Genetics and The Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon, one of the four books of scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see Standard Works), is an account of three groups of people. Two of these groups supposedly originated from Israel. There is generally no support amongst mainstream historians and archaeologists for the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Since the late 1990s and the pioneering work of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and others, scientists have developed techniques that attempt to use genetic markers to indicate the ethnic background and history of individual people. The data developed by these mainstream scientists tell us that the Native Americans have very distinctive DNA markers, and that some of them are most similar, among old world populations, to the DNA of people anciently associated with the Altay Mountains area of central Asia. This conclusion from a genetic perspective confirms a large amount of archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic evidence that Native American peoples' ancestors migrated from Asia at the latest 16,500–13,000 years ago. (See Settlement of the Americas and Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas).

The mainstream scientific consensus about the origin of the ancient Americans and peoples is at odds with the claims put forth in the Book of Mormon, though Mormon apologists have made efforts to reconcile these apparent contradictions.