Join John, Gerardo, and Australian geneticist Simon Southerton as we break down the “Heartland Model,” which proposes that the events described in the Book of Mormon took place primarily in the heartland of North America. The main proponent of this model, Rodney Meldrum, and his followers have been described as a “movement” that could transform the LDS Church.
Simon will explain how one of the main pieces of “evidence” that the FIRM enterprise promotes is built on a single questionable claim that Meldrum has been making for over 15 years, even after being corrected by several non-Mormon scientists, Simon himself, FairMormon, and LDS scholars at BYU, including Ugo Perego.
Show Notes:
- “The fight over Book of Mormon Geography,” by Michael DeGroote, Deseret News, May 27, 2010
- “An Outsider’s View of Mormon Archaeology with Dr. Michael Coe” on Mormon Stories
- “LIDAR, Response to John Sorenson, and the Book of Mormon with MesoAmerican Archaeologist Dr. Michael Coe” on Mormon Stories
- Dean Sessions’ Universal Model
- Rod Meldrum’s FIRM Foundation (Foundation for Indigenous Research and Mormonism)
- “How Heartland Began and Continues,” by Rod Meldrum with input from Rian Nelson
- “Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History,” by Deborah A. Bolnick, et. al., Book of Mormon Archeological Foundation, 2012
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 - Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton by Douglas W. Owsley
- Face of a Nephite: DNA Studies and the Book of Mormon by David Read
- Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church by Simon G. Southerton
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6 Responses
Thank you.
Interesting.
I wonder if there should be a podcast on science: how scientific thought happens, the scientific process, falsifiability, the difference between ‘knowledge’ obtained from god differs from knowledge obtained by doing science.
FYI it’s a known genetic fact that Haplo Group x is found in the Middle East. Simon Southerton completely lied during the podcast. “ Galilee Druze individuals represent the refugium of an ancestral group with high diversity and high frequency of haplogroup X, which was more prevalent in the region in antiquity, and from which the global diversity of X mtDNA haplogroup emerged”. ““We surveyed our Old World haplogroup X mtDNAs for the five diagnostic X2a mutations (table 2) and found a match only for the transition at np 12397 in a Nannagle X2* sequence from Iran. In a parsimony tree, this Iranian mtDNA would share a common ancestor with the Native American clade.”
(Origin and Diffusion of mtDNA haplogroup X, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180497/)
Is your point that Native Americans may have a common ancestor to the Middle East 30,000 years ago?
The point is Native American Haplo group x is from the Middle East. There is enough dna, archeological, andcultural evidence to show that the radio carbon dating is subjective. Generally, scientist believe that as genetic groups leave and travel away from their ancestral home and join other ancestral groups their genetic dna marker dilutes. But Haplo group x highest concentration is found in Israel Druze 27% (Likely Tribe of Manasseh). The second highest concentration of haplo group x is North American Native Americans Ojibwa 26%. In Egypt the concentration is 14%. The Druze and Ojibwa concentrations are continents apart and flys in the face of current theory but matches the Book of Mormon and Bible perfectly. Ojibwa actually have the highest concentration of Haplo group x2 in the world, higher than in Israel. But the real question becomes why would the closest Haplo group x genetic link to Native Americans be in Iran and Israel? The bible answers this question. Outside of the American continent it’s the most closely related genetic link to a founding Native American genetic dna marker and the only place outside of North America you can find X2a. X2a’j is found in Iran. One would expect that if current theories about world migration and dna dating are correct the closest genetic links to Native American Haplo group x2a would be in Siberia, East and central Asia. Native American haplo group x2a DNA marker is not found in these countries its found only in the Middle East specifically Iran. Current theory is that people from the middle east migrated to subarctic Siberia then to North America. As already stated Haplo group x as related to North American Native Americans is not found in Siberia or East and central Asia. The idea that people from the Middle East, in temperate climate would migrate to subarctic inhospitable wastelands is nonsensical
The main point is this Simon Southerton lied when he said That Haplo group x is not found in the Middle East. Genetic links from Native American Haplo group x is found in the Middle East not east Asia.
Based on this compelling scientific data, I’m going to pay 10 % of all I earn to Ensign Peak going forward.