say that it is the confession that is a lie, not The Book of Mormon, even if Joseph Smith had written this non-existent confession, because my belief in The Book of Mormon is not derived from a human being--including Joseph Smith.

This is the part I find most interesting. You are basically telling me that you would trust your own subjective and emotionally-based experiences over hard data. Am I interpreting this correctly? Because this leads me into my next question:

Can you trust subjective and emotionally-based experiences as evidence for truth about your external reality?

At this point, I am just going to answer the question for you and say no, and I can prove it.

Firstly, take a moment to examine the testimonials from other non-LDS faiths. If you really want to see specific examples, I'll dig them up for you; but all over the internet you can find all sorts of testimonial experiences from non-Mormon sources that describe their specific conversions to whatever sub-set of Christianity they belong to (and even many non-Christians), and all of them involve many of the same recurring themes. So if God is responsible for any of them, then there is no way to be sure that yours is any more or less true. If he is responsible for none of them, then you have no basis for claiming yours in the first place.

Secondly, any introductory textbook on social psychology is filled with demonstrable experiments where belief is generated out of nothing. Even when the specific belief is embarrassingly false, it is still perfectly easy to create a strong belief for it anyway, even in total contradiction to reality.

Thirdly, I don't care how strong your witness for the Spirit is. Even if you regularly hear direct audible conversations from God himself, it is still within human capacity to concoct the whole thing out of one's imagination. For example, around 1/50 people in the US will experience full-blown auditory hallucinations when put under chronic emotional stress, and many of these "voices" become chronic conditions. So even if you regularly hear the voice of God himself, there is a perfectly legitimate phenomenon among human beings that can replicate the experience.

In other words, no matter how strongly you believe in your faith, no matter how much happiness it brings you, and no matter how much The Holy Spirit witnesses to you, there are demonstrable human effects that are perfectly capable of fabricating them all out of your own imagination. This, above all else, is the reason why I cannot accept the idea that God is the direct source of any "truth." Even if I felt the love and warmth of the Holy Spirit right this minute, I still could not accept it; Such experiences are well-documented for their power to deceive.

[Ray Callis Hatton III]

Are you now trying to derail your own thread because you can't discuss the OP any more?

Do you think that people here can't distinguish straw men from reality? For reasons that are opaque to me, you seem to be trying to gin up an argument over positions that we don't hold.

If somebody wants to convince me, the only way to do so is via relevant evidence and superior reasoning. Or, of course, by an authoritative revelation. However, unless and until such a revelation is produced, I'm going to go with evidence and analysis. I think, though, that I've pointed out several of the falsehoods that you've managed to pack into that disingenuous OP of yours.

[handys003]

Are you now trying to derail your own thread because you can't discuss the OP any more?

Do you think that people here can't distinguish straw men from reality? For reasons that are opaque to me, you seem to be trying to gin up an argument over positions that we don't hold.

If somebody wants to convince me, the only way to do so is via relevant evidence and superior reasoning. Or, of course, by an authoritative revelation. However, unless and until such a revelation is produced, I'm going to go with evidence and analysis. I think, though, that I've pointed out several of the falsehoods that you've managed to pack into that disingenuous OP of yours.

That's because we blew up his missiles he was getting ready to launch in regards to DNA.

[ERayR]

AntiCitizen your hypothetical is nothing but a straw man you think you can beat but even in that you argue from a position of ignorance. Your lack of understanding of spiritual experiences when you call them "...subjective and emotionally-based experiences..." is clearly evident. It is clear that you haven't the slightest bit of understanding and your cavalier dismisal speaks loudly of your ignorance.

[AntiCitizen]

I will look you straight in the eye, toe-to-toe.

Several years ago I spoke to Dr. Brown from Emory University, the one who wrote the orignial findings. When I asked him about this dating, he basically admitted that the dating was uncertain based on several assumptions. It was an estimate.

While he does accept this general dating, he admitted that we would not know it for certain until we found the actual founding group.

Toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball, my dear arrogant fellow. I have posted this conversation in detail elsewhere on this forum.

Yes, the dating has well-defined uncertainties, but that does not give you free-license to suggest that it is 1/10th as old as the minimum consensus. I defy you to go back to Dr Brown and have him officially support the plausible likelihood that Haplogroup X is on the order of 2,000 years as opposed to 12,000 or more.

[AntiCitizen]

Are you now trying to derail your own thread because you can't discuss the OP any more?

Do you think that people here can't distinguish straw men from reality? For reasons that are opaque to me, you seem to be trying to gin up an argument over positions that we don't hold.

If somebody wants to convince me, the only way to do so is via relevant evidence and superior reasoning. Or, of course, by an authoritative revelation. However, unless and until such a revelation is produced, I'm going to go with evidence and analysis. I think, though, that I've pointed out several of the falsehoods that you've managed to pack into that disingenuous OP of yours.

Is this not the "apologetics board?" Is this not where I'm supposed to discuss such issues? If you want me to start an original thread on this, then fine I will. I just assumed I was following the natural flow of the conversation. If you would like to discuss this issue, I would like to know your thoughts. If you think this is better left to a new thread, then I will start one. But please at least give me the benefit of the doubt before hurling personal attacks.

[AntiCitizen]

AntiCitizen your hypothetical is nothing but a straw man you think you can beat but even in that you argue from a position of ignorance. Your lack of understanding of spiritual experiences when you call them "...subjective and emotionally-based experiences..." is clearly evident. It is clear that you haven't the slightest bit of understanding and your cavalier dismisal speaks loudly of your ignorance.

Why are you so belligerent at such a simple set of questions? Are they leading? Perhaps. Are they antagonistic to the LDS faith? Perhaps. But this is the apologetics board, so I want to know what you guys think about my questions. Could you please provide me with more than just arbitrary declarations of ignorance?

[nicolasconnault]

At this point, I am just going to answer the question for you and say no, and I can prove it.

Firstly, take a moment to examine the testimonials from other non-LDS faiths. If you really want to see specific examples, I'll dig them up for you; but all over the internet you can find all sorts of testimonial experiences from non-Mormon sources that describe their specific conversions to whatever sub-set of Christianity they belong to (and even many non-Christians), and all of them involve many of the same recurring themes. So if God is responsible for any of them, then there is no way to be sure that yours is any more or less true. If he is responsible for none of them, then you have no basis for claiming yours in the first place.

Secondly, any introductory textbook on social psychology is filled with demonstrable experiments where belief is generated out of nothing. Even when the specific belief is embarrassingly false, it is still perfectly easy to create a strong belief for it anyway, even in total contradiction to reality.

Thirdly, I don't care how strong your witness for the Spirit is. Even if you regularly hear direct audible conversations from God himself, it is still within human capacity to concoct the whole thing out of one's imagination. For example, around 1/50 people in the US will experience full-blown auditory hallucinations when put under chronic emotional stress, and many of these "voices" become chronic conditions. So even if you regularly hear the voice of God himself, there is a perfectly legitimate phenomenon among human beings that can replicate the experience.

In other words, no matter how strongly you believe in your faith, no matter how much happiness it brings you, and no matter how much The Holy Spirit witnesses to you, there are demonstrable human effects that are perfectly capable of fabricating them all out of your own imagination. This, above all else, is the reason why I cannot accept the idea that God is the direct source of any "truth." Even if I felt the love and warmth of the Holy Spirit right this minute, I still could not accept it; Such experiences are well-documented for their power to deceive.

So you think that every religious belief can be explained either by socialisation or by sensory hallucination. That would mean that, if a man was brought up in an atheist family, and never came in contact with religion, and had perfect mental health, he would never, ever have a spiritual experience, and could never, ever develop a belief in a supreme being.

If you're comfortable with that idea, then I don't think you should expect any more discussion on the topic, should you? You expect every LDS here to be deceived, deceptive or hallucinating, so it's hardly a worthy crowd with which to reason, is it?

[rodheadlee]

What happened to the DNA and Indians?

[handys003]

Yes, the dating has well-defined uncertainties, but that does not give you free-license to suggest that it is 1/10th as old as the minimum consensus. I defy you to go back to Dr Brown and have him officially support the plausible likelihood that Haplogroup X is on the order of 2,000 years as opposed to 12,000 or more.

Here is a geneticists blog. Discussing the haplogroups of American Cherokees. You will note not only Haplogroups A,B,C,D, and X but several other anomalous mt DNA. You will also see what I was explaining to you in bold. You cannot determine when the haplogroup of mt DNA was introduced to the Native Americans. It could be 12,000 years ago or 2600 years ago. You can only determine it's place of origin as fact.

Source: http://www.dnaconsul...n_the_Cherokee/

Donald N. Yates

submitted August 31, 2009

ABSTRACT. A sample of 52 individuals who purchased mitochondrial DNA testing to determine their female lineage was assembled after the fact from the customer files of DNA Consultants. All claim matrilineal descent from a Native American woman, usually named as Cherokee. The main criterion for inclusion in the study is that test subjects must have obtained results not placing them in the standard Native American haplogroups A, B, C or D. Hence the use of the word "anomalous" in the title of a paper prepared by chief investigator Donald N. Yates, "Anomalous Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in the Cherokee."

Most subjects reveal haplotypes that are unmatched anywhere else except among other participants, and there proves to be a high degree of interrelatedness and common ancestral lines. Haplogroup T emerges as the largest lineage, followed by U, X, J and H. Similar proportions of these haplogroups are noted in the populations of Egypt, Israel and other parts of the East Mediterranean (see below).

The Cherokee and Admixture. According to a 2007 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Cherokee are the largest tribal group today, with a population of 331,000 or 15% of all American Indians. Despite their numbers, though, the Cherokee have had few DNA studies conducted on them. I know of only three reports on Cherokee mitochondrial DNA. A total of 60 subjects are involved, all from Oklahoma. Possibly the reason the Cherokee are not recruited for more studies, I would suggest, stems from their being perceived as admixed in comparison with other Indians. Accordingly, they are deemed less worthy of study.

In the past, whenever a geneticist or anthropologist conducting a study of Native Americans has encountered an anomalous haplogroup, that is, a lineage that does not belong to one of the five generally accepted American Indian mitochondrial DNA haplogroups A, B, C, D and X, it has been rejected as an example of admixture and not included in the survey results. This is true of the two examples of H and one of J reported by Cherokee descendants by Schurr (2000:253). Schurr takes these exceptions to prove the rule and regards them as instances of European admixture. The governing logic of population geneticists seems to go as follows:

Lineage A, B, C, D and X are American Indian.

Therefore, all American Indians are lineage A, B, C, D and X.

The fallacy in such reasoning is apparent. It could be restated as: "All men are two-legged creatures; therefore since the skeleton we dug up has two legs, it is human." It might be a kangaroo.

"The geneticists always seem to cry 'post-Columbian admixture,'" says Stephen C. Jett, a geographer at the University of California at Davis, "but fail to take into account that there are no plausible post-Columbian sources for the particular genetic mix encountered."

"Anomalous Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in the Cherokee" concentrates on the "kangaroos"- documented or self-identifying Cherokee descendants whose haplotypes do not fit the current orthodoxy in American Indian population genetics. Here are some highlights, organized by haplogroup.

Haplogroup H. Although this quintessentially European haplogroup would seem to be the most likely suspect if admixture were responsible for the anomalous haplogroups, there are but four cases of it.

Haplogroup X. Haplogroup X is a latecomer to the "pantheon" of Native American haplogroups. Its relative absence in Mongolia and Siberia and a recently proven center of diffusion in Lebanon and Israel (Brown et al. 1998, Malhi and Smith 2002; Smith et al. 1999; Reidla 2003; Shlush et al. 2009) pose problems for the standard account of the peopling of the Americas. DNA Consultants Cherokee-descended customers include seven instances of haplogroup X. David E. Lewis (whose Cherokee name is Wayauwetsi) traces his unmatched X haplotype back to Seyinus, a Cherokee woman of the Wolf Clan born on or near the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina in 1862. Two cases represent descendants (unknown to each other, incidentally) of the Cherokee woman called Polly who was the namesake for the Qualla reservation (the sound p lacking in the Cherokee language and being rendered with qu).

Haplogroup J. Two other cases, both J's, are related to Polly, tracing their lines back to Betsy Walker, a Cherokee woman born about 1720 in Soco (One-Town). A descendant was the wife or paramour of Col. Will Thomas, the first chief and founder of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians located today on the Qualla Boundary. Views about J are still evolving, but it seems to have originated in present-day Lebanon approximately 10,000 years before present. It is a major Jewish female lineage (Thomas 2002).

Haplogroup U has never been reported in American Indians to my knowledge. In our sample it covers 13 cases or 25% of the total, second in frequency only to haplogroup T. One of the U's is Mary M. Garrabrant-Brower. She belongs to U5a1a* (all U5a1a not matched or assigned) but has no close matches anywhere. Her great-grandmother was Clarissa Green of the Cherokee Wolf Clan, born 1846. Mary's mother Mary M. Lounsbury maintained the Cherokee language and rituals. One of the cases of U2e* is my own. This line evidently arose from a Jewish Indian trader and a Cherokee woman. My fifth-great-grandmother was born about 1790 on the northern Georgia and southwestern North Carolina frontier and had a relationship with a trader named Enoch Jordan. The trader's male line descendants from his white family in North Carolina possess Y chromosomal J, a common Jewish type. Some Jordans, in fact, bear the Cohen Modal Haplotype that has been suggested to be the genetic signature of Old Testament priests (Thomas et al. 1998). Enoch Jordan was born about 1768 in Scotland of forbears from Russia or the Ukraine. My mother, Bessie Cooper, was a double descendant of Cherokee chief Black Fox and was born on Sand Mountain in northeastern Alabama near Black Fox's former seat at Creek Path (and who was Paint Clan). All U2e* cases appear to have in common the fact that there are underlying Melungeon, Cherokee and Jewish connections.

Haplogroup T. "Tara," as she was named by Brian Sykes, is believed to have originated in Mesopotamia approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago and to have moved northwards through the Caucasus and westwards from Anatolia into Europe. The closer one goes to its origin in the Fertile Crescent the more likely T is to be found in higher frequencies. The haplogroup includes slightly fewer than 10% of modern Europeans, but accounts for 28% of people in the DNA Consultants study. The great-great-grandmother of Linda Burckhalter was Sully Firebush, the daughter of a Cherokee chief who married Solomon Sutton, the stowaway son of a London merchant, in what would seem to be another variation of the "Jewish trader marries chief's daughter" pattern. Three T1*'s are perfectly matching individuals completely unknown to one another before testing who are clearly descended from the same woman. Two of them claim Melungeon ancestry.

The many interrelationships noted above reinforce the conclusion that this is a faithful cross-section of a population. No such mix could have resulted from post-1492 European gene flow into the Cherokee Nation. So where do our non-European, non-Indian-appearing elements come from? The level of haplogroup T in the Cherokee (26.9%) approximates the percentage for Egypt (25%), one of the only lands where T attains a major position among the various mitochondrial lineages. In Egypt, T is three times what it is in Europe. Haplogroup U in our sample is about the same as the Middle East in general. Its frequency is similar to that of Turkey and Greece. J has a frequency not unlike Europe (a little less than 10%). The only other place on earth where X is found at an elevated level apart from other American Indian groups like the Ojibwe is among the Druze in the Hills of Galilee in northern Israel and Lebanon. The work of Shlush et al. (2009) demonstrates that this region was in fact the center of the worldwide diffusion of haplogroup X.

Phoenicians. On the Y chromosome side of Shlush et al.'s study, male haplogroup K was found to have a relatively high frequency of 11% in the Galilee region (2008:2). K (renamed T in the revised YCC nomenclature) has long been suspected to be the genetic signature of the Phoenicians. A TV show by National Geographic appeared about a year ago titled Who Were the Phoenicians?, in which Spencer Wells of the National Genographic Project, unveiled this theory. Without a doubt it was the Phoenicians, whose name among themselves was Cana'ni or KHNAI 'Canaanites', not Phoenikoi 'red paint people' (Aubet 2001:9-12; cf. Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. "Phoenicians" ), who are referenced by James Adair when he observes that "several old American towns are called Kan?ai," and suggests that the Conoy Indians of Pennsylvania and Maryland were Canaanites and their tribal name a corruption of the word Canaan. The Conoy Indians are the same Indians William Penn around 1700 described as resembling Italians, Jews and Greeks. By about 1735 they had dwindled to a "remnant of a nation, or subdivided tribe, of Indians," according to Adair (1930:56, 67, 68). One of the oldest Cherokee clans is called Red Paint Clan (Ani-wodi).

So do the two subclades of X and other haplogroups represent Old World and New World branches diverging from each other as long ago as 30,000 years, or do the Native American "anomalous" haplotypes come more recently (but not as late as Columbus) from the same source in the East Mediterranean? The answer probably depends on how open one is to new evidence and revisionary thinking. According to Jett, "The splits may have taken place well before transfer, with one only or both being transferred to a new place and then one dying out in the home area (and the other in the new area, if both were transferred)." The distinction, at any rate, is irrelevant to the Cherokee who exhibit these not-so-rare haplogroups, although to those denied authenticity on the basis of anthropologists' hardened ideas about the genetic composition of American Indians it is welcome vindication either way.

References

1. Adair, James (1930). Adair's History of the American Indians, ed. by Samuel Cole Williams, originally published London, 1775. Johnson City: Watauga.

2. Richards, Martin et al. (2000). "Tracing European Founder Lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA Pool." American Journal of Human Genetics 67:1251-76. Supplementary Data. URL: http://www.stats.gla...000/index.html.

3. Schurr, Theodore G. (2000). "Mitochondrial DNA and the Peopling of the New World," American Scientist 88:246-53.

4. Shlush, L. I. et al. (2009) "The Druze: A Population Genetic Refugium of the Near East." PLoS ONE 3(5): e2105. URL: http://www.pubmedcen...i?artid=2324201