Description

"For the past 175 years, the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) church has taught that Native Americans and Polynesians are descended from ancient seafaring Israelites. Recent DNA research confirms what anthropologists have been saying for nearly as many years, that Native Americans are originally from Siberia and Polynesians from Southeast Asia. In the current volume, molecular biologist Simon Southerton explains the theology and the science and how the former is being reshaped by the latter."

"Losing a Lost Tribe summarizes the molecular genetic data that have been used to reconstruct human migrations into the New World and Oceania. It also provides an illuminating discussion of the anthropological and Mormon perspectives on the origins of Native Americans and Polynesians. The theological implications of the genetic data are profound and unequivocal."

—Theodore G. Schurr, director of the Laboratory of Molecular Anthropology and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania; consulting curator, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; contributor, New Perspectives on the First Americans

"In an incisive way, Simon Southerton clarifies the often cloudy waters that lie between religious belief and scientific findings. He presents a solid case for the science-based perspective on the origins of American and Polynesian native peoples, while acknowledging the difficulties that such a perspective might cause for the Mormon church."

—Peter S. Bellwood, Professor of Archaeology, Australian National University; author of The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People and Man's Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania; editor, Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association

(Text above from back cover.)

Table of Contents

An American Lost Tribe

1. A Chosen Race in a Promised Land
2. Race Relations in Colonial America
3. Lamanites in the Latter Days
4. The Lamanites of Polynesia

The Human Race around the World

5. Human Molecular Genealogies
6. Science and the First Americans
7. Native American Molecular Genealogies
8. Polynesian Molecular Genealogies
9. The Outcasts of Israel

The Troubled Interface between Mormonism and Science

10. The Lord's University
11. Plausible Geography
12. Faith-Promoting Science
13. LDS Molecular Apologists
14. Moving the Spirit

Appendices

1. Testing for Mitochondrial DNA Lineages
2. Maternal DNA Lineages in the New World
3. Statement from the Smithsonian Institution
4. Websites on Mormon Topics

Glossary of Genetics Terms
Works Cited
Index