DNA and the American Indian – Part II

For quite some time, people have considered that Amerind (American Indian) DNA is easily determined through tests, and that certain so-called Lamanite ancestry markers can be traced to middle Asia, thus eliminating the possibility that Lamanites in the Western Hemisphere could trace their DNA ancestry to the Hebrew Middle East. This has become a major point for critics to question the validity of the Book of Mormon, and some members unfortunately have questioned their beliefs because of it.

However, as pointed out in the last post, Native American DNA testing is far from conclusive—in fact, it is often more confusing that not. Take, for example, that supposedly known DNA markers of Native Americans (Indians) have shown up in Japan, North Asian, and even Turkey, suggesting that in a blind test, those individuals would fall into the Native American Indian category.

DNA tests actually show that so-called Native American markers are the same as some Japanese, northern Asians, and even people of European and Turkish descent as well as Samoan—LtoR: American Indian, Asian, Japanese, Samoan

Still more confusing, some of the haplotypes attributed to Native Americans are also found in people from other parts of the world. Several are found in North Asia, and one is found in southern Europe and Turkey. In fact, the principal marker of haplotype B, called the "9-Base Pair Deletion," is found in some Japanese and almost all Samoans. Should they then be classified as genetically Native American? These tests cannot even establish with certainty that, for example, someone’s mother’s mother’s mother was Native American‚ they can at best establish only the possibility that this was the case.

However, it was the practice of geneticists working with DNA to establish probabilities that led to the disastrous findings in 1987 and the so-called discovery of Mitochondrial Eve (See our post of Feb 26, “The Demise of Mitochondrial Eve”). The problem lies in the fact that as 2011 figures, the World’s population stood at 6,973,738,433 people (that’s a hair under 7 billion), of which the largest claimed genetic profile database claims to include over 554,000 individuals. This means that, even if they actually had DNA testing on all half million, which is not likely the case since they are talking about covering 1227 populations including 918 indigenous populations, covering every continent throughout the world, we are talking about DNA tests on less than .00008 of the population (that is 8/10000ths).

Now tell me, is that a workable figure on which to make such lavish claims? What if we then went back one generation, five generations, 10 generations, etc.?

The percent of people tested would be so astronomically low that there is no possible way anyone can say that this marker or that marker, this haplotype or that haplotype belongs to this group or that group. Of course, scientists like to claim they can extrapolate small numbers to get very large numbers, but that was the problem with the creation of the 1987 finding of Mitochondrial Eve, which was proven wrong in 2002 because, as one of the newer researchers stated: “Until approximately 1997, we did not have good empirical measures of mutation rates in humans.  However, that situation greatly improved when geneticists were able to analyze DNA from individuals with well-established family trees going back several generations”--something that had not been available to the geneticists a mere ten years earlier. And if we are even now, 26 years later, still only measuring .00008 of the population, how many errors are we making today that will be altered in the future when we have far more "better-established" family trees going back a great many generations.

This means that for approximately 10 years, during which time Mitochondrial Eve became the newest buzz word or concept on the planet, DNA scientists were making claims they simply did not have sufficient empirical measurements to make—that is, enough generations to see what the mutation rates of DNA in humans actually were. However, since 1997, sufficient generational information became available of individuals with "well-established family trees going back several generations," which enabled geneticists to make more accurate measurements and realize the error of a decade earlier. But of course they didn’t know their assumptions (guesses) of "random mutations in the DNA occurred at documented, steady rates," was inaccurate. It took a later, more complete generational database to learn of their error—an error that set thousands, if not millions, of people, programs, companies, and individuals on the wrong road to understanding DNA.

Are we still on such a road? It would seem so, since science is still claiming Western Hemisphere settlement via the Siberian Land Bridge in opposition to all archaeological finds in Andean South America showing the oldest cultural existence and building in the Americas, with new finds occurring regularly, pushing back the dates of Andean settlement to very early periods, earlier (older) than anything else yet discovered in the entire Americas.

Scientists still hang on to the old paradigm that man originated in Africa and spread throughout the world, reaching the Western Hemisphere over a so-called Land Bridge between Siberia and Alaska, called Beringia, despite growing evidence of a south to north development in the Americas

Another issue in the Amerind DNA is the widespread belief that genetics can help determine specific tribes of either living or ancient people; however, this is quite simply false according to the report noted in the last post. Neighboring tribes have long-standing complex relationships involving intermarriage, raiding, adoption, splitting, and joining. These social historical forces insure that there cannot be any clear-cut genetic variants differentiating all the members of one tribe from those of nearby tribes. At most, one can identify slight differences in the proportions of certain genetic variations in each group, but those do not permit specific individuals to be assigned to particular groups.

The conclusion of the report shows that "the concept of genetic testing to prove Native American ancestry is one that is discussed more frequently in recent times, but there are many problems with the idea. Perhaps foremost of these problems is that to make a genetic test the arbiter of whether someone is Native American or not is to give up tribal sovereign ability to determine membership and relations. But even taken on their own scientific terms, the tests cannot do much to identify who is and who is not Native American." This is because they yield many false negatives and false positives (they readily misidentify non-Native people as Native, and misidentify Native people as non-Native), and "the positive results they do yield at best are only probabilities, not certainties." the researcher went on to add, "If these were medical diagnostic tests, they would never be approved or adopted."

But the most important argument against this type of testing to establish tribal affiliations is that biology (and genetics) track just part of the tribal inheritance. These DNA tests treat Native American biology as though all Indians were essentially the same. But that is far from the truth.

In a study before MtDNA was shown to be in error in the way geneticists had been using it, scientists measured Amerind MtDNA and found one interesting factor—“The HincII np 13,259 and AluI np 5,176 lineages were observed exclusively in Amerinds and were shared by all such tribal groups analyzed, thus demonstrating that North, Central and South American Amerinds originated from a common ancestral genetic stock” (Antonio Torroni, et al, Center for Genetics and Molecular Medicine and Departments of Biochemistry and Anthropology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia).

It seems the idea that the American Indians, who we call Lamanites, all came from “a common ancestral stock”—correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what the advocates of the Book of Mormon have been saying that everyone is criticizing? Perhaps when DNA sampling and testing reaches a point where scientists involved are not bent on blindly following the evolutionists’ fossil record, and rely more and more on their actual findings through factual testing, we might find a more accurate location of that ancestral record.