aussieguy55 Posted May 6, 2018 Posted May 6, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69uUUGWRl4c Interesting interview. This is the first part of several parts.
mfbukowski Posted May 6, 2018 Posted May 6, 2018 12 minutes ago, aussieguy55 said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69uUUGWRl4c Interesting interview. This is the first part of several parts. I got as far as "could not reconcile the science" Literalism. Scriptures are not science texts.They are stories to help us live our life well. Maybe they happened maybe they didn't. It really doesn't matter. Nothing here for me.
Robert F. Smith Posted May 6, 2018 Posted May 6, 2018 2 hours ago, aussieguy55 said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69uUUGWRl4c Interesting interview. This is the first part of several parts. Yes, very interesting. Thank you for sharing it. I was surprised at the end by Dr Southerton's shallow assumption that modern DNA testing of hundreds of Maya Indians tells us anything meaningful about ancient DNA. He knows very well that the Maya are not considered to have been Lamanites or Nephites by Mormon scholars. Moreover, he also knows that the bottleneck effect, genetic drift, etc., in ancient times could effect whatever DNA is available in modern tribes in any case. The best plan for genetic research on the BofM is to examine ancient skeletal remains for DNA in the Chiapas, Mexico, area (a non-Maya area). As Southerton himself correctly said on more than one occasion: Quote “In 600 BC there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites entered such a massive native population it would be very, very hard to detect their genes 200, 2,000, or even 20,000 years later.” Southerton, March 10, 2005, on Signature Book website, later removed. 2
cacheman Posted May 6, 2018 Posted May 6, 2018 6 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Yes, very interesting. Thank you for sharing it. I was surprised at the end by Dr Southerton's shallow assumption that modern DNA testing of hundreds of Maya Indians tells us anything meaningful about ancient DNA. He knows very well that the Maya are not considered to have been Lamanites or Nephites by Mormon scholars. Moreover, he also knows that the bottleneck effect, genetic drift, etc., in ancient times could effect whatever DNA is available in modern tribes in any case. The best plan for genetic research on the BofM is to examine ancient skeletal remains for DNA in the Chiapas, Mexico, area (a non-Maya area). As Southerton himself correctly said on more than one occasion: I'm fairly ignorant on the subject, but I seem to remember that preclassic Mayans were featured in BoM research. And aren't there Mayan ruins in Chiapas? Again....I really don't know much about this area of study. Also. ... Dr. Southerton's quote was true at the time (13 years ago). But, with the advancements in the field of population genetics, he now says the statement is not true. Do you disagree with him in that?
Robert F. Smith Posted May 7, 2018 Posted May 7, 2018 11 hours ago, cacheman said: I'm fairly ignorant on the subject, but I seem to remember that preclassic Mayans were featured in BoM research. And aren't there Mayan ruins in Chiapas? Again....I really don't know much about this area of study. Since the Maya are such a spectacular and successful culture in Mesoamerica, one must naturally study their culture and language -- but only because it is one of the five cultures of Mesoamerica which took their common culture from the "Mother Culture," the earlier Olmec (Jaredites). The people living in Chiapas, Mexico, then were the Mixe-Zoque, a much different ethnic group from the Maya. There is no doubt that the highland Maya in Guatemala had contact with the Lamanites, but we do not know the degree of possible interbreeding, nor whether the Maya gene pool was so large that the Lamanite DNA would become virtually invisible to modern researchers. That is why I emphasize the need for ancient DNA. 11 hours ago, cacheman said: Also. ... Dr. Southerton's quote was true at the time (13 years ago). But, with the advancements in the field of population genetics, he now says the statement is not true. Do you disagree with him in that? I would like to know why he says that it is no longer true, and would like to hear what Dr. Ugo Perego has to say about that (he was interviewed by the same guy). Especially since Dr. Southerton says that he agrees with Perego.
smac97 Posted May 7, 2018 Posted May 7, 2018 12 hours ago, cacheman said: I'm fairly ignorant on the subject, but I seem to remember that preclassic Mayans were featured in BoM research. And aren't there Mayan ruins in Chiapas? Again....I really don't know much about this area of study. Also. ... Dr. Southerton's quote was true at the time (13 years ago). But, with the advancements in the field of population genetics, he now says the statement is not true. Do you disagree with him in that? I think this article merits some attention. Some excerpts: Quote To date, genetic studies indicate that Native Americans are most closely related to East Asians,4 while no clear genetic relationship with the Middle East has been established.5 However, the best available DNA data has several limitations,6 making it likely that the migrations mentioned in the Book of Mormon would go unnoticed genetically.7 I think the limitations mentioned here are very important, and I question whether "advancements in the field of population genetics" (your paraphrase of Southerton's more recent position) have overcome those limitations (see the footnoted references). Quote A key factor is that the Americas were already populated when Book of Mormon peoples first arrived. There is strong evidence that Book of Mormon peoples likely interacted with indigenous peoples almost immediately,8 forever complicating efforts to trace the DNA lineages of Jared, Lehi, Mulek, and their co-travelers. "Forever complicating efforts to trace the DNA lineages of Jared, Lehi, Mulek..." Seems like Southerton's 180 is perhaps not fully justified. Quote One important limitation is the simple fact that no one knows what Jared’s, Lehi’s, or Mulek’s DNA actually looked like.9 Simply assuming it looked like DNA from the modern Middle East can be deeply misleading. A common problem in population genetics, known as founder effect, appears when the founders of a population had atypical genetic markers for the region they came from. For instance, an LDS geneticist from Italy found that his paternal genetic marker was more typical of East Asian ancestry. If something similar was the case with the founders of Book of Mormon populations, identifying their descendants using DNA would be impossible.10 I wonder what Southerton has to say about this. Quote Even if Jared’s, Mulek’s, and Lehi’s DNA were typical of the regions of their origins, the reality is that most genetic information from the past does not survive into present populations. Most DNA studies on Native Americans are dependent upon DNA markers which pass from one generation to the next along paternal and maternal lines. Because such markers do not get mixed from one generation to the next, these lineages are easy to trace back several generations. However, in total they only represent 0.01 percent of a person’s DNA.11 Since these DNA markers only follow the maternal and paternal lineages, they leave out a lot about a person’s ancestry. For example, if one goes back 10 generations (only a couple hundred years in the past), they will have 1,024 ancestors in the tenth generation. However, the paternal and maternal DNA markers would only be able to detect one (for women) or two (for men) of these ancestors. This remains true even as the number of ancestors grows larger with each successive generation, meaning that the further back in time one goes, the less representative these markers become.12 Chart showing how Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA are only represented by a small portion of a person's ancestry. Image by Book of Mormon Central. The rest of the article is worth a read. Here is what Southerton has apparently said more recently (in 2010): Quote The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU, argues a Central American setting for the Book of Mormon and contends that a small group of thirty people would not leave a genetic trace among millions of Siberians in the Americas, so the absence of evidence is actually positive evidence for the Book of Mormon in that it is what one would expect. "The genetic tests are now so sensitive," Southerton says, "that it is possible through admixture mapping to detect a tiny fraction of a percent of the mixed ancestry in a person's DNA. If a small family of Jews mixed with American Indians 3,000 years ago, the Jewish nuclear DNA would spread throughout the adjacent populations like a drop of ink in a bucket. It would be virtually impossible for it to go extinct. If it is there, we'll find it." More here (from his blog in 2013). Thanks, -Smac
aussieguy55 Posted May 7, 2018 Author Posted May 7, 2018 (edited) Interesting article http://www.newsweek.com/native-americans-teeth-shoveled-teeth-gene-mutation-898870 The researchers questioned why these teeth were so common in Native Americans and Asians but rare in other groups. Edited May 7, 2018 by aussieguy55 update
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