DNA
On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 10:34 PM, Rod Meldrum <rodneymeldrum@hotmail.com> wrote:
Sorry so long getting on this… busy day and trying to get ready for Rexburg conference. I will send the reply below to the sender. I might assume that he/she will forward on to Bolnick, which is why I have tried to write it in a more scientific style.
“First, the article wasn’t a part of the original DNA essay. It was added later, but I don’t know when exactly. Jonathan is right about it being under ref #15.
Second, the Scott Gordon chart from FAIR is pretty old and as Jonathan said, my understanding is that it originated from John E. Clarke. I think that they might have updated some things over time, but agree, it is absolutely useless without references to corroborating info. I’d love to see a similar chart in ABOM but again, without adding references to articles, we’d have the same issues and at least some of the articles are our own. I can see several we could ‘green’ on the chart: like goats, sheep, Solomon-like temple, copper smelting, brass, iron, molten stone glass, etc. using, of course, our Heartland biases! 🙂
Third, the article is co-written by Deborah Bolnick, who, I was told, nearly lost her job because of her appearance in The Lost Civilizations of North America documentary. She has been trying to vindicate herself with her peers ever since, in fact directly contradicting her statements in the film regarding the middle eastern origins of haplogroup X. While I don’t have time today to go into to much detail in response to this article, here are some observations.
Under the heading of “The Current Model” the authors assume that a small (single?) founder population was “likely,” yet several other published studies have indicated that there may have been several founding populations. The authors are correct in stating that “There is still a great deal that is unknown about this founder [or founding] population(s). Of course, the majority of the founding populations originated in East Asia, and not the Middle-East. We’re not questioning that. The authors assume that ALL founding populations came over Beringia, were isolated there so long they evolved their own genetic variants (mutations or sub-groups) and those variants are found ONLY in the Americas today. That they developed their own variations after their arrival is essentially what our research indicates.
The authors admit that “the precise history of migration out of Siberia/ Beringia following the LGM is currently the focus of active research and debate in anthropological genetics, archaeology, and geology.” Yet, for some reason, they are quite certain of their own conclusions.
Under the heading of “Haplogroup X2a” the authors reiterate that haplogroup X2a is only found in North America near the Great Lakes along with a few Plains and Pacific Northwest tribes. It is NOT in Central or South Americans. We agree.
The authors state that there is “no clear record of the evolutionary history of X2a in ANY [other] population.” If there is no other ancient source population having X2a, wouldn’t it then be plausible that this particular variant of the primary haplogroup X lineage arose after its arrival in North America? They admit that X2, the “grand-parental haplogroup” to X2a is, indeed, found in the “Near East” where the X haplogroup is “thought to have initially evolved.” They continue, “Thus, the intermediate lineages linking X2 and X2a appear to have been lost in contemporary populations” and are “rare.” This is what we would expect of a group of people coming from the source populations of haplogroup X or subgroup X2 in the Middle East and then migrating to America before developing their own sub-mutations (X2a and/or X2g).
The authors claim that the hypothesis of an “ancient Hebrew migration from the Middle East to North America approximately 2500 cal yr BP” is incorrect based on four key findings:
“X2a is not found in the Middle East,…” True, but as the article already discussed, X2a is thought to have developed it’s unique mutations following its arrival in America, so it would not be found in the Middle East.
“…none of the X2 lineages present in the Middle East are immediately ancestral to X2a…” The key term here is “immediately” which is again a timing or dating issue. It is not disputed that X2a is a subgroup of X2, only how close in time the two are related. This is a dating issue.
Why? Because “the date of coalescence for X2a significantly precedes the hypothesized migration for the Middle East (Perego et al. 2009).” So this particular issue is two-fold. First, X2a is a subgroup of X2. X2 is found in the Middle East, but it’s subgroup, X2A isn’t. This would be a problem if it were reversed with the primary group coming from the sub-group, but the direction is correct in this case. Second, the coalescence date (date of the split of X2a from X2) is a figure that is phylogenic dating based, which is theoretical and shown to be orders of magnitude different than observed mutation rates. This means that if the dating of the coalescence time is incorrect, then the proposed Hebrew migration to the New World from the Middle East could have preceded the rise of the X2a mutation(s) found only in America.
“haplogroup X2a was present in North America far earlier than the hypothesized Hebrew migration” because it was found in Kennewick Man who was dated to “8690-8400 cal yr BP.” Again this is based on the assumption that the dating of Kennewick Man is correct. If the Kennewick Man dating is incorrect, then it is possible that his X2a post-dated the Hebrew migration of 600 BC.
Every issue with the hypothesis that a Hebrew population having haplogroup X2 migrated to America around 600 BC, and following their arrival developed unique mutations to create sub-haplogroup X2a is based on assumed dates derived from theoretical dating techniques. If the theoretical dating is wrong, then the simple facts remain, which are completely consistent with the Hebrew hypothesis.
Most of the remaining article is dealing with the Solutrean hypothesis, which is substantially different than the Hebrew hypothesis. The article authors spend much more time addressing the Solutrean hypothesis.
In their “Concluding thoughts” section 4 it should be noted that, to their credit, the authors acknowledge that their considered opinion is that the current hypothesis of a small founding population arriving from Asia across Beringia is more convincing than the Hebrew hypothesis. If the coalescence and/or carbon dating is incorrect, then the actual DNA sequenced observations of haplogroup X originating in the Middle East, developing a sub-group called X2 there, and then migrating to America where another sub-sub-group developed into X2a is in harmony with the Hebrew Hypothesis.
I address DNA dating techniques, methods, assumptions, and challenges in my book, ReDiscovering the Book of Mormon Remnant Through DNA. It is critical to understand how dating is being conducted and the basis and foundations of it in order to better understand why the dating can and indeed should be questioned.”
Comment by Jonathan Neville:
“Excellent explanation from Rod!
Another consideration is that there is no population in East Asia that is ancestral to X2a.
“Thus, the intermediate lineages linking X2 and X2a appear to have been lost in contemporary populations, or are so rare that they have not yet been well studied. We might expect to find them in ancient populations, but our temporal and spatial coverage of ancient populations is still quite sparse. Despite — or perhaps because of — this gap in the phylogeographic record for haplogroup X2, the presence of X2a in North America has been cited as evidence for two different trans-Atlantic migrations before European contact.”
This is why they can’t explain a Beringia migration for X2a. Kennewick man was found along the Columbia river, but that is consistent with the Hebrew theory because we already know Zelph (or Onandagus) was known from the Rocky Mountains to Cumorah during Nephite times. The Rocky Mountains are the continental divide, so naturally Nephite explorers would have gone west from the Rocky Mountains, just as the European explorers did. The tragedy is that the Federal Government buried the Kennewick site before archaeology could be done there.
The 19th century destruction of burial sites throughout the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. was a catastrophe, but hopefully there are enough ancient Nephite/Lamanite remains yet to be uncovered that will help illuminate the DNA puzzle.”