Peopling of the Americas by Boat, Not Land

[hope_for_things]

12 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Call it whatever, science has built all its theories on the peopling of the Americas upon the necessity that America could only be accessed by foot. Walking. So all the theories have revolved around ridiculous time periods based on sea levels and ice corridors. That has severely crippled thinking on the subject. It has limited any passage to America to 14,000 BC when the land bridge was exposed.

That isn't necessary now.

Now science can allow for the passage of any number of people around the Pacific Rim to the Americans at any point, from as early as 20,000 BC.

That is a big shift.

This is encouraging to me and an example of scientific progression of thought and the commitment to following evidence.  It’s not evidence of dogma.  

Webster definition of dogma:  

a :something held as an established opinion;  especially  :a definite authoritative tenet

b :a code of such tenets  

• pedagogical dogma

c :a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds 

2:a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church

[Rajah Manchou]

3 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

What time period are you talking about with this idea that sophisticated boats may have existed for trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, you said pre-Columbian, but you're not talking about 14,000 BCE are you?  

I'll let Robert speak for himself, but I seriously doubt he is talking about trade from the Mediterranean in 14000. What I think he is saying is that once boats are accepted as a mode of transportation as early as 20,000, pretty much anybody from any point on the planet could arrive at Tierra Del Fuego, or Greenland, or Mesoamerica and even the reverse direction. Whether that actually happened is irrelevant. The point is that we no longer need to limit our thinking to walking across a land bridge that no longer existed after 14,000 BC.

The irony here is that I suspect one of the main reasons for this shift in thinking is the recent confirmation that the the Na Dene (Navajo) are genetically related to the Ket in Siberia, and their migration took place around 3000 BC. Add the well-accepted discoveries of Jomon pottery and Hun-like DNA in Ecuador and the evidence of Austric and Polynesian DNA is found in Brazil and there is no way to get around long migrations around (and possibly even across) the Pacific Ocean.

Read the comment sections of many of these articles and you will see the shift in thinking. Many bright people are now accepting the possibility that Indo-European type groups sailed directly across. That wasn't acceptable just a month ago. Now it is becoming a topic.

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I respect Rajah and I appreciate that he's trying to think outside the box, but I honestly don't take any of the Malaysian BoM model theories seriously at all.  

I get this a lot, but usually it means that the person saying it hasn't given the model more than a glance. Malaysia? Nah, impossible. Skip.

The Malay Model is exactly that, a model. Its purpose is not to prove that the Book of Mormon took place anywhere in particular, it is there to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon narrative is not anachronistic, and all its claims are plausible. I'd challenge you to find one criticism of the Book of Mormon that holds when you accept that there was interaction around and across the Pacific Rim from 3000 BC. For example, there are accounts of very large ships trading between the Malay Peninsula and the Red Sea as early as the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. These ships were said to be more then 50 meters in length, standing out of the water more than four to five meters with a capacity of 6 to 7 hundred people. These were built by Austronesians who did in fact trade between the Meditaranean and deep deep into the Pacific Ocean as early as 2500 BC.

The Malay Model doesn't prove the Lehites did it, but it does demonstrate such an account is not an anachronism. That is the value of the Malay Model, in my opinion.
 

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

3 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The Malay Model is exactly that, a model. Its purpose is not to prove that the Book of Mormon took place anywhere in particular, it is there to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon narrative is not anachronistic, and all its claims are plausible.

I was 17-18 years old the first time I read the Book of Mormon. My brain immediately registered a number of historical implausibilities even as the Lord used that book to thoroughly change my nature. It took me until my PhD research to realise just how plausible a number of my original concerns actually were. Does this prove the Book of Mormon? In no way. But it certainly removes a number of objections ... and many times has left me wondering how a young man on the American frontier knew to write absurdities that I would later read exact parallels of in uncontested historical documents. Sheer luck, no doubt... 

[juliann]

This just makes me shake my head. A decade or two ago it was all the thing to make fun of all the things the BOM got wrong based on the current migration theories. I used to call it "the discovering has all been done" thinkers. I have watched those who have tried to build a dam against further findings with great interest. I watched the silliness that the BOM predated all known civilizations go down as the timelines of the Olmec backed up. And it is always a matter of dead silence. They just stopped talking about how something was impossible and it is never mentioned again. It mystifies me because it never made sense to me that there was one time and one way people moved around. I have always thought drawing a hard line about "horses" based on nothing but evidence hadn't been found yet  to be just dumb. With all the new discoveries, most of which we don't even know about unless they hit media, I'm not drawing any hard conclusions.

And I really don't care what it "proves" about the BOM. New findings can work for or against it. I just find anyone who makes a stand based on all discoveries have been discovered to be really....odd. 

[hope_for_things]

19 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

I'd challenge you to find one criticism of the Book of Mormon that holds when you accept that there was interaction around and across the Pacific Rim from 3000 BC.

That’s easy, one of the strongest reasons I don’t believe the BoM is ancient is the 19th century Christian theological content found everywhere in the text.  There is nothing in ancient America or Malaysia that can explain the predominant presence of modern developed Christian doctrine in a text that’s supposed to be of ancient origins.  The KJV dependence and the modern Christian theology are enough by themselves to convince me of its modern origin.  

Have you any archeological evidence to support the Malaysia hypothesis?  

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

That’s easy, one of the strongest reasons I don’t believe the BoM is ancient is the 19th century Christian theological content found everywhere in the text.  There is nothing in ancient America or Malaysia that can explain the predominant presence of modern developed Christian doctrine in a text that’s supposed to be of ancient origins.  The KJV dependence and the modern Christian theology are enough by themselves to convince me of its modern origin.  

That only demonstrates that the text was open to have 19th century theological content added to it. We have an example of this process in a text called The Abode of the Blessed (possibly dating as early as the 3rd century BC). Although the debate is ongoing, the Abode of the Blessed was most likely a Jewish text describing Israelites being led by God from Jerusalem to distant lands. It was translated into numerous languages and expanded at different points over its lifetime. Christians added theological content to the Jewish source text, and it became the History of the Rechabites. More content, including 3rd to 16th century Christian theology, was expanded into it and it became the Narrative of Zosimus. Yet the original Jewish core remained. So, is the Abode of the Blessed a 3rd century BC text, or is it a 4th century AD text? Or is it only to be dated to the 19th century AD when it was translated into English?

(Sidenote, the Biblical group described in the Abode of the Blessed are related to a historical group that departed Jerusalem in the 6th century BC and took up residence on the Malay Peninsula, known anciently as the Golden Peninsula. There is data to support this argument.)

So let's imagine that the Book of Mormon was yet another expansion of this apocryphal account of Rechabites writing their own history apart from the Old World in a land beyond the shores of the sea. This text was restored and translated at some point between the 16th century AD and the 19th century AD, with more additions and expansions to come. So the question really is, does the Book of Mormon have a core to it that dates back to antiquity? Non-Mormon Bible scholars like Margaret Barker and Paul Owen have explored this question:

“The extraordinary similarity between a text that is sometimes called the History of the Rechabites and sometimes the Narrative of Zosimus—the extraordinary similarity between this story and the story of Lehi leaving Jerusalem—has already been studied by Mormon scholars. This ancient text, which survives in Greek, Syriac, and Ethioptic, tells the story of some people who left Jerusalem about 600 BCE and they went to live in a “blessed land.” They didn’t drink wine. They were called the sons of Rechab1, which could mean that Rechab was their ancestor, or it could be the Hebrew way of saying that they were temple servants, priests who served the divine throne. In their blessed lands, angels had announced to them the incarnation of the Word of God from the holy virgin who is the mother of God. Nobody can explain this text.” - Margaret Barker

How did the concept of Christ and the holy virgin get added to an authentic Jewish text predating Christ?

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Have you any archeological evidence to support the Malaysia hypothesis?  

With respect, you don't take the model seriously, but you haven't looked at the arguments? The short answer is yes, but the evidence is not only for the Malay Peninsula, but all civilizations related to those that originated from there, in particular the Rechabites, also known as the Rahmans, or Khmer. As Michael Coe says, the Mayan and the Khmer were parallel civilizations and the only way to explain the similarities is by accepting that they "paddled their canoes" across the ocean.

Parallel Civilizations: Ancient Angkor and the Ancient Maya

That is the starting point for this model.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[Rajah Manchou]

Duplicate

Edited November 7, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[Darren10]

22 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

It could fit a BoM scenario. The Dene (Navajo) arrived by boat around 3000 BC. Unless they swam across the Bearing Strait.

Ancient DNA Refines New World Settlement Paradigm

 

When it comes to people from Russia, they have done crazier things.

[Darren10]

13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

  -- the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites did nothing strange.

Except for following God’s direction. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, that’s always strange. 

Edited November 7, 2017 by Darren10

[Darren10]

10 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

 

Short distances in boats is what scientists believe was possible, not long distances. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/time-to-scrap-the-idea-that-humans-arrived-in-the-americas-by-land-bridge/

Is there any theory by Sorensen or other Mormon scholars that talks about the BoM people traveling along the Pacific coastlines using short distances to arrive in the new world?  I'm not aware of one or how this would fit with this view of how the Americas became populated some ~14,000 yrs ago.  

 

Not necessairly only short voyages:

Quote

Polynesians in America reopens the case for pre-Columbian landfalls along the Pacific coasts of North and South America by bringing together new linguistic, biological, material, nautical, and physical anthropological evidence produced during the past decade.

http://muse.jhu.edu/article/502630

[CV75]

15 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Manned flight around the world became possible after many years and significant technological innovation.  The same with cross oceanic voyages, but the amount of time it took for that technology to develop was many thousands of years.  You're talking about a time period where there is absolutely no evidence to suggest this technology existed.  

The science now accepts that pre-Clovis peoples arrived to the Americas by boat, whatever technology they used. Are you concerned about the technology of the time period of the Jaredites and Lehites, or of the pre-Clovis voyagers? Are you suggesting that 12-13 millennia between these arrivals to too long to support a retrospective extrapolation that far back, based on your expectation for the rate of nautical innovation in ancient times? How do you think the study of pre-history differs from the study of ancient and modern history or current events?

[hope_for_things]

9 hours ago, Darren10 said:

Not necessairly only short voyages:

http://muse.jhu.edu/article/502630

Thanks, what time period is this pre-Colombian Polynesian theory supposed to be taking place.  I was talking about 14,000 - 20,000 BCE.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

The science now accepts that pre-Clovis peoples arrived to the Americas by boat, whatever technology they used. Are you concerned about the technology of the time period of the Jaredites and Lehites, or of the pre-Clovis voyagers? Are you suggesting that 12-13 millennia between these arrivals to too long to support a retrospective extrapolation that far back, based on your expectation for the rate of nautical innovation in ancient times? How do you think the study of pre-history differs from the study of ancient and modern history or current events?

I guess I don't understand why its relevant that pre-Clovis people arrived to America by boat when it comes to BoM claims.   It doesn't prove that cross oceanic expeditions were technologically possible during the BoM times.  It doesn't do anything to help BoM claims at all that I can see.  It sounds like some apologists feel vindicated because they've been arguing for the possibility of the use of boats for migrating populations, and now that the evidence supports this one example they feel vindicated in some way, but I really don't understand why since the evidence of pre-Clovis people really has no application to the BoM claims that I can see.  

[RevTestament]

11 hours ago, juliann said:

This just makes me shake my head. A decade or two ago it was all the thing to make fun of all the things the BOM got wrong based on the current migration theories. I used to call it "the discovering has all been done" thinkers. I have watched those who have tried to build a dam against further findings with great interest. I watched the silliness that the BOM predated all known civilizations go down as the timelines of the Olmec backed up. And it is always a matter of dead silence. They just stopped talking about how something was impossible and it is never mentioned again. It mystifies me because it never made sense to me that there was one time and one way people moved around. I have always thought drawing a hard line about "horses" based on nothing but evidence hadn't been found yet  to be just dumb. With all the new discoveries, most of which we don't even know about unless they hit media, I'm not drawing any hard conclusions.

Unfortunately, we still cant' rely on the media nor the scientific community because of the prejudice against "Diffusionism." For instance most people do not know about horse bones found in post-Clovis layers of Mexican caves exactly because the scientific community was loathe to publicize these findings - they got relegated to the back pages of notes in excavation reports. Old scientific theories can sometimes die hard - esp where new findings could support a minor religious sect who the scientific community generally liked to laugh at, and dismiss their "prophet" as a fraud, mad-man, etc.

Quote

And I really don't care what it "proves" about the BOM. New findings can work for or against it. I just find anyone who makes a stand based on all discoveries have been discovered to be really....odd. 

Not odd at all in scientific circles. In fact anyone who would espouse any other theory of migration to America other than the Beringia Land Bridge model got labeled a "Diffusionist" with some contempt by the scientific community. This just goes to illustrate what Robert said about scientists having their own biases and prejudices which can serve to stomp out truth or prevent its pursuit - for many years scientists would not pursue other theories for fear of being labeled a Diffusionist and losing their job, funding, publication status, etc. This just goes to show the weakness of HFTs constant harping on what the scientific experts believe - if they don't believe it, he won't. But we see their opinion can change 180 deg, and limiting one's belief this way can be spiritually damaging when it comes to the church. I have been kind of banging the diffusionist drum here for 2-3 years now, but not based on obscure and contested artifacts. I think there is plenty more evidence for pre-Columbian immigration besides DNA, and I believe it is evidence which 'demands a verdict.' It is evidence in the archaeological record, and I believe there are strong grounds for questioning the current approach to DNA evidence and indeed, the entire scientific paradigm. I believe the BoM will literally rise out of the dust, shake off the scientific mothballs, and begin to receive similar credence to the Bible, which has also taken its hits from the scientific community.

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

I guess I don't understand why its relevant that pre-Clovis people arrived to America by boat when it comes to BoM claims.   It doesn't prove that cross oceanic expeditions were technologically possible during the BoM times.  It doesn't do anything to help BoM claims at all that I can see.  It sounds like some apologists feel vindicated because they've been arguing for the possibility of the use of boats for migrating populations, and now that the evidence supports this one example they feel vindicated in some way, but I really don't understand why since the evidence of pre-Clovis people really has no application to the BoM claims that I can see.  

The discussion about kelp highways and coastal migrations intensified a year or two ago when Australmelanesian DNA was found in South America. Researchers had to come up with an explanation. How did Australmelanesian DNA (most closely resembling the DNA of Andaman Islanders in the Indian Ocean) get to South America? Did Australmelanesians ride the kelp highway all the way up to Alaska and back down to Brazil without leaving any traces in East Asia or North America? Looking at the map below, would you expect that Onge-like DNA arrived in the Amazon by hugging the coasts of Siberia, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest? 



The paradigm shift this year is coastal voyages along the kelp highways of the Pacific. The paradigm shift next year will be boats directly across the Pacific Ocean. And when that shift happens, critics will be wondering why Mormons think that the ancestors of the Polynesians sailing across the Pacific Ocean is such a big deal. It doesn't prove anything.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[hope_for_things]

37 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The discussion about kelp highways and coastal migrations intensified a year or two ago when Australmelanesian DNA was found in South America. Researchers had to come up with an explanation. How did Australmelanesian DNA (most closely resembling the DNA of Andaman Islanders in the Indian Ocean) get to South America? Did Australmelanesians ride the kelp highway all the way up to Alaska and back down to Brazil without leaving any traces in East Asia or North America? Looking at the map below, would you expect that Onge-like DNA arrived in the Amazon by hugging the coasts of Siberia, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest? 



The paradigm shift this year is coastal voyages along the kelp highways of the Pacific. The paradigm shift next year will be boats directly across the Pacific Ocean. And when that shift happens, critics will be wondering why Mormons think that the ancestors of the Polynesians sailing across the Pacific Ocean is such a big deal. It doesn't prove anything.

What time periods is the Australmelanesian DNA theorized to have arrived in the America's?  I'm not saying voyages across the Pacific ocean weren't possible in more recent times, and I'm not even saying they weren't possible during BoM times.   I'll follow the evidence.  

[hope_for_things]

12 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

That only demonstrates that the text was open to have 19th century theological content added to it. We have an example of this process in a text called The Abode of the Blessed (possibly dating as early as the 3rd century BC). Although the debate is ongoing, the Abode of the Blessed was most likely a Jewish text describing Israelites being led by God from Jerusalem to distant lands. It was translated into numerous languages and expanded at different points over its lifetime. Christians added theological content to the Jewish source text, and it became the History of the Rechabites. More content, including 3rd to 16th century Christian theology, was expanded into it and it became the Narrative of Zosimus. Yet the original Jewish core remained. So, is the Abode of the Blessed a 3rd century BC text, or is it a 4th century AD text? Or is it only to be dated to the 19th century AD when it was translated into English?

(Sidenote, the Biblical group described in the Abode of the Blessed are related to a historical group that departed Jerusalem in the 6th century BC and took up residence on the Malay Peninsula, known anciently as the Golden Peninsula. There is data to support this argument.)

So let's imagine that the Book of Mormon was yet another expansion of this apocryphal account of Rechabites writing their own history apart from the Old World in a land beyond the shores of the sea. This text was restored and translated at some point between the 16th century AD and the 19th century AD, with more additions and expansions to come. So the question really is, does the Book of Mormon have a core to it that dates back to antiquity? Non-Mormon Bible scholars like Margaret Barker and Paul Owen have explored this question:

“The extraordinary similarity between a text that is sometimes called the History of the Rechabites and sometimes the Narrative of Zosimus—the extraordinary similarity between this story and the story of Lehi leaving Jerusalem—has already been studied by Mormon scholars. This ancient text, which survives in Greek, Syriac, and Ethioptic, tells the story of some people who left Jerusalem about 600 BCE and they went to live in a “blessed land.” They didn’t drink wine. They were called the sons of Rechab1, which could mean that Rechab was their ancestor, or it could be the Hebrew way of saying that they were temple servants, priests who served the divine throne. In their blessed lands, angels had announced to them the incarnation of the Word of God from the holy virgin who is the mother of God. Nobody can explain this text.” - Margaret Barker

How did the concept of Christ and the holy virgin get added to an authentic Jewish text predating Christ?

Is there a core text that Joseph had access to that he expanded on using 19th century ideas.  The simplest answer is no, he just dictated the BoM without having any core text to build from.  It seems obvious to me that he borrowed many elements in the cultural zeitgeist, ideas about the Native Americans being Israelite descendants, and crafted them into an account.  If you take out all of the ideas in the 19th century that were part of the environment, what would you have left?  

An additional complication would be if Joseph did have access to another text of some kind, where did that text come from?  We know Joseph had no ability to read other languages (I'm taking the naturalist approach here because personally I see no evidence for any supernatural translation ability on Joseph's part).  Where would this text have come from, and how would it have ended up translated into English and in Joseph's hand, and then disappear with no trail of evidence afterwards.  

Can you explain your last sentence in the above quote.  What is this about the concept of Christ and the holy virgin in a text that predated Christ?  

12 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

With respect, you don't take the model seriously, but you haven't looked at the arguments? The short answer is yes, but the evidence is not only for the Malay Peninsula, but all civilizations related to those that originated from there, in particular the Rechabites, also known as the Rahmans, or Khmer. As Michael Coe says, the Mayan and the Khmer were parallel civilizations and the only way to explain the similarities is by accepting that they "paddled their canoes" across the ocean.

Parallel Civilizations: Ancient Angkor and the Ancient Maya

That is the starting point for this model.

You're right, I don't take the model seriously because the basic explanation for how this information could have made its way into the BoM is even more of a stretch of the imagination than the standard BoM claims.  Please tell me the theory for how this information could have made its way to Joseph Smith so that it ended up in the BoM.  

[CV75]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I guess I don't understand why its relevant that pre-Clovis people arrived to America by boat when it comes to BoM claims.   It doesn't prove that cross oceanic expeditions were technologically possible during the BoM times.  It doesn't do anything to help BoM claims at all that I can see.  It sounds like some apologists feel vindicated because they've been arguing for the possibility of the use of boats for migrating populations, and now that the evidence supports this one example they feel vindicated in some way, but I really don't understand why since the evidence of pre-Clovis people really has no application to the BoM claims that I can see.  

If such travel had been going on for so long, and was so common, it is not so odd to posit that it continued in Book of Mormon times. If scientists have been positing the possibility of the use of boats for migrating populations, and now the evidence supports it, they have done their homework which is good for apologists. According to Wikipedia, there are several other examples also:

- In 1997 a site at Monte Verde in Chile was measured as at least 14,500 years old — 1000 years before Clovis tools appeared. The earliest date at the site is now 18,500 years ago, though it is not universally accepted.

- Several more pre-Clovis sites have also since been discovered, such as Huaca Prieta (Peru. 15,000 years), Paisley Caves (Oregon. 14,300 years), and Triquet Island (British Columbia. 14,000 years).

- Genetic evidence from precontact South American skeletons now suggests expansion out of Beringia 16,000 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact_theories

[hope_for_things]

14 minutes ago, CV75 said:

If such travel had been going on for so long, and was so common, it is not so odd to posit that it continued in Book of Mormon times.

Are you intentionally confusing the issue?  We're talking about two very different things.  The use of small boats for gradual migration across the coastal regions, and the use of larger boats to take long voyages across the entire ocean.  Apples and Oranges, I keep pointing this out to you, but I'm not sure why you keep mixing the two together, they are very very different and the technology was thousands of years apart.  

None of what the pre-Clovis evidence supports the BoM apologetic claims.  There is a lot of material in that Wiki article you linked, and I only skimmed through part of it.  Most of what i read were post BoM time period theories, and many of those claims are also disputed by scientists.  At any rate, I still don't see how the pre-Clovis small boat coastal exploration has anything to do with BoM claims.  It sounds like you have no answer to that question of mine. 

[Rajah Manchou]

58 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

What time periods is the Australmelanesian DNA theorized to have arrived in the America's?  I'm not saying voyages across the Pacific ocean weren't possible in more recent times, and I'm not even saying they weren't possible during BoM times.   I'll follow the evidence.  

That is unknown. There were two independent studies that both found Austromelanesian DNA, and they didn't exactly agree on the timing and source. But the authors of the two studies weren't able, at the time, to suggest anything other than a crossing of the land bridge before 14,000 BC. Hopefully now that boats are an acceptable mode of transportation for Paleomericans, they will make an update. This is from one of the studies: 

"We have shown that a Population Y that had ancestry from a lineage more closely related to present-day Australasians than to present-day East Asians and Siberians, likely contributed to the DNA of Native Americans from Amazonia and the Central Brazilian Plateau. This discovery is striking in light of interpretations of the morphology of some early Native American skeletons, which some authors have suggested have affinities to Australasian groups. The largest number of skeletons that have been described as having this craniofacial morphology and that date to younger than 10,000 years old have been found in Brazil, the home of the Surui, Karitiana and Xavante groups who show the strongest affinity to Australasians in genetic data. However, in the absence of DNA directly extracted from a skeleton with this morphology, our results are not sufficient to conclude that the Population Y we have reconstructed from the genetic data had this morphology."

So the Australasian-like skeletons are younger than 10,000 years old, but as for the age of the DNA they go on to say "The arrival of Population Y ancestry in the Americas must in any scenario have been ancient: while Population Y shows a distant genetic affinity to Andamanese, Australian and New Guinean populations, it is not particularly closely related to any of them, suggesting that the source of population Y in Eurasia no longer exists; furthermore, we detect no long-range admixture linkage disequilibrium in Amazonians as would be expected if the Population Y migration had occurred within the last few thousand years."

So, who knows?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[hope_for_things]

22 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

That is unknown. There were two independent studies that both found Austromelanesian DNA, and they didn't exactly agree on the timing and source. But the authors of the two studies weren't able, at the time, to suggest anything other than a crossing of the land bridge before 14,000 BC. Hopefully now that boats are an acceptable mode of transportation for Paleomericans, they will make an update. This is from one of the studies: 

"We have shown that a Population Y that had ancestry from a lineage more closely related to present-day Australasians than to present-day East Asians and Siberians, likely contributed to the DNA of Native Americans from Amazonia and the Central Brazilian Plateau. This discovery is striking in light of interpretations of the morphology of some early Native American skeletons, which some authors have suggested have affinities to Australasian groups. The largest number of skeletons that have been described as having this craniofacial morphology and that date to younger than 10,000 years old have been found in Brazil, the home of the Surui, Karitiana and Xavante groups who show the strongest affinity to Australasians in genetic data. However, in the absence of DNA directly extracted from a skeleton with this morphology, our results are not sufficient to conclude that the Population Y we have reconstructed from the genetic data had this morphology."

So the Australasian-like skeletons are younger than 10,000 years old, but as for the age of the DNA they go on to say "The arrival of Population Y ancestry in the Americas must in any scenario have been ancient: while Population Y shows a distant genetic affinity to Andamanese, Australian and New Guinean populations, it is not particularly closely related to any of them, suggesting that the source of population Y in Eurasia no longer exists; furthermore, we detect no long-range admixture linkage disequilibrium in Amazonians as would be expected if the Population Y migration had occurred within the last few thousand years."

So, who knows?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks, I think I misunderstood your earlier post because it sounded like you were saying that this evidence shows that these people must have taken a direct path across the ocean on a long voyage, otherwise we'd find evidence of them along the coastal regions, however I'm not sure you can make this assumption.  Do the studies support your assumption on this point?  From what you've described it sounds plausible that these people came across through the same small boats exploring the coast lines method, and then settled in the Amazon.  

[CV75]

23 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Are you intentionally confusing the issue?  We're talking about two very different things.  The use of small boats for gradual migration across the coastal regions, and the use of larger boats to take long voyages across the entire ocean.  Apples and Oranges, I keep pointing this out to you, but I'm not sure why you keep mixing the two together, they are very very different and the technology was thousands of years apart.  

None of what the pre-Clovis evidence supports the BoM apologetic claims.  There is a lot of material in that Wiki article you linked, and I only skimmed through part of it.  Most of what i read were post BoM time period theories, and many of those claims are also disputed by scientists.  At any rate, I still don't see how the pre-Clovis small boat coastal exploration has anything to do with BoM claims.  It sounds like you have no answer to that question of mine. 

The Wikipedia article has a small section, part of which i quoted. The full section is:

Ancient trans-oceanic migration

Main article: Settlement of the Americas

 

Map of the Americas showing pre Clovis sites.

It is now generally believed that earlier, prehistoric peopling of the Americas was achieved by boat at least 14,000 years ago, replacing the once dominant theory of ice-free corridor migration associated with the Clovis culture.^[2] The world's largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), summarized^[2] for Science in August 2017:

Most archaeologists think the first Americans arrived by boat. Now, they’re beginning to prove it. [...] Whereas archaeologists once thought that the earliest arrivals wandered into the continent through a gap in the ice age glaciers covering Canada, most researchers today think the first inhabitants came by sea. In this view, maritime explorers voyaged by boat out of Beringia—the ancient land now partially submerged under the waters of the Bering Strait—about 16,000 years ago and quickly moved down the Pacific coast, reaching Chile by at least 14,500 years ago.

— Lizzie Wade^[2]

Key evidence:

• In 1997 a site at Monte Verde in Chile was measured as at least 14,500 years old — 1000 years before Clovis tools appeared. The earliest date at the site is now 18,500 years ago, though it is not universally accepted.^[2]
• Several more pre-Clovis sites have also since been discovered, such as Huaca Prieta (Peru. 15,000 years), Paisley Caves (Oregon. 14,300 years), and Triquet Island (British Columbia. 14,000 years).^[2]
• Genetic evidence from precontact South American skeletons now suggests expansion out of Beringia 16,000 years ago.^[2]

What are the apologetic claims? That science is agreeing that ancient peoples came to the Americas by boat? I don't see the problem: if very ancient people did it, it is plausible that less-ancient people did also, differences in technology notwithstanding. The size of the boats doesn't preclude any of them stopping along the way, and neither does the lack of a captain's log in the Book of Mormon.

[cinepro]

The most amazing thing about all these discoveries isn't that it pre-dates the Book of Mormon migrations.  It's that these time frames pre-date Adam and Eve! 

 

If the Church acknowledged there were people (actual humans) roaming the Earth in these time frames, that would be huge.

[Kevin Christensen]

27 minutes ago, cinepro said:

The most amazing thing about all these discoveries isn't that it pre-dates the Book of Mormon migrations.  It's that these time frames pre-date Adam and Eve! 

 

If the Church acknowledged there were people (actual humans) roaming the Earth in these time frames, that would be huge.

There was this, aptly titled "Before Adam"

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1101&index=7

Originally delivered at BYU in the remoteness of 1980, and it happened to be a huge influence on my thinking at the time.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Is there a core text that Joseph had access to that he expanded on using 19th century ideas.  The simplest answer is no, he just dictated the BoM without having any core text to build from. 

Joseph just dictated a text that happens to have a number of remarkable similarities to the 3rd century History of the Rechabites? He just dictated it? Like out of the blue? That's the simplest explanation?

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

You're right, I don't take the model seriously because the basic explanation for how this information could have made its way into the BoM is even more of a stretch of the imagination than the standard BoM claims. Please tell me the theory for how this information could have made its way to Joseph Smith so that it ended up in the BoM.  

To be honest, I never understood why people who prefer a 100% natural, rational, logical explanation bother with Mormonism or religion at all. Why not just be a scientist and stick with what is known and testable? But oh well. If that's what you prefer, I suppose the idea of a Malay geography could have come to him via Solomon Spaulding who, according to his daughter and a number of other people who knew him, was writing a book about the "Nephites and Lamanites" and their "migration via the Red Sea to the Pacific Ocean; their residence for a long time in China; their crossing the ocean by Behrings Straits in North America." Or maybe it was the dozens of other accounts that had the Lost Tribes and/or the Rechabites traveling through Asia before they crossed the Bearing Strait? Or maybe it was influenced by Samuel MitchiIl who proposed that Malays and Tartars were the first Native Americans and they battled it out in upstate New York. Or maybe it was from Claudius Buchanan's Star in the East that described Malayalan Jews leaving Jerusalem in the 6th century BC with brass plates and sailing as far as the Malay Peninsula and China.

I don't know, if "cultural zeitgeist" is what you're looking for, than Asia would be much richer in source material than Upstate New York or Mesoamerica. For nearly 1500 years before America was even on a map, Asia (the Great Tartary, the Isles of the Sea and the East Indies) was the location of the Lost Tribes. What amazes me most about Mormonism and the Book of Mormon, is how thoroughly it has erased almost two millennia of Lost Tribe traditions that were firmly planted in Asia, and shifted them to New York State. That you find it a stretch that this material could have influenced the Book of Mormon boggles my mind.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Rajah Manchou